My growing tension with "reclaiming words"

I was having a talk with my CSL placement supervisor at Kindred the other day and she asked me what we had been talking about in class recently. I told her that "Slut Walk" was the hot topic on the plate at the moment. I told her that there was this tension that I had created for myself in trying to understand the reclaiming of the word “slut”. I couldn't quite grasp why reclaiming slut would be effective or necessary in moving forward with the ideas of not being judged based on how we dressed or the choices we make as “women”.

The police have used “slut” to claim their authority on specific women and yet slut is used in different contexts now to claim authority over someone else’s identity or choices; so then I understand why we would want to reclaim it and turn it into something positive. My tension lies in the systematic use of “slut” that has been propelled into the fore front, where the word defines the movement, when what should be defining slut walk is the claiming of our choices and bodies as our own.

My supervisor gave me an example of other words that have been reclaimed, she said people reclaimed “witch” and “hag”, which were terms once used to offend but now “hag” is used to identify older wise women.  My supervisor said, she reclaimed those words as well, to identify herself as a Wicca. She said that this idea could be applied to “slut” where someone would want to reclaim “slut” if they identified with what it stood for. Yet again I can see how that would be a positive outcome from past negative associations with the word “slut” but that would involve identifying oneself into a specific category that is already defined through cultural associations or feminists associations.

What about the word “whore” which is commonly associated with sexual promiscuity and sexuality in general, why shouldn't we reclaim that word, or maybe instead of trying to reclaim words we should diminish existing words and create new words that elicit positive understandings, but of course our society hasn’t caught up to that idea quite yet. At least I don’t think so.

Thoughts maybe?  If not Happy Thanksgiving!