Reply #67: The term may be evolving to refer to men [View All]

[pnwmom]

but it originated solely to describe women, and the term "corporate whore" is deliberately meant to connote images of trading favors for personal gain as well as of "sluttiness."

The fact is that, even though some dictionaries may now have evolved to a broader use of the word, the word "whore" has thousands of years of history in connoting a certain type of woman, not a man. And when it is used to describe a woman, such as Hillary Clinton, the connection is even clearer. Tell me, why is it that we don't use the word "corporate gigolo" as a gender neutral term? The fact is, we don't use it at all, because it doesn't carry the same degree of contempt.

This is something like using the word "gay" as a substitute for "lame," which many people do. When people first started using the word that way, it clearly wasn't a neutral term -- the people who used it were also disparaging gays. Now it's used so commonly, some people want to argue that it has lost any negative connotation. Untrue! Because the word, as in the phrase "gay homework" had its roots in a word that had come to signify "homosexual," it disparages gay people to use it to describe things that are unpleasant. No matter how innocent the speaker may claim to be.

And it disparages ALL women when a word is thrown around like "corporate whore" or when pop songs call women "ho's."