Ask twenty people to define the word slut,and you'll receive twenty different answers. Is it somebody who sells sex for money? How about Monica Lewinsky? Is it the seventh-grader who's texting two boys at once? Because I've heard people call her a slut, too. Even the dictionary definition—"a woman who has many casual sex partners"— leaves infinite room for interpretation. How many, exactly, is "many"casual sex partners? Two? Ten? Seventeen? Thirty-nine? And what, exactly, constitutes "casual" sex? A one night stand? Sex out of wedlock? Sealing the deal before you've been dating for 3 months? No matter how you define it, somebody else will define it differently. It all begs the question, where do we draw the line?

Simple, we don't.That's the beauty of slut: It's a catch-all. The nebulous definition of the word allows us to slap it onto anyone we please. If we never draw the line, then virtually anything can justify the use of the label. We're at a point where slut doesn't even have to refer to the target's sexual behavior. Oftentimes, when we use the word slut, we are not so much implying promiscuity as we are trying to convey the negative connotations typically associated with female promiscuity. It's similar to the way we use gay: Sure, sometimes when we use gay we're referring to a man who likes other men, but gay can also be used to harness the femininity or negative feelings typically associated with the word and project those feelings onto the target of the insult; we've watered it down to simply imply that something is bad. Similarly, with slut, we harness the negative feelings inherently associated with female promiscuity in order to project those negative feelings onto another girl, regardless of whether those negative feelings actually stem from the girl's sexual behavior. Thus, we don't actually have to be referring to someone's sexual behavior in order to justify the use of the word. How many times have you heard, "Oh my God, that SLUT!" when a girl is angry with another girl? Slut has become our go-to insult for when we can't come up with something more specific. It's widely-accepted, user-friendly, and frankly uncreative.

So what exactly is this mythical creature, the infamous slut?

Nothing more than a social construct, a figment of our sexist imaginations. Have you ever wondered why we don't have a slut for boys? Oh wait, we do: It's called stud. Player, Lady-Killer, Cassanova—whichever epithet you choose, it rarely if ever carries a negative connotation. The double standard is alive and well. Slut as an insult relies on the understood assumption that sex is immoral (but only for girls, of course). What's scary is that no matter how many people recognize the double standard, we still treat slut as a legitimate character flaw. And that's because girls love slut just as much as boys do (when we're not the target of the insult). Slut is an easy way to assert our superiority over other girls. We see it as an easy way to destroy a girl's credibility without having to support our claim. Nobody even asks for evidence because, back to that vague definition, slut can mean anything. Everybody is a slut under somebody's definition of the word. One man's angel is another man's harlot. You can't argue against the assertion that you're a slut because the definition has no parameters to argue against. The word itself has no concrete denotation because everyone makes up their own; all we can agree on is the negative connotation. Everybody knows that slut = bad, but nobody knows why, or even what constitutes a slut.

Now, nobody likes being called names. It's natural to want to defend yourself when somebody calls you an ugly word. However, we have a problem in how we currently defend ourselves against the word slut: Our automatic defense against the label is "no I'm not" or "no she's not"—thus acknowledging that while we might not be sluts, others certainly are. If we have four regrets, then sluts must have five; if we've done something six times, then sluts must have done it seven. We create this arbitrary hierarchy in order to put ourselves above other girls. When we so passionately deny being sluts ourselves, we amplify the poison of the word and we give it the power to hurt others. Now, I'm not saying we should just sit there and accept the insult; I'm saying we need to change our counterargument. Instead of arguing against the assertion that you are a slut, argue against the use of slut as an insult entirely. Instead of responding, "no I'm not," it's time that we ask, "What's a slut?" and "Why is that a bad thing?" Make them define it. Make them explain it. Chances are, they can't.