A group of college students braved the Southern summer temperatures this past weekend to hold a SlutWalk at my university. SlutWalks are protest marches that began a year and a half ago when a Toronto police officer advised students at York University that women who don’t want to be sexually victimized should “avoid dressing like sluts.” Wearing outfits that may include ripped fishnet stockings, mini-skirts and lingerie, Slutwalkers make the statement that women never ask to be raped and should be safe, protected, and, if attacked, believed regardless of their appearance.

Not everyone is a fan of the SlutWalk movement. Critics contend SlutWalks are simply another reflection of the over-sexualization of girls and women today. The message we should be sending to girls, these critics argue, is that they do not have to be so sexual. I see them differently.

I was labeled a slut. So was my daughter. So were most of my women friends.

My offense? I dated a Mexican-American boy in high school (I’m white). My daughter’s? She asked a question about contraception during her abstinence-only class in middle school. My friends have been labeled sluts for: acting stuck up, breaking up with a guy, being outspoken, having curves and big breasts, rejecting a guy’s overtures, and yes, some were labeled sluts for the way they dressed or for having sex—but not as many as you’d think. This is because the word slut is used to police girls’ and women’s behavior—and not just when it comes to sex. Men created the word and other words like it—whore, harlot, ho, skank, hussy, slag, jezebel—as a tool to keep women in their place (below men) and to justify treating them poorly. Labeling some women sluts creates a whole category of women who don’t deserve respect.

So I’m proud that I was labeled a slut. It means I challenged society’s rules for how girls and women should behave. And I’m delighted that college students around the country are standing up to sexual double standards and reclaiming the word slut. It’s incredibly easy to be labeled a slut, which means we’re all potential sluts: embracing the word, then, means refusing to divide women into good and bad and thus refusing to sacrifice some women as not worthy of dignity and care.

So parents, if you learn your daughter has participated in a SlutWalk, not: she is standing up for all women’s rights by making a strong public statement that no woman ever asks to be sexually attacked. By embracing the word slut she is also undercutting the power of the label to police, divide, and hurt girls and women. Just as the LGBT community reclaimed the word queer in the ’90s, it’s time to take back slut.