a
book
for
men 
It occurred to me when I decided to do this project in 1991 that there were so many more derogatory terms for women than there were for men. Then I started to think about the actual names themselves and I noticed a few themes:
1. Many terms, both terms considered “nice” and terms considered “rude,” were less-than-human, whether they be inanimate objects, animals, foods, or what have you, that somehow became descriptions for women.
2. There was a much greater number of “mean” slang terms for women who were promiscuous than for men (for men, it was something to be proud of, so slang terms were not derogatory but complimentary).
3. There was a much greater incidence of jokes and phrases about women being either stupid or promiscuous than men.
4. Terms for sex with women (terms used predominantly by men) were often sports analogies, references to power tools and other historically masculine objects, or by nature violent.
I originally thought of taking photographs of what these terms really are (and not of their slang definition) in order to show how ludicrous the contrast was to what the terms have come to mean in our society.
The jump to make the following pages a reference tool for men in order to help them degrade women with their terminology was to provide an additional point of contrast: these pages, the way they are designed, are to make it look like this name-calling is a conscious effort on the part of all men to degrade women with the terms they use.
The reason why I did this is because although the effort is not made consciously, and although this conscious effort as displayed on the following pages seems humorous, the current effect of this spectrum of terms for women has the same result as if it was a concerted movement. No, it isn't a concerted movement: it's worse; it is second nature to everyone.
After realizing this, I felt that displaying these points humorously and sarcastically would make it a better engine for making people think about the language they use in describing women.
