I see labels... and am glad to see some of the women stigmatized by the norms of patriarchal attitudes turned the negative to positive.
I know I tend to sound like a broken record with this observation but it is tragic that so many things are still dictated by an ignorant notion that women are property.
This of course is obvious in the double standard that men can be studs yet women should be chaste. I think that the example shown by those of same gender preference is the best way to deal with the word slut. Just as they claimed, the words queer, fag as their own, and devalued them as insults, women should claim the word slut. Many women have already including Janet Hardy who authored “The Ethical Slut”
Before the word slut became prominent, the word males used to describe any women who was deemed promiscuous (or even enjoyed sex) was nymphomaniac.
Kinsey had the right idea when commenting on the erroneous concept stated humorously
“A nymphomaniac is "Someone who has more sex than you do."
A slut was a person who in their peers eyes were indiscriminate about with whom who they had sex. This was based more upon appearance and often personality clashes then upon actual knowledge of person’s sexual habits.
In high school, I hung out with an older crowd many of whom had already graduated or dropped out. I remember the term slut being used in a friendlier manner to describe casual sex; I think the term was “slut puppy” as in “your such a slut puppy” or I was such a slut puppy last night” I also recall the word “whore” being a more derogatory term and associated with a person using sexuality for unscrupulous purpose. However, it was also used erroneously because of personality clash or jealousy. I had a relationship in my late teens with a girl who had grown up in a suburb of Cleveland. She was estranged from her family because of an incident that happened to her in her SR year of high school.
She was a ministers daughter who was pretty much mainstream in her teens.
However, she attended a party, got drunk, and went to bed with the town Romeo. Several of the girls from her father’s church had also attended the party and became jealous. These girls engaged in an active campaign against her and she became the “slut”. She related to me that until that experience she had been a virgin. While traumatized at the time by the whole experience she related, “It had a positive effect in her growth as it lead to rejecting the values she was raised she felt if it had not been for that incident and her families lack of support she would have wound up like her mother.