I remember once as a teenager hearing my stepfather justify using the N-word (language warning) [View all]

I'm not going to censor my words here because it's important to understand the analogy. So to any potential jurors examining this, please understand my strong language as an indictment of the word and not as an endorsement.

Anyway...

I grew up in a very racist household and the word nigger was uttered more times than I care to recall. But the relevant usage is when I got into an argument with him about what it actually meant to be a nigger in his eyes.

He told me with just the slightest of hesitation (I assume this was a momentary actuation of his scruples) that what he was saying wasn't racist because a lot of white people were niggers too. To him, at least in this argument, the epithet became a universal label for anyone he thought was classless or criminal or otherwise unsavory. Of course, I had never in my life before, and have never heard him since, ever refer to a white person as a nigger. His usage was and continues to be in the classical sense of the word as rhetorical violence against black men and women.

So consider that for a moment. Now consider how that might be similar to the same person who goes around calling women sluts, is challenged on the usage and then attempts to justify it by saying men can be sluts as well.

These sort of post hoc justifications are merely a means of fighting back the reality of their bigotry.

It's never okay to call a woman a slut. All the equivocation in the world will not change that fact.