I've been wondering of late if I should bring up my very, very major issue with people who use the following words: "bitch," "whore," "slut," "skank," "ho," "c--t," and anything like them.

And then I found this link on Jezebel, an op-ed by Angela Morabito, also of Georgetown Law, discussing this week's controversy over her fellow Georgetownian, the Limbaugh gas attack, President Obama's and the college president's defense of her, and Limbaugh's further gassings. Morabito seems to be unaware that any old American is "qualified" to talk to Congress, let alone an American whose body parts are in the general discussion (strange of a law student), but we'll let that go.

Morabito engages in the ages-old pursuit of woman-on-woman bashing, using the terms "media sluttery" and "Welfare Condom Queen." She said Fluke was "star of the bedroom sex tape." She even posits that by standing up for birth control Fluke is standing up for her own birth control. Finally, Morabito wields the traditional "have some self respect and take responsibility for your own choices." Every woman over the age of sixteen know this is code for "you are a slut." (Probably even plenty of them over ten. Among the gifted crowd, over eight.)

This is only one example of the thing I hate most: women slut-bashing other women. Using the words that have ripped women apart for centuries. Trying to gain male approval, or approval from other women in the same club, by casting out anyone who might be a potential ally. This is why women have always been their own worst enemies in the workplace, in the playground, in the church, in the schools. The minute you see a small group of women bunched up with their arms crossed over their chests, their mouths pursed, I will bet you anything you care to name they are trashing another woman. And I'll bet that sooner or later one of those words gets used.

I have quite a few friends who use these words, their rationale--well thought out--being that they are taking back the words, particularly the anatomical ones. There's a book with the c--t word as the title that's written to help women reclaim it, just as Eve Ensler's ground-breaking "The Vagina Monologues" was written and is performed to get women to use those variants without stammering, blushing, or retreating in shame.

But. There are so many more perjorative uses for these words, anatomical words and not, words that are used primarily to depict the woman thus described as dirt. Trash. Worthy of violence, use, and discarding. Deserving of unequal rights. And every time a man hears a woman use that word, he thinks it's okay for him to use it. Every time a woman doesn't call a man on the use of the word, he thinks it's okay. (If he's a mammering sewer-lapping muscus-slurping louse-biter, he'll still think it's okay even after he's been called on it, but at least you won't feel lower than the curb because you let him get away with it.)

Put it this way. If you had a very young kid, and you heard the kid say one of those words, would you let her, or him, go on saying it?

If it's not okay for a kid, how is it okay for an adult?

That is why my ljs are a no bitch-whore-slut-skank-ho-c--t-etc. area. I may be too tired to give the speech sometimes, so I'll let it slide, but make no mistake--I hate bashing other women this way, and I hate the words themselves. We are never going to get it together as a force to be reckoned with if we keep doing this to other women and if we keep letting people think this kind of rhetoric is okay by us.