In Defense Of “Cunt”
I’m guessing it’s the New Statesmen editors who headlined this piece with the infantilizing phrase “C word” rather than the author (Laurie Penny) who wrote:
It’s a perfectly nice little word, a word with 800 years of history; a word used by Chaucer and by Shakespeare. It’s the only word we have to describe the female genitalia that is neither mawkish, nor medical, nor a function of pornography. Semantically, it serves the same function as “dick” or “prick” — a signifier for a sexual organ which can also be used as a descriptor or insult, a word that is not passive, but active, even aggressive.
There are no other truly empowering words for the female genitalia. ‘Pussy’ is nastily diminutive, as if every woman had a tame and purring pet between her legs, while the medical descriptor “vagina” refers only to a part of the organ, as if women’s sexuality were nothing more than a wet hole, or “sheath” in the Latin. Cunt, meanwhile, is a word for the whole thing, a wholesome word, an earthy, dank and lusty word with the merest hint of horny threat. Cunt. It’s fantastically difficult to pronounce without baring the teeth.
I must differ with the “nastily diminutive” description of the word “pussy”, though. I’ve heard “pussy” used that way, sure. But, more often, not. Is “pussy” diminutive? Sure. But we (men and women alike) can and often do use diminutives to express tenderness and affection. We also use them, sometimes, for nasty putdowns and diminution; context is everything.
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I have now idea why vulva has been supplanted by vagina. Metonymy? The double vees in vulva seem to evoke the clefts of the labial folds
And yes, pussy comes from the Dutch,het poesje, diminutive of de poes, the cat. The word kooch or kootchie is also a similarly formed diminutive.
For that matter, the English cat has no equivalent in other Germanic languages and it is my theory that it actually comes from a form of the word cunt, in a sense, the words for cat and vulva were flipped. To draw a comparison, does anybody think of cock as a male chicken? It has become supplanted by rooster; whereas, cock is a default term for the male sex member.
Perhaps we’re just dirty Australians, but we still use Cock to refer to a male chicken, as long as the intended audience is at least partly rural.
Even Penis and Vagina can be incredibly sexual, it really depends on the couple’s respective backgrounds. One partner and I both had highly educated parents, we used penis and vagina with such ferver that both words were turnons for us.
Of course, context makes all the difference.
The quoted passage states “There are no other truly empowering words for the female genitalia”. Does that mean that there are such words for the male genitalia? Is “cock” an empowering word? (Asking out of curiosity. As a non-native speaker such nuances are hard to pick up for me.)
@Potomacker:
I’m always at loss as to why people ignore the beautiful word “vulva”, too.
Regarding your statement about the English word cat: cat is pretty much the same in several European languages: “Katze” in German, “chat” in French, “el gato” in Spanish (had to look that last one up).
Endemion, I think she’s ascribing empowerment to “prick” and “dick” in the quoted passage, and I’d grant “cock” many of the same connotations. But I’m also fairly sure she’s writing in *British* English, which diverges in some fairly startling ways (especially at the level of connotation and nuance) from my own US English. So, not sure.
A lot of people without medical training don’t even *know* the word “vulva”, which sort of limits its usefulness. Although these days there’s a brigade of sex-pos women on Twitter who seem to be waging a campaign against the mis-use of “vagina” where “vulva” is meant. Awareness may be trending up, but it’s starting from a low base!
If people don’t know the word “vulva”, there certainly must have been a lot of head-scratching out in TV land, when on an episode of “Seinfield”, Jerry used the name “Mulva”, as the punchline of what I thought was a truly inspired joke…
By the way, it’s all about the fricatives. The word “cunt”, of which, has TWO, which is rather rich for a single syllable word, but then, all the best “curse” words do…