“Tis Pity She’s a Whore”: the ‘Whore’ in Whores of Yore

Germaine Greer once said she would ‘rather be called a whore than a human being’; but, what does the word ‘whore’ actually mean? Where has it come from, and what does someone have to do to earn that particular title? Why was Joan of Arc, who died a virgin, called the ‘French Whore’? And why was Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, attacked as the English Whore’? The revolutionaries called Marie Antoinette the ‘Austrian Whore’; Anne Boleyn was the ‘Great Whore’ and Air America host Randi Rhodes came under fire for calling Hillary Clinton a ‘big whore’ in the 2016 American elections. Perhaps we think we know perfectly well what we mean should we ever choose to drop the w-bomb, but the word is historically and culturally complex. This simple monosyllable is loaded with over a thousand years of attempting to control and shame women by stigmatising their sexuality.

“You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs anymore," said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.” Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb
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Language is an important battle ground in the fight for social equality. As the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued, ‘language constitutes our world, it doesn’t just record it or label it’. Language is fluid and malleable; it drives social attitudes, rather than simply expressing them. To see the evolution of language we only have to look at what was once acceptable terminology to describe people of colour; ‘half caste’ was once perfectly acceptable for a bi-racial person, just as ‘coloured’ meant a black person. Such words were not thought of as offensive, merely descriptive, and can occasionally still be heard in usage (though, thankfully this is less and less common). But, when we breakdown the power structures implicit in phrases, we can begin to understand how words do reinforce and create our reality. A person who is ‘half caste’ is, by definition, a half of something; they are half formed, half made, half a person rather than a whole person in their own right. A person who is ‘coloured’ has been metaphorically coloured in, which suggests an original state of not being coloured in (or, white); it reinforces a negative difference, rooted in racial hierarchy. We might not immediately recognise the implications of such phrases, but describing someone as half formed, even if done on a linguistically unconscious level, obviously reinforces racial prejudice; as Saussure argued, it makes our reality, it does not record it.

Language that reflects the humanity of the person, or people being described is a cruical process, and one that requires continual revision. Although political correctness frequently comes in for mocking, we cannot and will not achieve social equality if the language we use to describe marginalised groups actually reinforces stigma. Language informs much of the debate around LGBT rights, body issues, ageism and, of course, gender. The feminists of the seventies fought to have the title ‘Ms’ as an alternative to ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ (both of which denote a married status, which, of course, ‘Mr’ does not). The power dynamics inherent in only having Miss or Mrs as titles for women is obvious, when we consider that either one effectively introduces a woman in terms of her relation to a man. Similar arguments have been expressed about what it means when a woman takes her husband’s last name. Is it an expression of love, just traditional, or a verbal transference of ownership from her father (who ‘gives her away’) to her husband? In 2010, the ‘Slut-Walk’ protests came to global prominence, as men and women walked together in over 200 cities and 40 nations to reclaim the word ‘slut’. These demonstrations were brought about when a Toronto police officer advised students at York University that ‘women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized’.

The reclamation of terms of abuse is a fascinating linguistic phenomena, and one where no one has written down the rules; but we all know there are rules. ‘Queer’, ‘nigger’, ‘ho’, ‘bitch’, etc., can function as terms of inclusion and even affection when used within those specific groups, but permission to use such terms within this context is culturally policed, and rightly so. As a straight, white woman, I cannot call a gay man a queer, but I can call my female friend a ‘bitch’, whereas a straight man cannot - though a gay man might be able to. When a term of abuse is reclaimed and owned by the people it once stigmatised, it is a defiant action. One that takes the power away from the oppressor, galvanises an identity within the formerly oppressed, and sticks two politically incorrect fingers up at the establishment. Of course, many argue that such words, used in any context, only serves to reinforce a prejudice as such words are never shaken free of historical import; they create reality, rather than recording it. The word ‘whore’ is also in a state of reclamation amongst certain groups of the sex work community (others reject it entirely.)

The truth is that I should not have used ‘whore’ in whores of yore; it’s not my word, and if you’re not a sex worker, it’s not yours either. It’s a term of abuse that sex workers hear every day by those seeking to devalue them and shame them. So, why did I call this project whores of yore? ‘Whore’ is a very old word, with a complex and powerful history, and that’s what I wanted to bring to this project. To my ears, whore is an archaic, slightly humorous word, like strumpet and trollop – but, that simply isn’t the reality for many (and a mistake on my part). I have had feedback from many sex workers questioning my use of the term, and for a while I gave serious consideration to changing it. But, the history of that word is an important one, and one that I want to retain, and emphasise. Debate around what ‘whore’ actually means is a conversation worth having.

The word is so old that its precise origins are lost in the mists of time, but it can be traced to the Proto-Germanic ‘horon’, or "one who desires". It also links to the Old Norse hora "adulteress," Danish hore, Swedish hora, Dutch hoer, and Old High German huora. Going back even further to Proto-Indo-European language (the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages), whore has roots in ‘Ka’, meaning ‘to like, desire.’ Ka is a base that has produced words in other languages for ‘lover’, such as the Latin carus ‘dear’; Old Irish cara ‘friend;’ and the Old Persian kama ‘desire.’

‘Whore’ is not a universal word; the indigenous Aborigines, First Nation people and native Hawaiians have no word for ‘whore’, or indeed prostitution, as they do not share the West's shaming of sexuality. It is interesting too that 'whore' is almost exclusively a feminine insult. I accept that 'man-whore' has now entered modern language, and certainly 'son of a whore' has been an insult historically directed at men; but 'whore' is absolutely an insult directed at women. But, 'whore' is not the exclusive preserve of men, to hurl at unsuspecting women at will; women have called each other whores all throughout history. Historical court records are full of defamation cases of woman calling each other 'whores' and all manner of other sexual insults. Tudor women were regularly brought before the courts for defaming other women as 'hedge whores', 'begger whores', 'drunken bitch whores', 'black mouthed, witch whores'; and in 1627, Isabel Yaxley complained of a neighbour alledging she was a 'whore' who could be 'fucked for a pennyworth of fish'.

From the twelfth century, whore was a term of abuse for a sexually unchaste woman, but it did not exclusively mean a sex worker. Thomas of Chobham’s thirteenth-century definition of a whore was any woman who has sex outside marriage (hands up all those who have just learnt they are a thirteenth-century whore.) Shakespeare used "whore" nearly 100 times in his plays, including Othello, Hamlet and King Lear; but it doesn’t mean someone who sells sex, it means a sexually transgressive woman. John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) explores narratives around badly behaved women. In one memorable scene, Monticelso defines what a whore is;

“Shall I expound whore to you? sure I shall;
I 'll give their perfect character. They are first,
Sweetmeats which rot the eater; in man's nostrils
Poison'd perfumes. They are cozening alchemy;
Shipwrecks in calmest weather. What are whores!
Cold Russian winters, that appear so barren,
As if that nature had forgot the spring.
They are the true material fire of hell:
Worse than those tributes i' th' Low Countries paid,
Exactions upon meat, drink, garments, sleep,
Ay, even on man's perdition, his sin.
They are those brittle evidences of law,
Which forfeit all a wretched man's estate
For leaving out one syllable. What are whores!
They are those flattering bells have all one tune,
At weddings, and at funerals. Your rich whores
Are only treasures by extortion fill'd,
And emptied by curs'd riot. They are worse,
Worse than dead bodies which are begg'd at gallows,
And wrought upon by surgeons, to teach man
Wherein he is imperfect. What's a whore!
She 's like the guilty counterfeited coin,
Which, whosoe'er first stamps it, brings in trouble
All that receive it.”

Monticelso doesn’t admit it, but what is driving this rant is a fear of women, fear that they can wield power over men; they can ‘teach man wherein he is imperfect.’ Here, whore is not a sex worker, she is a woman who has authority over a man, and must be shamed into silence at all costs. Historically, ‘whore’ had been used to attack women who have upset the status quo and asserted themselves, usually in an attempt to reassert sexual control and dominance over her. But, unlike the word ‘prostitute’, whore is not tied to a profession, but rather to a perceived moral state. Which is why many trailblazing women, with no connection to the sex trade, were attacked as ‘whores’; Mary Wollstonecraft, Phulan Devi, even Margaret Thatcher were all labelled whores by those who were angered at their power. Maybe 'whore' has less to do with sex than we think.

Given that ‘whore’ is a historical term of abuse, rooted in a sense of sexual morality, it is little wonder that the word also came to pejoratively mean sex workers. As society’s most visible icon of female transgressive sexuality, the sex worker represented everything a deeply patriarchal society sought to repress in ‘good girls’. Many literary works published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries focus on whores (meaning both sex workers and promiscuous women) as clear threats to marriage and childbearing, religion, and morality. Another motivation was their potential economic power in a society that was becoming increasingly capitalistic. Now offering their services for money instead of for prestige, whores presented an economic danger via their accumulation of wealth in a system in which men presumably controlled the flow of money. I feel this is somewhere closer to the truth; a whore is a woman who is threatens the social stabilty; a whore is a woman who wont behave.

‘Whore’ may be a term of abuse, but it is one rooted in fear of female independence and sexual autonomy. Its progression from meaning a woman who desires to an insult, seeking to shame that desire traces cultural attitudes around female sexuality. I am not reclaiming it, I am taking it back to its original meaning. I do not use ‘whore’ to shame, I use it to recognise all those women to rattled cultural sensibilities enough to be called a whore. I use it to deflate the shame within it. I use it to remember that our language shapes how we view each other, and it is constantly evolving. Historically, if you desire, you’re a whore; if you have sex outside of marriage, you are a whore; if you had transgressed and threatened ‘the man’, you are a whore. We are all historical whores. Remember it. Celebrate it. Own it.

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