Cara Kelly

USA TODAY

In what may be the fastest case of reappropriation in this election cycle, women have already taken back one of the insults Republican nominee Donald Trump lobbed at Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during Wednesday night's debate.

"Such a nasty woman," Trump interjected as Clinton answered a question about funding Social Security.

Cue Janet Jackson's Nasty Boys — streams of which have been up 250% on Spotify.

Twitter erupted with ladies proudly claiming the mantel, tee-shirts were promptly designed, someone snagged the domain name nastywomengets***done.com, which now redirects to a Hillary Clinton donations page and clothing retailer Nasty Gal got in on the fun, changing the name to Nasty Woman for the day.

Though many were having fun proclaiming themselves nasty women, reappropriation has long been used by social activists. For women's groups, this has taken several forms.

One of the most notable is Take Back the Night, a foundation working to end sexual assault and violence against women that spread from Europe to the U.S. in the late 1960s that still holds events on hundreds of college campuses. One of the first occurred in October 1975, after microbiologist Susan Alexander Speeth was murdered while walking home alone at night. Incensed by the notion that women should stay at home out of fear of attack, many took to the streets and flipped the narrative, calling for safer environments.

That concept got an update in 2011 when a Toronto police constable told students at Osgoode University that they could prevent sexual assault if they stopped dressing like sluts, and Slut Walk was born. It's since gone from the streets of Toronto to cities worldwide, and has found a vocal supporter in Amber Rose.

So while the hashtag #nastywomenvote has been trending due mostly to women getting in a few jokes about Trump's comment, it is following traditional paths of women's rights groups. Will it work in the Twitter age? We'll see on Nov. 8.