Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.
Carrie: I’m Carrie Gillon.
Megan: I’m Megan Figueroa. It’s hot, Carrie, I was just thinking…
Carrie: Oh.
Megan: We’re going to record and I’m going to sound so dull and boring because it’s summer doldrums. It’s so hard here.
Carrie: I know. I feel very extra lazy.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: It gets like over… I don’t know, body temperature.
Megan: Fair enough. Not only that, but it was like close to above dog body temperature the other day, which is like 101 or something.
Carrie: Oh, I was just going to ask.
Megan: I think I was just at the vet with my dog for his routine and it was like 101 or something. I got asked, but I was like, “Oh, okay.” Yeah, now that you compare it to the body temperatures of humans, I’m like, “Oh, God, once it gets above a dog.” My dog has just been a puddle on the tile since it’s been summer.
Carie: Yeah.
Megan: It’s rough.
Carrie: One of my cats is also doing that streaky Supergirls cat. That’s the same name. I didn’t name it. I didn’t name him. But anyway, he also just lies out along the tile.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: With like their little frog legs behind them. I love it.
Megan: Yeah, oh.
Carrie: I don’t blame them. I want it to do the same thing, but the tile’s not that comfortable, so I mispronounce someone’s name. Of course, we never want it do that, but I also know that it’s going to happen.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Thankfully, she told us. So Gwendolyn Rehrig, at least that’s the IPA, she gave me. Hopefully, that is this time it is correct. I’m so sorry. I should have been able to tell from the way it’s spelled, but eh.
Megan: Well, luckily Carrie’s reading IPA because I can’t read IPA.
Carrie: What?
Megan: It’s nice. Not possible. It takes me a while.
Carrie: Okay, fine. I mean, neither of us are on the “P” side. We’re all both closer to the… Well, you’re on a different kind of “P” side.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: But closer to the Syntex side, I guess. The “S” side.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Anyway.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Anyway, and I also want it thank another Patreon from last month. There’s always like some sort of tech issue and this time the tech issue prevented me from finding out that they were our newest Patreon. That is Joshua Philipp.
Megan: Thank you.
Carrie: I hope I pronounced that correctly.
Megan: Yes. If not, send IPA to Carrie.
Carrie: Yes, please do. Feel free to leave a message letting me know. Because you can leave a message when you become a Patreon. Letting me know, “Hey, this is actually how to pronounce it.” By the way, in case you don’t know what we’re talking about Patreon is a site where you can support all kinds of artists, podcasters, YouTubers, and almost anything you could think of, any kind of creator you can think of.
Megan: Authors.
Carrie: You can support us there.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. It’s very cool. Check us out at http://www.patreon.com/vocalfriespod.
Megan: Yay.
Carrie: All right. Now, we’re going to talk about something kind of…
Megan: Oh, yeah. This is fresh.
Carrie: It’s very fresh.
Megan: Well, okay, so you sent the article to me, but you haven’t read it. But I have, and it’s fucked up. An educational magazine out of the UK tests reports that the school’s minister Nick Gibb of the UK, came out talking about the importance of oracy after a primary school has reportedly banned using the word “like” as a filler.
Carrie: Alex Arce taught us that there are many different meanings of the word “like” so they’re targeting… There are probably a few different uses of “like,” because I’m assuming they don’t know how many different kinds there are, and they’re probably just thinking that three or four of them are conversation fillers, even though none of them really are conversation fillers.
Megan: Yes. They’re shitting on the word “like,” which as we’ve said so many times, we love the word “like,” it’s great. So useful, and it’s ridiculous the idea of banning words that aren’t slurs.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: It’s like, what are we doing? I guess it’s Copthorne Primary School. Apparently, they have also discouraged kids from using single-word replies, such as sad, nice, and good. I remember this in school, them trying to get us like, not to avoid using “to be” as a verb. I’m like, “That’s the most useful verb ever.” Like, we need it.
Carrie: Yes. My dad also tried to avoid it when he was writing his stuff for radio.
Megan: Wow.
Carrie: He was also taught that using “be” was bad. Sometimes works, and sometimes you can find a better, more interesting verb if you replace “be” with plus whatever, but often it ends up being kind of stilted.
Megan: Oh, yeah.
Carrie: Also, in this case, not being able to respond with a single word that feels like you’re targeting something else. When someone just responds with a one-word answer, it feels very non-cooperative. I think that really what they’re trying to get is to teach the kids to be more cooperative and to respond with more information. The way it’s worded here, that’s not really what they’re targeting.
Megan: No, the way it’s worded, they’re saying that they’re trying to get kids to expand their vocabulary. I think that it makes people like you said, feel uncooperative. They feel uncomfortable by kids answering that way as if the kids aren’t respecting them in some way, I think. But the idea that this is going to expand the vocabulary, it’s really hard to respond when someone is talking to you in class. You have to respond in front of your peers. There are just so many reasons why it’s hard to find the words that you’re looking for.
Carrie: Right. If you’re sad and your answer is sad.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Saying “I’m sad.” Okay. That feels more cooperative. But is that really more informative? No.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: Isn’t it enough to find out that the kid is feeling sad?
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Isn’t that a trigger to do something to help them?
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Rather than being like, “Can you say that in the form of a full sentence, please?”
Megan: I think that “sad” is actually a very informative word.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: No, absolutely. One-word sentences can be super informative, especially I think in these circumstances when it’s involving children. One word can tell you a lot.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: More frustrating when an adult responds with one word.
Megan: Would you surprised? Yeah, it’s true that sometimes I am purposely uncooperative when I answer with one word.
Carrie: Right. I think what’s happening is that adults are interpreting children as adults when they’re not. They are not adult interlocutors yet. They can use very complex grammar, obviously, but they haven’t got the pragmatics down yet.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: Which is what we’re talking about anyway. So let’s go back to “like.”
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: Okay. The school’s Executive Head Teacher, Christabel Shepherd, told the Sunday Times, “It is when children are giving you an answer and they say, “It is like, when you’re like,” they haven’t actually made a sentence at all.” Well, they have made a sentence. It’s just not a sentence that you understand how to interpret. I guarantee the other children know how to interpret it.
Megan: Yeah. Also, you’re only giving us part of what the child said, probably.
Carrie: Yeah, probably. Probably. There’s a quote there, “because like, when you’re like,” maybe not a quote, but an explanation of how they felt.
Megan: Right. Exactly.
Carrie: I’m sure there was something there, but yeah. Even if they trailed off there, there’s still a meaning there.
Megan: Yeah. Also, this just goes back to the idea that people have to change the way that they’re hearing us, hearing children, hearing whoever, because “like” is really useful. It’s not going away anytime soon.
Carrie: It’s been around for a long time.
Megan: Yeah. I hate when people can understand each other and they still want to shit on the way someone says something.
Carrie: Right.
Megan: That’s the goal here to understand who you’re speaking or signing with. So, if communication shuts down in a way where you can’t understand someone, okay. But that’s not the case most times when people are shitting on each other for the way that we speak.
Carrie: Right. No, I think part of it is they want their students to be able to talk in a particular way so they can get jobs later. I mean, that’s fine. But that’s not saying you can’t do this. It’s like, do this, but also do this other thing. It’s additive, not subtractive. That’s what education should be.
Megan: Yeah. I also still think we should start hearing each other differently or interpreting each other differently.
Carrie: Well, we absolutely have to.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: But the reason why they’re not even trying…
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: … is because they think they’re doing the right thing by teaching them the way that we’ll get them jobs. Which by the way, that’s a whole other issue of…
Megan: For sure.
Carrie: … why are we only focusing on that?
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: But even if that’s your goal.
Megan: Yeah. Right.
Carrie: You have to remember that just shitting on them is not actually going to get you where you want it to get them.
Megan: Nope. It just makes you an asshole. So a goodbye, yeah.
Carrie: Teachers being assholes is somehow the most hurtful to me.
Megan: I know.
Carrie: Even though I know it’s very common because it can be a very conservative area of the workforce, but doesn’t have to be.
Megan: No.
Carrie: Because education is so important to me personally, but also I think so important to everybody. It hurts me when teachers are assholes to kids.
Megan: Yeah, no one should be an asshole to kids. God. They’re little sponges. They’re clay. We’re making them out in our likeness in terrible ways.
Carrie: Or we are making them hate education.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Right?
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: There’s no real good outcome here. Either you’re making them into another monster like you, another asshole like you.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Or you’re turning them off of education.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Neither of those is good.
Megan: No. So thank you to all the good teachers out there.
Carrie: Right.
Megan: That don’t want to traumatize children.
Carrie: Right. There are many really good teachers out there.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: I know many of them.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: This is only directed at the asshole teachers
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Who is probably not listening to this? Although, I don’t know, maybe.
Megan: Maybe.
Carrie: I don’t know, probably not. I mean, maybe because I think that there are teachers who are mostly not assholes, but they’re assholes about this one thing.
Megan: It’s true.
Carrie: They may learn, they may want to learn about, and how not to be an asshole in this way as well.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: This is for all the teachers who want to learn to be better and also the teachers who don’t, but this one goes out to you. All right. Okay. Today, we’re going to talk with Amanda Montell about her book “Wordslut,” Today, we have Amanda Montell, who is a writer and reporter from Baltimore with bylines in Marie Claire Cosmopolitan, Women’s Day. The Rumpus, Byrdie.com, and WhoWhatWear, where she is a staff feature editor. She’s the author of the nonfiction book Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, which will be published by Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins on May 28, 2019. As a pop linguist, Amanda’s insights have been featured in Time, Glamor, Bustle, Refinery29, HelloGiggles, and Bust Magazine. Amanda graduated from NYU with a degree in linguistics. So, welcome Amanda.
Amanda Montell: Thank you so much for having me.
Megan: Of course, we were very excited when we got a copy of your book.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: Oh, wow. Well, I was excited too. I received them after many of my friends received them, and they were posting photos of these beautiful hardbacks that I’d been waiting with bated breath for. So I’m excited too. I just got mine too.
Carrie: I have to ask right away, why Wordslut? Why that is the title?
Amanda: Gosh, the process of titling this book was such a saga, let me tell you because, what do you name a book about words? First of all, it’s just like such a challenge. Also, the book covers such an enormous range of topics that it was really, oh, it was so difficult. There was a bit of a bloodbath over the title. I have to tell you. I would send my editors lists of hundreds of options.
Carrie: Wow.
Amanda: Anything that poured out of my brain, everything from something super academic to title options that were really like punny and kind of cringe, which wasn’t me at all. So I was aired, this book had three former titles before Wordslut. They were all coy and not as daring. But when you write a book that has chapter titles like Slutty Skanks and Nasty Dikes, a list of gender insults, a comprehensive list of gendered insults I hate, but also kind of love. You have to go bold.
Carrie: Yes.
Amanda: Finally I was just like, “You know what? Fucked it. Let’s just yell it wordslut.”
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, I’ve seen a few brands that have the word “slut” kind of cheekily in the name. Like, there’s a restaurant in LA called “Eggslut.” There’s a brand of liquid lipstick that donates all of the proceeds to different social justice organizations called “Lipslut.”
Carrie: I have one of their lipsticks actually.
Amanda: Oh, do you? Which one?
Carrie: RBG.
Amanda: Nice. I love the title Wordslut. I think the reason why I was withholding a little bit was because I was genuinely just thinking, “How are my parents going to explain my book to their colleagues?” But now my parents have come so far on board to the title that they just like, “Call me in slut in whatever context they can.” I’ll be like, “I’ll have an oat milk latte” My mom will be like, “Ah, oat milk slut.” I’m like, “Denise, simmer down.”
Megan: Oh, my God. I love that.
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Megan: Oh, my God.
Carrie: Oh, my God.
Amanda: Let’s do it again. I don’t know.
Carrie: That’s amazing.
Amanda: Ultimately, what is so perfect about Wordslut in my eyes, is that it’s this juxtaposition of like sexiness and friskies and cheekiness and nerdiness.
Megan: Yes.
Amanda: That’s who I am and what the book is. So I think it’s perfect. I’m happy with it.
Carrie: Yeah, speaking of nerdy, I mean, it has the IPA on it. It does.
Amanda: Yes.
Carrie: I fucking love it.
Amanda: Oh, my God. Thank you. That was my edit.
Carrie: Good.
Amanda: It came in really simple and the cover design, and I was so thrilled by that because I really didn’t want it to be frilly. I wanted it to be bold and graphic. When it came in with a bunch of color options there was a red, which felt a little too handmaid’s tale, there was a blue, and some white ones, but they were really simple. I was like, “These are almost perfect, but can we put Wordslut in IPA [inaudible].” I got one of my old phonetics professors to confirm that I had actually transcribed it properly because how nightmarish would that have been for me to like put a schwa where a schwa shouldn’t be.
Megan: Lisa Davidson, right?
Amanda: Oh, my God. Yes, it was.
Megan: She’s fantastic.
Carrie: Yeah, she’s great.
Amanda: Oh, my God. How funny.
Carrie: We follow her on Twitter.
Amanda: Yeah. She’s a phonetics professor.
Megan: Yeah, when we said that we got an advanced copy of your book and we posted a picture. She was like, “Oh, I’m so glad she went with the IPA that I suggested.”
Amanda: That warms my heart. You have no idea, you’ve actually, no idea.
Megan: I’m so glad.
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Megan: I was reading Wordslut the other day, in public, and I was just like, with my eye challenging someone to ask me about it, like, ask you about it. I would love to tell you.
Amanda: Did anyone ask?
Megan: No, I was surrounded by college-age kids. They don’t care. They’re like, “I could read slut anywhere and not notice, but I don’t know. But I do wonder what conversations it might start.
Amanda: I know. Well, I have this clear purse, you know how those like PVC purses are in now.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: I have a clear top-handle purse and I’m embarrassed for people to see my belongings through it. So I’ve been keeping the book that I’m reading in front of it to block my keys and ibuprofen, whatever embarrassing garbage is in there. But I’ve been keeping Wordslut in there, like shameless promo. Like, someone asked me about the bright yellow book in my purse.
Carrie: That’s perfect.
Megan: Not yet, no one yet?
Amanda: No, not yet.
Megan: It’ll happen.
Carrie: Why did you want to write this book?
Amanda: Oh, gosh. This book is just a culmination of everything I’ve loved in my entire life. So I was a linguistics major in college. I figured it would be useless. I figured it would just be like a cringy millennial trash degree that would lead to nothing.
Megan: Wow.
Amanda: Yeah, but loved it more than anything. I mean, I say that with the warmest heart in the world, because linguistics is everything to me. But I just couldn’t foresee it because I was too lazy to pursue a PhD. Trust me, I would love to be a Dr. Montell. My parents are, and I would love to tackle a little PhD onto my name, but I’m too impatient. I took one graduate-level sociolinguistic seminar in college, I was just hungover and couldn’t analyze the spectrogram. It was just like, I didn’t have the patience for a PhD. So I was like, “All right, well that’s the only way that you can use your linguistics degree.” If you like, pursue academia or I don’t know, become a speech pathologist, or I don’t know. I’m not brilliant enough to be like a computational linguist or like a computer programmer or whatever. I just like to want to talk about like accents and silly things all day. So I was just like, “Whatever, I won’t pursue linguistics.” But it’ll be a fun thing to talk about at dinner parties. Indeed it is such a fun thing to talk about at dinner parties.
Megan: Yes.
Amanda: Because everybody’s interested in why they talk the way they do.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: You have some information about that. People are just going to gravitate towards you. I wanted to pursue writing as my career and I wanted to publish a nonfiction book because that’s all I’ve ever read and loved. My favorite writer of all time, Mary Roach is a pop science writer. I don’t know if you’ve read her work, but I’m obsessed with her. There were a lot of steps leading to this, but when I finally got on the phone with my literary agent, who’s an angel, and gave a big spiel about everything I know and do that could possibly lead to an interesting or sellable book. She was that language and gender stuff, you know about, that’s interesting. I had already been making content about language and gender in online video form for this website called “Wifey.” This is like an online media brand founded by Jill Soloway, the creator of the show, Transparent. I had been making these short five-minute videos that would comment on some pop culture events happening but from a language and gender perspective. I had making content about this already for like two years, or a year at that point. When my agent thought that this would be a sellable book, I was just delighted beyond belief because I was like, “Oh, my God. A publisher is going to pay me to nerd out for 300 pages about language and gender. That’s my dream.” It is, and I still am shaken by it like that. This book is just such my vision and I’m so lucky and privileged that they let me run with it, that IPA on the cover is the perfect example. I don’t know what book cover sells, they could have really pushed for a different sort of design, but they just let my voice be my voice. The little illustrations throughout the book.
Megan: I was going to ask. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: I work by day in the beauty industry, so I care a lot about packaging and I wanted there to be illustrations and I talked about this when I was initially pitching the book. I wanted them to feel sort of cheeky modern hip, but still simple and elegant. Comments on textbook illustrations, you know?
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: You have your graphs and your charts and your diagrams of what a vocal track looks like when producing vocal fry, but they’re cute.
Megan: I loved that one.
Amanda: Thank you. I collaborated with this amazing artist named Rose Wong, who illustrates for the New York Times. She’s exactly my age. I just picked her and we made these illustrations together and the publisher just took one look at them and was like, “Perfect. Great.”
Carrie: Cool. That’s amazing.
Amanda: Yeah, illustration of genitalia slang throughout the years.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: I just loved what she did with that. We took an existing chart that was just a little more straightforward and academic and made those cute little illows on it. I’m so delighted by how it all turned out.
Megan: Well, I’m just delighted that the picture of how the vocal chords look when you’re vocal frying still looks like a vagina, like vagina, vagina, vagina. Good Don’t lose that. Don’t ever lose that because it does.
Amanda: Speaking of my phonetics class, I will never forget the scandal of when my professor played the video of a human larynx phonating, it looks like the lips of a vagina. Like there’s nothing…
Carrie: Yes.
Amanda: It clearly does.
Carrie: Yeah, it does.
Amanda: Even if you’ve never seen a vagina in your entire life, you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s sexual.”
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely.
Amanda: Everyone in the class was just looking at one another being like, “That’s what’s in my throat?”
Carrie: Yeah, it’s true. I used to teach linguistics and every time I would show that in my intro classes, yep. That’s exactly what action I would get. I’d be like, “Yes, it’s exactly what it looks like.”
Amanda: There’s something poetic to me about we all have a vagina in our throat.
Megan: Yep, it’s amazing. Misogynists will shrivel and die once they realize it.
Amanda: Right in that. I delight in that.
Carrie: Speaking of genitalia, let’s skip right ahead to that chapter. So you wrote a whole chapter on words for genitalia and sex. Why did you think it was important to cover this in your book about gendered language?
Amanda: I initially based a lot of the content in this book on that sex, gender and language course that I took at NYU because I was so ignited about this topic by that class as someone who like didn’t know anything about it. I figured that other people would be too. So when choosing what I wanted the chapters to cover, I referenced my old syllabus a lot. But at the same time, added my own spin and focused on things that I’m personally enchanted by and that I thought people my age, or in my age group would also love. There was obviously no chapter in my college linguistics class about cursing.
Megan: A shame. That’s a shame.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: It’s a shame, you think. If there are classes on Game of Thrones analysis.
Megan: Right.
Amanda: You think there’d be a class on cursing?
Megan: Well, there are in some places.
Amanda: Yeah.
Megan: But, oh.
Amanda: There was a section on our “Narratives of desire” and I just thought, well, John Green is this lexicographer who does all these fun lexicography studies where he’ll unearth slang over the years and communicate what that says about our culture and how our culture has evolved. Going over the “Narratives of desire” chapter, I stumbled across this John Green study where he chronicled all of our, however many, there were 1500 genitalia slang terms over the past few hundred years. I was so tickled by that. They’re so ridiculous. I mean, they’re entertaining, but they also thematically are quite disturbing. The idea that the metaphors and slang words that we use for a penis imply that it’s this violent thing, and sex is an aggressive penetrative thing by nature, and a vagina is just like this passive also kind of gross receptacle for a penis and like cum sponge and whatever. Like, that’s so gross. I thought that genitalia was just like a sparkly edgy entry point into talking about these sort of deeper topics. I think we all think about, I mean, everybody wants their sex life to be better and everybody’s had at least one icky experience at least every woman or non-normative gender that I know. How we talk about sex is just this really accurate portrayal of how we approach sex in general. That could be a whole book.
Megan: Oh, yeah.
Carrie: Yes, it absolutely could.
Amanda: Yeah, that topic is just on my mind a lot and felt really necessary to include. Of course, the genitalia terms are just fun. So felt necessary.
Carrie: Well, and it helps to normalize just like keep saying like, cunt or like all these words that you have in your book, just like, no problem. That’s not a good example because there are bad uses of it. “Yeah, well just vagina, let’s just take vagina.” These things need to be normalized because we’re so scared of them in the US, so scared.
Amanda: I remember there’s that other crazy factoid where Shonda Rhimes created, or popularized the word “vajayjay” because there was that instance when writing a Grey’s Anatomy episode when broadcast standards allowed the word penis in an episode 18 times, but wouldn’t allow the word “vagina” twice.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: That is so telling to me.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: That really, really says something about how we view female sexuality and desire. What I love about talking the linguistics of this all is that when you can warm yourself up to it, because I grew up scandalized by the word “vagina and pussy.”
Megan: Sure, me too. Yeah.
Amanda: All that stuff, you’re taught that it’s wrong and controversial and gross. You can say penis, penis, dick, dick, no problem. I mean, it’s just the default male thinking that I talk about throughout the entire book. We are so comfortable with male sexuality and maleness in general, and then, so reviled by female sexuality and femaleness in general. The way we talk about sexuality really represents that. I think what’s cool talking about this stuff, starting with the language aspect is that you can really just blame the science on why you’re using these words. It’s like we’re just doing clinical linguistics here. I’m not talking about the pussy, I’m talking about the word “pussy.”
Megan: Right.
Amanda: Because a linguist told me that I was allowed to. So that can warm you up to the idea and get you a little more comfortable with it, I find.
Carrie: Yeah. You know what? This reminds me, have either of you seen this film that is not yet rated?
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Megan: Uh-uh.
Carrie: Oh, it’s so good. You should watch it, Megan. It’s really good.
Amanda: Yeah, I love that documentary. I think about it a lot. I thought about it when there’s that footnote that I have in the book talking about how oral sex performed on a penis is like all over movies of every rating, but the second you imply cunnilingus, it gets an R or an NC-17 rating.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: I learned that from that documentary.
Megan: Yes, if you show male orgasm, no big deal. But if you show female orgasm, it is just off the charts. Like, “Holy shit, too much sex.”
Amanda: Totally.
Carrie: It’s really enlightening
Amanda: All of that messaging really, really affects how we perceive our own sexuality. The ratings that movies with female orgasms are given, the sling and terminology, and even textbook terminology that we use to describe our bodies can really inform how we see them. There was that medical definition that I found online of a vagina that said, “The organ that receives the penis.”
Megan: Oh.
Carrie: Yeah, I read that and I laughed.
Megan: Oh, heteronormative shit.
Amanda: Where to begin addressing?
Megan: I know, right.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, pervades everything and yeah, it was just essential to address.
Carrie: Absolutely. What’s your favorite slang term for genitalia?
Amanda: Oh, my God. Oh, it really depends on the context.
Carrie: You can choose one context.
Amanda: If we’re talking about like, funny terms, I mean, there are so many good ones for penis that are just so silly. Like, one-eye trouser snake. It’s disgusting.
Megan: Oh, I know.
Carrie: I love it.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: I love it.
Amanda: Diddly wacker. It’s just like so whimsical.
Carrie: Yeah, whimsical. Yes.
Amanda: For vagina, oh my gosh. I don’t know. I learned this term from Jill Soloway, what’s it called? The vaginal, clitoral, vulva complex, or whatever.
Carrie: Yeah, I thought that was good.
Amanda: That’s such a mouthful. But it’s when we’re talking about our bodies down there, like our reproductive organs, like the vagina is really just the canal.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: That is actually just the…
Carrie: Inside.
Amanda: The canals. No.
[crosstalk]
Amanda: It blended hole and canal and we got cannoli. Should we just call a vagina a cannoli?
Carrie: I think so. I think that’s my new favorite slang. It’s totally
Amanda: It’s totally cannoli because it’s a canal and a hole. a cannoli.
Megan: Yes. It’s so good. Holy cannoli.
Amanda: Well, okay, so that like vaginal, clitoral, vulva complex. That is a mouthful. But that is actually a more accurate representation of everything that’s going on down there because when you’re having sex with a woman, you’re not just interacting with the cannoli.
Carrie: No.
Amanda: Well, the whole thing is a vulva and it is a complex and there’s stuff on the outside and stuff on the inside and it’s a whole.
Megan: It’s a whole thing.
Amanda: Vaginal, clitoral vulva complex. I think it’s that, but VCVC.
Carrie: Yes.
Amanda: Cute.
Megan: VC squared.
Carrie: VCVC.
Megan: VC squared.
Carrie: I love it.
Amanda: We love math.
Carrie: I love math. I really honestly do
Amanda: Okay. If you love math, then you must love syntax.
Megan: Yes. I’m a syntax/semanticist person.
Amanda: We’re on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Megan: Yes, we are. But we can still talk about sex, man,
Amanda: Yeah.
Carrie: Yes, that’s what connects us all.
Megan: It brings everyone together.
Amanda: Syntax, I got through it. But I was like, “If I have to build one more syntactic tree, I swear. I can’t.”
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: Semantics, at the end of the day don’t really thinking about thought. If that makes sense.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: I really respect people who do, like my mom was a philosophy minor in college and my brother loves that stuff. I love the discipline of logic and philosophy. It just doesn’t light my fire. Who knows why?
Megan: Yes. Well, I’m not really that big into philosophy either, actually. I find it’s kind of too masturbatory.
Amanda: Totally.
Carrie: But I do like thinking about what things actually mean or what sentences actually mean. But I don’t care as much about this top-down view that philosophy has.
Amanda: Totally, no, I get that. That’s what’s fun about linguistics is that it’s so nitty gritty and nerdy. I’ll never forget, because I didn’t know what linguistics was when I got to college.
Megan: No, me either.
Amanda: Right. Because no one knows, I looked up some stats, it’s 0.05% of college graduates every year have a linguistics degree, I guess makes sense.
Megan: Tiny, tiny, yeah.
Amanda: Yeah.
Megan: It’s a pretty new field. Pretty new, but yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, it was 40 years old or whatever. I didn’t know what it was, but I’d been thinking about and loving this stuff my whole life, and I’ll just never forget how in my linguistics 101 class, do you know Jillian Gallagher? She’s a linguistics professor at NYU. But she was a PhD candidate at the time when she taught my 101 class. She studies Quechua.
Carrie: Oh, cool.
Megan: Oh yeah.
Amanda: She so beautiful. I just remember being in this class and I didn’t know what linguistics was. You imagine like Noam Chomsky or what is this?
Megan: Sure. Yeah.
Amanda: She was just this like a little elf with these big eyes who was just so smart. I was like, “Oh, my God, I want it to be you.” Yeah, the first exercise, she had everybody do. She was like, “Okay, everyone, I want you to think about just starting to get us to think about the vowel and consonant inventory of English and just things that we totally take for granted. She was like, “I want everybody to come up to the board and write down an English sound that you have found is hard for foreign speakers to pronounce.” I was like, “Oh my God. These are my people.”
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: I just ran up to the board and I was like, “R’s.” Everybody hates it. American R.”
Megan: It’s so true. Wait, you were like that you knew that immediately everyone has trouble with R’s?
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah, because I love accents and dialects and in fact, like in college there was a period and even after college when I thought I might want to pursue being a dialect coach. Because I just love accents and I’m not like a pro by any means, but I do have an ear for them. I heard once in an interview that Kristen Bell does this too. If I’m watching something and there’s someone with an interesting accent on TV or whatever, like I can’t help but like try to do it.
Megan: Same.
Amanda: I’ve spent my whole life perfecting my Australian accent, so don’t make me do it.
Megan: Okay. I won’t. Yeah, I don’t want it put you on the spot, but I am intrigued.
Amanda: I think I have a pretty good Australian like Oval when they’re like, “Oh, I know.”
Carrie: Yeah, that’s good.
Megan: Oh.
Carrie: That’s good. I can’t do that at all.
Megan: Pretty much thought you were Chris Hemsworth
Amanda: I couldn’t tell. I get that all the time.
Megan: Back to the book. So you say in the book that language is the next frontier of modern gender equality. Why do you think that is?
Amanda: Oh, my gosh, it’s such a bold statement now. I have to really put my money where my mouth is.
Megan: It stuck out to me. It’s like it was highlighted and underlined and might as well have been in another color
Amanda: That comment is really just based on conversations that I’ve been in and that I’ve seen about language. Like I’ve been able to connect with people who would otherwise never want to engage in a conversation about feminism or gender equality.
Megan: Sure. Yeah.
Amanda: Based on opening the conversation with language. I’ve gotten feedback from people who’ve read the book already, that women who have male partners and who started to engage in a conversation about gender equality and the partner were resistant to want it to get on board, but the second they provide some empirical data from a nerdy study illustrating their point, the dude is all of a sudden like, “Whoa. That’s so interesting. I never thought about that before. Yeah, I really see that.” When you can point out these patterns that linguists have noticed through their studies of different language corpuses of the semantic derogation of female insults and just terms referring to women in general and you compare them to what has happened to terms that we used to describe men. There’s really no parallel. You can’t deny that really illustrates something about our attitudes toward men and women in real life and the grammatical gender stuff. That’s so empirical. That’s just like, so clinical, but it really has this significance.
You can really show people that we still have huge inequities in our culture when it comes to gender and the respect and the power that each gender receives and is granted access to. That’s really what I want it to say. Language and power are connected and gender and power are connected. If you can illustrate through language the gravity of how the power disparities that exist in our culture based on gender, then that’s huge. I just think that’s the next big conversation that we’re going to be having. It’s already started with conversations of gender-neutral pronouns and gender-inclusive language. People get upset about ideas of political correctness and linguistic sanitation and those things, but its language changes exactly as quickly as social attitudes do. So it only makes sense that this conversation is happening now. I just really want it continue it and emphasize that.
Carrie: Yes, so you bring up gen gender-neutral pronouns, but there are other ways that language can be gender-neutral like you pointed out in the book. We try to go towards…
Mega: Chairperson.
Carrie: Or even just chair versus chairman. But you also point out that’s not enough, which I agree with, but why isn’t it enough?
Amanda: As I said, you can’t encourage someone as our new social norm to use one word over another by saying chairperson or server or flight attendant as opposed to like chairman, waiter, and waitress, steward, stewardess, just by changing someone’s language, you can’t change their attitudes. So there are people who will always continue to think that a chair of something is a man by default, regardless of what language they use. By forcing quote-unquote, you can’t force anyone to say anything.
Megan: They like to remind us of that. A lot of men like to be like, “You can’t force me to do it.”
Amanda: Yeah, that is certainly true.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: You most definitely cannot force anyone to say anything. But the key point to remember here is that, yeah, we are perfectly at liberty thanks to the Constitution to say whatever we want, but we have to acknowledge that our language choices and our politics are not separate. People aren’t mourning their ability to use what language, whatever language they want it use. They’re mourning the freedom to think that their language and their morals aren’t connected, which they are.
Carrie: Absolutely.
Amanda: You’re making a political statement when you say things and that’s always been true, but it’s like even more true now because there’s more of a microscope on this sort of thing as the gender and sexuality spectrums and equality and human rights are being spoken about a lot right now. But the thing is, yeah, if some place of business encourages all of its employees to start using gender-neutral language and doesn’t allow anyone in the office to refer to anyone else as cupcake or sweetie or whatever. Most of us have encountered a workplace environment, as I mentioned in the book, I once worked at an office where the boss would refer to every woman by her hair color.
Carrie: Oh, yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: I also chuckled at that when I read that, I was like, “Geez.”
Amanda: Truly, I did not make this up. There was this guy named Daniel, who had zigzags buzzed into his head, but he didn’t get called anything special.
Megan: Yeah. He wasn’t zigzag. Yeah.
Amanda: Totally, you can force bosses in the workplace not to use that kind of language, but they’re still always going to think in this problematic gendered way. However, the young people who come up in that business and hear them using gender-neutral language like that could very well have an impact on them. Ultimately, we just want to raise a new generation of more inclusive people and the language that we use really does have a huge, huge impact on the next generation. So that’s my thoughts on that.
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Why are gendered insults harmful?
Amanda: My goodness.
Megan: You talk a lot about it, so an example of this might be cunt.
Amanda: Everything has to do with context, right?
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: We words in and of themselves don’t have abusive meaning. It’s the meaning that we subscribe to them based on our opinions and attitudes. A lot of our gendered insults and the fact that there are so many more negative insults for women than there are for men. There are countless studies illustrating that, and you can read about them in Chapter 1. There are all these empirical studies of slang and casual conversation that illustrate that, basically, any word the English language has ever offered to describe or refer to a woman has at some point devolved into some kind of sexual slur essentially. That really reflects something about how we see women, it’s the linguistic object objectification of them. We don’t even realize how, when someone does something negative that’s completely unrelated to their gender, we insult them by referring to their gender. If a woman does something that we perceive as mean or backstabbing, she’s a bitch and cunt. But what does that have to do with her vagina? It’s inaccurate to criticize someone’s gender when really you’re trying to criticize their behavior. It also just propagates really damaging attitudes perceptions and expectations that we have of each gender. Having words like pussy and wimp and candy ass, they propagate damaging viewpoints of men and of women.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: They don’t allow men to be soft. They don’t allow men to be vulnerable. They don’t allow men to be quote-unquote weak. Yeah, all of these words just reinforce super, super problematic gender stereotypes that kind of work in service of the patriarchy. Calling a woman a bitch because she’s not delicate and polite enough for you. You’re basically forcing her into this box of delicateness and politeness. You’re not allowing her to stand up for herself or do whatever she’s doing that is annoying you.
Carrie: Right.
Amanda: Equally by calling a man like a pussy, you’re saying like, “Well, women are weak and God forbid you seem anything like a woman.”
Carrie: Yeah. Also whenever you talk about pussy in that way, you’re wrong. Pussy are strong. They push out babies. They can take a beating you should call them scrotums.
Amanda: Yeah, that’s right.
Carrie: Because those are weak.
Amanda: There’s that amazing Betty White quote that I like to include in the book in a footnote somewhere where it’s like, “Why do people say, gross some balls? Balls are so sensitive, you should really say like, grow a vagina because those things can really take a pounding or whatever.”
Carrie: Exactly. Yeah.
Amanda: It’s not logical why we call…
Carre: I know.
Amanda: … people these different things, it reflects really, really icky, like sad, cultural views that we have of each gender. There’s a reason why we love these insults. They’re fun to say, just in terms of phonosymbolism. Like, we love a bitch, we love a cunt, we love a dick, we just like swack in your mouth. They’re a blast. It’s not that we need to outlaw them, it’s just the context in which we use them is so important.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: It’s like part of the reason why my book is called Wordslut. There are plenty of linguists and regular people who think that the word “slut” deserves to be abolished and that having a special word for female promiscuity is really damaging. But I like the word and part of that just has to do with my personal experience of it. I’ve been called a slut abusively maybe once or twice in my entire life. I’m really lucky. I’ve been the subject of many other gendered insults. It’s just this particular one is not my [crosstalk] to bear.
Megan: Right.
Amanda: I like the idea of reclaiming it. Not everybody does. There are lots, I mean, there will always be disagreements about what slurs deserve to be reclaimed. There are still disagreements about the word “queer”, as that’s regarded as one of the most successful examples of an abusive slur being reclaimed. But not everybody is chill with it. The same is true of slut. But I think like me using it in the title of my book also demonstrates that like, “I’m not a proponent of political correctness.” I’m a proponent of being conscious of your language use, not like coming up with these rules. You can’t say this, you can’t say that. It’s like, be choosy and thoughtful about your language choice. I like Wordslut because I’m a word “slut.” I love words I just want it bathe in words. Oh wow. I think gendered insults can obviously be unbelievably damaging.
Megan: Right.
Amanda: We individually have the power to rectify that.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah, I’ve been arguing that we should definitely take that “cunt” because I think it’s a great word. I don’t really like vaginas, I don’t think it’s a nice-sounding word.
Amanda: So cumbersome. So long.
Megan: It’s a cumbersome word. It is.
Carrie: Badge is okay, but vagina for some reason. I really don’t like it. I don’t think it’s just sexism. I tried to interrogate myself about this, and I really do think it’s the sound.
Amanda: I totally, I’m with you. I’m completely with you. I like making a video, like back when I was making those 5 to 10-minute videos about this stuff. My first-ever video was called “I hate the word vagina.” Yeah, there is not a single plosive consonant in it. Hello, well, when I was little I thought it was a vagina and I like that better.
Carrie: Yeah, that is cuter. I would also accept vaginas instead of cunt.
Megan: I don’t think it’s going to stick for anyone though. It’s like trying to make fetch happen.
Amanda: We don’t want it to start off a fun genitalia word with a labio-dental fricative.
Carrie: Cannoli is good.
Megan: Cannoli, yeah.
Amanda: Totally.
Carrie: One of the things that I was so surprised by in your book, and it’s just like a tiny little detail, but that lesbian didn’t make it into the Oxford English dictionary until 1976, which by the way, is my year of birth. So I had no idea it was that recent.
Amanda: Yeah, what’s sort of at play here is that the Oxford English Dictionary is updated really slowly. There’s a possibility that it might’ve made it in there like eight years earlier or something. Yeah. No, I mean, isn’t that completely insane? What that factoid speaks to and whether it was going to be added in 1976 or 1985, it’s all just hideously recent and what that really speaks to, is our lack of acknowledgment of lesbian identity. I talked about that in that chapter, time to make this book just a little bit gayer, how like the acknowledgment of lesbian identity in media, movies, and TV is. It’s brand new. I mean, it’s brand spanking new, the accurate portrayal of lesbian identity. Accurate. I mean, what is that like? That’s like 10, 20 years old. Yeah, lesbian identities have largely been dismissed and hidden from view and that’s kind of what that linguistic factoid represents. But I also just love the example sentence.
Megan: Yes. I’m glad you’re bringing it up.
Amanda: Women shouldn’t write poetry. That’s for invalids or lesbians or whatever. I forget what it says.
Carrie: Also, who is it by?
Amanda: Who’s it by?
Carrie: Daniel Day-Lewis’s father.
Amanda: Oh, Daniel Day-Lewis’s father. That’s right. Amazing.
Megan: Was he an actor too?
Carrie: No, he is a poet. Yeah.
Megan: Oh, okay. So he is just, wow.
Amanda: Yes.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Okay.
Amanda: Listen, there are so many amazing little facts like that I wanted to include in the book and just couldn’t, they’re endless.
Carrie: Yeah.
Amanda: Like deciding what little factoids like that to include just it tortured me.
Carrie: Well, that was a good one, because I was just like…
Amanda: Totally.
Megan: Where do you think English is going, or do you think, or hope it’s going?
Amanda: Well, that’s sort of what the last chapter in the book talks about. I consulted some linguists about this. Because we want politics and language to simultaneously move in the right direction. I think that they are, but I think it’s really incremental and it’s going to be like two steps forward, one step back. So I think what’s really great is that a lot of gender-neutral language has already made it into general use and our everyday canon of speech, like, it’s great that on birth certificates and driver’s licenses, some states are offering a non-binary option. People are at least in my circle, but again, I live in Los Angeles, which is like a progressive place. People are definitely coming around to singular they. Again, people really feel threatened by the singular they, because people feel threatened by changes in grammar.
But if you’re able to give them little fun facts, like, “Well, this isn’t the first time that a plural pronoun evolved to apply to a singular usage in English that happened with thou and you, like thou used to be the singular second person pronoun, and then you extended to mean all of it. Then people are like, “Okay, that’s pretty airtight logic, can’t argue with that.” We already use singular they without even noticing it, like when we say, “Something left their umbrella under the table.” You give people facts like that and then they kind of like warm up to it a little bit more slowly, or like, a little bit more quickly. Yeah, I think there are some that I just think it’s generational, as our next generation. We have to help them along the way, with our language usage, like we totally have to help them along the way.
We have to encourage kids now and Gen Z and the next generation to be more open to grammatical flexibility and openness to linguistic change, gender-neutral pronouns, and being more conscious about their uses of insults and genitalia slang and whatever. We totally help them out. The fact of the matter is, it is kind of too late for a lot of people because their ideology, their political ideology is already what it is. My parents are liberal academics, but it is hard to get even like them on board with some of this language change because they’ve just been using language the way they have their whole life. It is possible to get people on board with that sort of thing who are a little bit older.
But I think the main thing we have to focus on is just like taking responsibility to make sure that our language reflects our politics as much as we can. If that means, not using “you guys” as much, like people love, love, love that phrase, but once you realize the problems underlying it, at least, I used to throw around the term “you guys” all the time, but once I really examined it and realized there is no way that this has become a gender-neutral second person plural. Like, “You gals would never earn the same lexical love.” There’s a reason why we think “you guys” is so cozy and casual and it’s because of default male thinking. It’s the same problem. Once you realize that, then you don’t even want it use “you guys” anymore. But some people really do. So it’s like, there are sacrifices that you have to make, but I think it’s just a matter of taking the responsibility to make sure our language reflects our politics so that the next generation grows up in that environment.
Carrie: Do you have one final message for our listeners about your book?
Amanda: Gosh, one final message for the listeners. I am just desperate to create a new generation of people. I mean a new generation. I sound like Lena Dunham in that opening episode of Girls. Like, “I’m the voice of the generation, not even.” I want people to nerd out about language and I’m so committed to and passionate about this idea of it being a way to open up a conversation about deeper political topics that normally wouldn’t be discussed. I just hope that people who never otherwise would pick up a book about linguistics or who never otherwise would pick up a book about feminism will give this thing a chance. I really hope that people at the very least will be able to bring up the factoids in it at a dinner party and like have conversations they otherwise wouldn’t. Just feel empowered by it and feel inspired by it. That’s just all that I want. I just want a bunch of empowered, foul-mouthed nerds, crawling.
Carrie: Yes, squad goals.
Amanda: Find me on Instagram at @amanda_montell. I post there a lot. It’s just a fun little account to follow. Yeah, that’s kind of it. That’s all I really do. Just the IG and you can find my writing around the internet. I’m a staff writer at WhoWhatWear. Well, I write a lot of like beauty and celebrity content. I love profiling celebrities. I mean, I like Moonlight as a linguist, but by day I just like later today right after this, I’m going to interview Eiza Gonzalez. Do you know who that is? She’s an action star or whatever. She’s like a babe. I don’t know.
Megan: Cool.
Amanda: Obviously, I write about language and feminism and all these things, but I also write about fun pop culture topics and you can find my writing around the interwebs. Follow me on IG and I’ll follow you back and we can nerd out in the DMs about Labiodental fricatives.
Megan: Awesome. Very cool. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day.
Amanda: Yes.
Megan: I know it’s a book, how do you call it? Promoting “Frenzy” that you’re on right now.
Amanda: Yeah.
Carrie: Thanks for coming on our show.
Megan: Yeah.
Amanda: Of course, thank you. This was a joy. It just feels like coming home to talk to some linguistics nerds, so thank you.
Megan: Yeah. People who so love to embrace their vocal fry.
Amanda: Oh, yeah.
Megan: That’s always good too.
Amanda: Yeah. You guys could have a vocal fry off. Oh, yeah. That’s hilarious. A vocal fry off. It’s amazing.
Megan: We like to leave our listeners wanting one final message, which is don’t be an asshole.
Amanda: Don’t be an asshole. An amazing gender-neutral [crosstalk]
Carrie: Yeah, everyone has an asshole. The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon for Halftone audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Vocal Fries pod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com.
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The Vocal Fries Pod 