to think that a TV programme aimed at 4-10 year olds should not contain the word 'slut'??

[Ceebee74]

Watched an episode of Ben 10 last night and one of the characters called another character a slut and then repeated it

Is 'slut' acceptable these days?? I can't imagine I would use that word under any circumtances and I certainly don't expect to see it on Ben 10 which DS1 was watching

Thats disgusting def complain

that's absolutely awful!

really? that's appalling.
Are you going to complain to the programme makers/channel controllers?

Aaaaaaargh.

That is not nice.

Isn't Ben10 american though? If I'm correct slut has different conotations there?

Not sure who to complain too - it was on the Cartoon Network so maybe them?

It may well be acceptable in America but surely it should have been edited out/reworded for here?

DS watches Ben10, I wouldn't like to think of him using that word! It IS American yes, but I thought it meant the same over there too?

Are you surer?! That doesn't sound like the Ben-10 I know!! Unless, as someone has intimated, it was used in the sense of someone being untidy/messy.

lal I thought that but not sure what it does mean in America? It was definitely said in a venomous way by an alien creature-woman to the woman her son was going to marry so it was still nasty!!

slut definitely means in American what it means in England; it came up in a book I was reading last week.

this is one of those things I would need to see for myself before getting genuinely worked up but if true it is just ghastly.

Slut originally meant a dirty, messy woman (not a sexualised term), someone who didn't clean her house. Perhaps they meant that?

Either way, bit shocking...

Katherine Whitehorn once wrote a v amusing article about being a slut - in the domestic sense - in which she said she first realised she was a slut when she found herself drying her hands on the cat.

the other meaning is there but the sexual meaning is so strong these days that putting it in a cartoon can't really be justified - there are probably kids who already know the sexual meaning but the not the domestic one.

Yes it has different context in America, it means messy or something like that.

I know how taken aback it makes you though, I once had an American tell my daughter that if she misbehaves then she will get her fanny smacked, It made me a little until I realised!!!

I thouight slut (in american) meant scruffy slattern.

Mind you, still don't know why that word would appear in ben 10.

I don't know - but FGS don't search google to see if anyone else has posted elsewhere about "Ben 10" and slut...........

There is now a lovely MN link right in the middle of the first page of results

don't think it makes a difference if it was Alien force, My DS (6yo) watches that as often as Ben 10 and if he watches it, it usually means his little brother will watch it to. I am shocked they think thats OK to use.

I am very much not a very uptight parent when it comes to the odd swear word.
But "slut"? in a cartoon?

That is bloody terrible.

and the alien wedding thingy was on here yesterday. Thankfully i didn't notice it and Ds must have missed it too or else he would have been telling me all about it.

I think i would see if i can find out what the episode is called and then go to the Tv watchdog people (can't think what they are called though)

Slut was definately used as a term of abuse in North America when I lived there as a teenager. It wasn't used to cast aspersions on someone's cleanliness; it was used interchangeably with "whore" or "hoor", depending on which side of the 49th parallel you lived. Shocked that it would be used in a children's television show.

I grew up mainly in America and "slut" definitely is not commonly used there to mean slattern or messy person. It means what it means to most of us here.

If anything, that "messy" meaning is more British, I think, but just not current ... maybe verging on obsolete? I recall using it that way as a kid, having read it in some sort of Edwardian children's book, and getting reprimanded by my (American) stepmother.

Are you sure it was Ben 10 and not Hot Thighs in Wet Grass?

Either way, just asked my American colleague (and parent) and he says it seems very unlikely indeed that they'd have used the word - absolutely no chance you misheard?

Stick to Cbeebies

YANBU

TBH this is why I didn't allow my DC's to watch anything but the BBC until about now-ish. I don't care if it sounds snobby, I don't want my DC's watching lowest common denominator shit. (Except the X Factor. The difference being, that I can watch it with them and discuss why it's shit, whereas sitting through Ben 10 et al would be like watching paint dry.)

Slut used to mean messy, a slothenly woman. My dad used to say it!