52 pages • 1-hour read
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexism and sexual harassment.
Chapter 6 Summary: “How to Confuse a Catcaller (And Other Ways to Verbally Smash the Patriarchy)”
Montell examines catcalling, claiming that this kind of verbal sexual harassment is not really about sex, but about men vying for power over women. She argues that by offering unwanted assessments of women’s bodies or by extending sexual invitations, men use language to assert their dominance and dehumanize the target of their harassment.
Other common ways in which men try to overpower women include mansplaining, interrupting, and ignoring, all of which the author believes persist in modern society. She points to evidence that showed that female Supreme Court Justices were interrupted by their male counterparts at a much higher rate than the males interrupted each other. With more women added to the bench, the problem only became worse. Montell agrees with Robin Lakoff that all of these habits function as a way to silence women, making them voiceless and therefore diminishing their influence. This, in turn, perpetuates women’s political inequality with men.
Montell then returns to the subject of catcalling, explaining that, despite what some harassers say, it is not complimentary. Indeed, 97% of women who have been harassed on the street say that they felt frightened and degraded by it. While some people claim women should learn to say “no” or otherwise assert themselves, Montell is wary of policing victims’ reactions and potentially victim-blaming. Montell maintains that catcallers feel they have a right to women’s personal space and bodies, and that women are not allowed to have the right to privacy or dignity in public. The author believes that at the core of this issue is some men’s lack of empathy for women. She argues that society’s standards of masculinity socialize boys and men to not relate to women or understand their experiences.
Montell offers solutions to the problem, arguing that by raising boys to understand women’s perspectives, they should have the emotional intelligence to refrain from sexual harassment and other forms of disrespectful behavior. If they want to, women can assertively stand up for themselves in the face of catcalling and other demeaning behavior.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Fuck It: An Ode to Cursing While Female”
Montell cites a paper by Dr. Richard Stephens that associated certain habits with personality traits and intellectual ability. She reports that Dr. Stephens found that people with higher IQs tend to curse more than others. Montell laments that society has long associated cursing with being “crass,” and that she, like many others, was raised to believe that swearing was a sign of being inarticulate or even dumb. She argues that modern American culture overly stigmatizes swearing and that practices like bleeping out televised swear words are “puritanical.” To Montell, swearing is not really harmful since most swear words are not used as insults, but instead are used for self-expression, emphasis, or even to create solidarity between people.
While cursing in general has long been stigmatized, Montell maintains that women tend to be more harshly judged for swearing than men are. She cites a 1997 study that showed that participants were more likely to think women who swore had poor morals or a lower social class than their swearing male counterparts. Socially speaking, swearing more does not necessarily help women fit in with men who curse regularly. Montell refers to a study on coal miners that found that women coal miners who swore were more likely to be sexually harassed by their male colleagues, while the women who refrained from swearing were more socially excluded by men at work.
Montell claims that men and women tend to swear an equal amount, but sometimes for different reasons. She cites an Irish study that showed that some women swore to bond with others, while no men cited that as a reason. Montell hypothesizes that because women are socialized to consider it unladylike to swear, cursing in each other’s company functions as an in-group secret to bond over.
The author considers how most sexually obscene language is from the cis male perspective. For instance, there is no feminine equivalent to “suck my dick” (204). Montell believes that with feminine equivalents lacking, the “power of vulgarity” serves men more than women (206). She invents some creative alternatives and encourages the reader to do the same.
Chapter 8 Summary: “‘Cackling’ Clinton and ‘Sexy’ Scarjo: The Struggle of Being a Woman in Public”
Women are judged for the sound of their voice. While hoarse-sounding voices, like Scarlett Johansson’s, are considered sexy, women who speak loudly, as Hillary Clinton did in an acceptance speech, are labeled “shrill” (213). Montell asserts that these judgements present female public figures with a conundrum, as they try to avoid being sexualized but also must not be too loud or authoritative in their speaking. Women who appear tough tend to be considered unlikeable, but at the same time women vying for positions of power cannot appear weak.
Famous women like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and politician Janet Napolitano all had “tough” personas which Montell believes is partly because they did not have “traditionally feminine vocal traits” (214). In contrast, Montell argues that women with higher-pitched voices and feminine speaking habits are often judged as weak and lacking authority. Montell laments how people strongly associate low vocal pitch with power and authority. Meanwhile, high pitch is associated with being emotional, small, or immature.
Montell acknowledges that some men in the public eye are critiqued for their tone, word choice, and overall oration, but believes that women are judged more harshly. She attributes this harsher judgement to American culture’s discomfort with women in leadership positions. One theory is that most people’s personal experience with a female authority figure is their own mother, which can produce mixed feelings and resentment. Until American culture normalizes women in leadership, Montell believes that women will struggle to avoid being labeled “‘adorable eye candy’” or “‘abrasive scold’” (223).
Montell believes that even with these biases in mind, it is better to appear genuine than to try to change one’s speaking style to cater to the public. She points to women like Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Angela Merkel as examples of people who seem very authentic and have their own unique way of expressing themselves. Montell agrees with businesswoman Sheryl Sandberg that the more women are hired into positions of authority, the sooner American culture’s bias towards women’s voices will begin to fade.
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
Montell deepens her theme on The Politics of Language by arguing that men use language as a means of dominating and degrading women. Her assessments of catcalling, interrupting, and “mansplaining” encourage the reader to focus on the common thread that runs between these actions: Men’s silencing of women. By framing these linguistic habits as intentional, malicious forms of sexism, the author invites the reader to consider the consequences of such behavior, arguing that they perpetuate real-world inequality between the sexes.
The transcripts from the US Supreme Court Justices provides evidence that, even in the most formal and educated circles, sexism in communication creates an imbalance of power between men and women, putting women at a disadvantage. Montell points to evidence that over 60% of all interruptions were aimed at women justices, even though they only accounted for a third of the justices at the time of the study. She also notes that the women justices “were persistently cut off not only by their male colleagues but also by their male subordinates—the advocates on the floor attempting to persuade them” (174-175, emphasis added). In drawing upon this study, Montell demonstrates how even women in positions of power can be undermined by the conversational habits of their male colleagues, with the attempted dominance of even “male subordinates” in this setting suggesting that women are not automatically treated with the same respect or deference as their male peers.
In her discussion of catcalling, Montell argues that catcalling is a symptom of a wider sociopolitical issue, one that reflects a general sense of entitlement that some men have to women’s bodies and attention. Montell’s first solution to these intrusions is to label the behavior and confront the speaker, but she acknowledges that this often does not resolve the problem in the moment. In her own experience and those in the research she cites, confronting catcallers rarely results in an apology, or even a constructive discussion. While she has had some satisfaction in confronting harassers, she writes, “simply informing a catcaller or any other verbal harasser that his words are hurtful is not enough to make him stop” (181).
Montell then uses the difficulties in having constructive dialogue with catcallers as a foundation for her next claim, which is that educating boys to not engage in these behaviors in the first place is the best way to ingrain gender equality in the culture. She explains, “The way to get to that world starts not with teaching women how to protect themselves from harm but with teaching men, ideally from very early on, that the whole world does not belong to them” (187). In shifting the focus of the solution from trying to moderate or change the behavior of the female victims to instead focusing on the male perpetrators, Montell also advocates for a more general shift in how society deals with issues of harassment, arguing that real gender equality must start with socializing men to see women as equals instead of as inferiors who can be harassed and dominated at will.
Montell also addresses The Relationship Between Language and Misogyny when discussing women in the public eye. In her discussion on the “double bind,” Montell aims to persuade the reader that every facet of women’s communication, from pitch to raspiness and volume, is judged more harshly than that of their male counterparts. Montell shows how these judgments are highly subjective and seem to be tied to people’s underlying associations of authority with masculinity. She explains, “Researchers have determined that one of the reasons we tend to connect men’s voices with authority is that we connect low pitch with authority” (216).
The author’s belief that this association is learned, rather than innate, suggests that this aspect of sexism could decline if society normalizes women filling leadership roles. She explains, “As long as it remains strange for women to fill positions of authority, then we can expect their clothes, bodies, voices, and gender itself to be inevitably ogled” (223). This conclusion suggests that societal change must happen first, and then people’s attitudes and perceptions of language will inevitably shift, too. Montell uses this discussion to remind the reader of her previous advice to reject people’s criticism of their communication styles and simply be genuine. She points to evidence that changing one’s style can elicit criticism of being inauthentic, and concludes, “So if the pundits, trolls, and disgruntled employees are going to bust your chops either way, you might as well just be yourself” (225).
Unlock all 52 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs