The Intellectual Whore.

Now Playing: Somebody That I Used to Know (Live) Gotye ft. Kimbra (now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over, but had me believing it was always something that I'd done)

It may surprise you that the first person to tell me that women should 'reclaim whore' was someone at school. I won't say who.

It's not that we - underaged, sixteen year old ingenue students - were encouraged to suddenly become slags. Whore does not mean what it means now, not in the context we were talking of. In another universe the word whore was applied to women who dared to play in a man's world. Educated, intellectual women. Women who intimidated men so much that they had to go for the low-hanging fruit; promiscuity, whether factual or fictional. Women of history that modern women should admire.

One such woman was Aspasia of Milesia, Pericles' mistress. Aspasia was amazingly influential in a world where women were not citizens, not given the right to vote, etc - Pericles left his wife for Aspasia, Aspasia was his right hand in all matters (although we will never know the extent of Aspasia's true political influence, because history is, of course, written by men), men would take their wives to learn from Aspasia, because although her promiscuity was widely condemned nobody could deny her brilliant mind and her wonderful education,  and when Pericles' opponents tried to harm him, they did it by attacking Aspasia.

Strong women are confident women, confident in their own capabilities, aware of their own vulnerabilities, and capable of manipulating both to get what they want. I've often said that the most powerful person is not Caesar, but Caesar's women - and you only have to look at Servilia or Cleopatra or even Giulia Farnese to see that that is true. But then there are women, powerful enough in their own right to eclipse men - like Catherine II - who weren't afraid to live life to the fullest. (Although the tale that she died trying to have sex with a horse is probably a lie).

Lucrezia Borgia, the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander, was accused of having an incestuous relationship with her father and brother, the Pope and Cesare Borgia; it is known for certain that Lucrezia had an illegitimate child during her marriage to Giovanni Sforza, known as the Infantus Romanus, and that Lucrezia and Cesare forced Sforza to declare his impotency (unlikely, considering he himself had an illegitimate child) so that the marriage could be annulled in a time where divorce was impossible (she was the daughter of the Pope, after all). All of this historically unproven fuss over a woman who was historically proven to be the only woman who sat on the chair of St Peters in loco parentis. Who cares? It is only women who have their private lives pulled apart and elaborated with lies and half-truths. How many people do you think Henry VIII slept with? A lot more than six, I'll tell you.

I perhaps have a rather bad reputation for being almost entirely indifferent and unjudgemental of people's personal lives. I like being unjudgemental. Some of the people I know get so...so angry, about what people do outside of school. Why? If it's not hurting anyone, then, well, it's their perogative...

Society is, was, and perhaps always will be afraid of women who take pride in their own attractiveness and sexuality. Now we don't mind if a woman is intellectually capable of being equal or better than men - not much, anyway - but the second sex gets involved we suddenly become Victorian prudes. A woman can enjoy every pleasure and right that men have, except for sex. If a man sleeps around, he's a champ. If a woman sleeps around, she's a slut. Why is that?