Of the responses to my poll the other week, "whore" was the most commonly cited worst-thing-someone-can-call-me. That was fairly predictable, and I thought little of it until yesterday, when I reread my low fidelity post and was reminded that as a child I had, in fact, deemed a girl who I liked a "whore"—for no reason other than she didn't like me back.
This got me thinking about how I've heard the term used since. It's invariably in similar contexts. What an irony that we men use "whore" as a synonym for "a woman who won't have me." And that women use it as a synonym for "a woman admired by the man I want."
People are so kind.