Every Word for Women Eventually Becomes a Pejorative Term

There are some days I go about my activities without screaming about the patriarchy, but today is not one of those days. Today I'm thinking about how words that are used to refer to women, eventually (and inevitably?) become insults.

For example, did you know Gossip started out as a very positive term?

"The history of ‘gossip’ is emblematic in this context. Through it we can follow two centuries of attacks on women at the dawn of modern England, when a term commonly indicating a close female friend turned into one signifying idle, backbiting talk, that is, talk potentially sowing discord, the opposite of the solidarity that female friendship implies and generates. Attaching a denigrating meaning to the term indicating friendship among women served to destroy the female sociality that had prevailed in the Middle Ages, when most of the activities women performed were of a collective nature and, in the lower classes at least, women formed a tight-knit community that was the source of a strength unmatched in the modern era."

But it's not just Gossip. There are lots of examples: