Sluts and Riot Grrrls: Female Identity and Sexual Agency

Abstract

This article examines the history of the term ‘slut’ and the articulation of different meanings around it. It traces some of the ways in which the term has been appropriated in various popular culture and new media texts and within subcultural practices and performances. It asks what this reveals not only about the way words are used to define women sexually, but about the way women engage with a culture that frequently reduces them to their sexual value whilst ignoring their sexuality. It argues that this kind of examination can also be a starting point for asking what is at stake in struggles between women, whether this takes the form of struggles over class, generation, aesthetics or politics.