Balancing C-Words Against Dysfunctional Alternatives
Following on the heels of Jane Fonda's appearance on The Today Show Holly Combe of The F-Word Blog documents her recent encounter with the word "cunt" on Yahoo!'s "Yahoo Answers" service:
The latest jawdropper, while browsing the site this week, was my discovery that, when it comes to comparing the word cunt to the far more restrictive description of "cum dumpster," the majority of answerers actually found plain old "cunt" more offensive. Seriously. A term that quite literally reduces the vulva to a passive site for "cum" to be dumped like waste is considered more acceptable than a simple word for it! In fact, at the point when I began to type my own earnest justification of why "cum dumpster" is obviously derogatory in a very literal way, the other answers had all singled out cunt as worse.
...
How can one word be so powerful? Why is it that the words "prick," "cock" and "dick" don't cause nearly as much offence, even when they're used as insults? I appreciate that some people just hate the way the word "cunt" is used but does that really mean the word itself is bad? And, if so, doesn't that impact on attitudes towards women's bodies?
Actually just as I seem to have dated myself with my post about cocksuckers I may be about to date myself again but at least when I was growing up "cock" was almost as nasty a word as "cunt." My take growing up was that, like cock, cunt was just too overtly, ungenteely, even assertively sexual. And while I still don't think I've ever said either word out loud for any purpose (isn't *that* unusual to have read more words than one has pronounced is it?) I've advocated appropriating for that *third,* actually *positive* thing penises are good for in heterosexual encounters. (Besides fertilization and oppression that is.) And if I can advocate for that then why the heck not agitate for taking cunt back from the morons who misappropriated in the first place?
And yeah, in my possibly tinfoil-hatted concerns about sex as men are indoctrinated to express it in language, if it was me I'd agitate for reappropriating cunt as that third *positive,* non-cutesy/non-medical-sounding thing women can do with their genitals besides gratifying men (a.k.a. "cum dumpsters?" really?) and canal-ing birth. Because goodness knows it wouldn't hurt men to have a rich, realistic, and not-at-all-prim vocabulary for their *partner's* enjoyment any more than it would hurt us to imagine our cocks as good for more than peeing and "pounding" with.
To be honest it still makes me uncomfortable when men say it. I know I've thrown it around casually sometimes, but like racial slurs, I don't think it can be "reclaimed" by people who've never had it used to hurt them. ("Cum dumpster" is clearly worse though. "Dumpster"?!?)
Interesting that when applied to a whole person, "cunt" is more of a gender insult--bad because you're a woman--and "prick" more of a personal one--bad because you're a jerk. At least that's my perception.
Still, even though I feel a bit weird hearing men talk about cunts... all of our words for genitals are messed up in some way--either clinical, childish, or obscene. Vagina, va-jay-jay, or cunt. I suppose if you want to sound like a grownup and the situation isn't exactly medical, "cunt" and the like is closer than the alternatives.
[I feel sort of the same way, Holly. On the one hand it would be a totally great word (it just looks and sounds perfect next to "cock") but on the other just thinking about saying gives me the (wrong kind of) shivers. But here's the deal, as Sunflower says a bit further down, the connotations of "cunt" as an insult: independence and failure to placate, actually make the specific nature of the hurt inflicted more rather than less relevant to reappropriation. Sort of like "Madame President" or "Madame Justice" would, and "Madame Speaker" could tend to paper over the previous disreptuatble connotations of the word "madame." Anyway, while it gets me the same way it gets you if someone else led the charge I'd charge behind them even if I didn't feel comfortable, or appropriate, leading myself. --fl]
I don't really understand why "cunt" is found so offensive, because to me it is a beautiful word, a good, honest, Old-English word (and the only one that doesn't label the cunt as being primarily a receptacle for the man's penis - vagina literally meaning "sword-sheath").
I would disagree with Holly's statement that "cunt" is a gender-based insult, because in my experience it is not used to suggest in any way that the target is feminine or effeminate. It's an effective insult and swearword by virtue of having a single, explosive, syllable that can be spat out angrily or aggressively. That it is a sexually-linked word completes the requirements for a really good swearword/insult.
[And the impression I get is that over in the UK where you're from, SE, it really is more of a body-part insult like "dick" than the deep affront it is here. That's just an impression, of course. --fl]
Many years ago a friend and I were discussing the words cunt and fuck and how those words are at the same time delicious and vulgar. Every time we saw each other, we'd say, "You fucking cunt!" It was pretty funny. I am surprised that people like the words "cum dumpster" better than cunt. Yikes! Cum dumpster is pretty offensive. I kinda like cunt, although I should admit that I don't usually say it. Oh, and I really wish people would stop saying vajayjay. Blech.
[I think it's not so much that the (mostly women if I read the original post correctly) respondents preferred "cum dumpster" more as much as they really, *really* disliked "cunt." If that makes sense, Mag. --fl]
It's that agency/no-sex class thing again. "Cunt" doesn't evoke reproduction, childbirth, motherhood; it evokes sex. Heck, let's be Anglo-Saxon: it evokes fucking. :Gasp!: How vulgar!
That carries implications (not absolute, but they're there) of "woman as sexual being", and even hints at the possibility, at least, of "woman as being with sexual agency". While the main force behind the offensiveness of "cunt" surely must be that wide-ranging "Germanic vulgar, Latinate genteel" trope that influences even the way we talk about what we eat, I would posit that the reason "cunt" is considered more offensive than "cum dumpster" is, indeed, that heretical (to the no-sex class paradigm) implication of sexuality/agency.
Consider that when "cunt" is used as a non-sexual derogatory term, it usually has implications of wilfulness, non-compliance, non-docility. I've noticed this even when it's applied to a man - if he's just being a general jerk, he's more likely to be called a dick; he gets called a cunt when the purported jerkishness involves adamant refusal to give the name-caller what s/he wants. It's even more sharply distinct when applied to a woman - it's roughly synonymous to "ball-buster" and other epithets suggesting she's behaving with unwomanly assertiveness. (Of course, many - perhaps most - of the strongest insulting nouns for women have some implication in that direction.)
Sunflower
[Very interesting analysis of the way cunt is used as an insult. As you say in a lot of ways it makes it more compelling companion to "cock" rather than less, Sunflower. --fl]
I totally agree with Sunflower.
I prefer the word Cunt to a lot of alternatives, probably for the reason I prefer Cock to, say, Willie or Dick, it feels like more of an in charge word.
The only times I've been called a cunt in a derogatory manner were when I was clearly ignoring someone, and then it felt like they were just mad at me because I wasn't making them the center of the world and they were doing the thing they did when they were a kid, using a naughty word so that they would be the center of attention again, even if it was as punishment.
Cum dumpster is way grosser and a lot more personal, but in a lot of ways sounds like it might be easier to laugh off, not just because it sounds really dumb, but because mummy and daddy never punished you for saying either of those words when you were a kid.
[Hi Colette, Yeah, that sounds like the way "cunt" is usually used as an insult. Which, now that I think about it, is especially funny given how much lore there is about cocks being headstrong, disobedient, and acting like they or their owners are the center of the world. Still, in language-of-empowerment terms to get the idea of women's sexual agency across to *men* that's not the worst association set to begin with. But just because *I'm* not the one to start making that connection doesn't mean nobody could, should, or, I suppose since Jane Fonda said it on national TV, has started to do so. --fl]