Men, use it much more and with greater effect on each other.That's interesting. I've never heard an American man use it about another man. In the U.S., unlike in Britain and Ireland, I've only heard men use it to express violent contempt for women.
Perhaps in certain more youthful circles than those I travel in it might be fairly mild, but to most of us it's the worst word there is and isn't to be bandied around lightly. I personally hardly ever say it (except when talking about female Alaskan politicians, at least one former US president and 2 British Prime Ministers, of course).I hear this a lot from British people, and I actually don't think it's right. In Britain, it's very rude and coarse and people don't often say it. In America, it's not just rude and coarse: it's generally used as hate speech. I assume that a British man who uses it is rude and coarse, which may or may not be a problem as far as I'm concerned. When an American man uses it, I assume there's a pretty good chance he really hates women.
The word is used by men against each other all the time perhaps that might be my impression from watching lots of Brit films or whatever, so therefore I don't see it as specifically sexist or denigrating, if it's used against a woman.That will be really relevant when you find yourself living in a British film. But your profile says you live in Brooklyn, and in the U.S., it's a word that has some pretty nasty misogynistic connotations. It's up to you whether you care or not, but you should realize that if you use it about any woman, a lot of people are going to get the impression that you've got some issues with women.
... I was initially troubled by the douchebag resurgence (hurf) too, but at least among my feminist-leaning social network, I believe it's been reclaimed as a feminist insult. When I call a guy a douchebag, douchelord, or douchenozzle, I'm saying he is dumb, bad for women, does not do what he is supposed to, and (especially) not going anywhere near my vagina.posted by juliplease at 9:13 PM on March 24, 2010 [11 favorites]
To me, the thing that offends me the most is every time that I hear the n-word. Not "nigger," by the way -- I mean "the n-word." Literally, whenever a white lady on CNN with nice hair says "the n-word"? That's just white people getting away with saying "nigger," that's all that is. They found a way to say "nigger": "n-word!" It's bullshit 'cause when you say "the n-word" you put the word "nigger" in the listener's head. That's what saying a word is. You say "the n-word" and I go, "Oh, she means 'nigger'" -- you're makin' me say it, in my head! Why don't you fuckin' say it instead and take responsibility for the shitty words you wanna say?posted by jokeefe at 9:55 PM on March 24, 2010 [9 favorites]
There are a lot of words that are... they're not bad words, no words are bad, but some people start using 'em a lot to hurt other people, and then they become bad, they become hard to use. There's words that I love that I can't use 'cause other people use 'em wrong, to hurt other people.posted by Rhaomi at 10:17 PM on March 24, 2010 [8 favorites]
Like the word "cunt" is... a beautiful word. To me, there's just beauty in that word, and I don't... I mean aesthetically. It's like chocolatey and round on the ends. I just like the... "cunt"... I just like the way it sounds.
And I don't use it as an insult. I'm alone in the laundry and I'm like "Cunt cunt!" I just like sayin' it!
I would never call a woman a cunt (except for my mom 'cause she likes it for some weird reason). But... it's a very misused word.
It's supposed to mean "vagina," which I don't think works at all, because vaginas are so sweet! They're little pretty things with little flower petal-y lips and... I hear a piccolo in my head every time I see a vagina.
Even "vagina" is too harsh, they should be called like a "falalalalala... haaaaaaa..." There should be a butterfly fluttering around every vagina all the time, just all the time, a little butterfly. When you go to the doctor he's like, "Well, the butterfly looks good, so we're in good shape. Good color to the butterfly..."
How do you look at something that pretty and say, "That's a cunt!" That doesn't fit at all. Maybe if it was a giant vagina and it was attacking a town and throwin' buses around and knockin' over telephone poles. Then you could say, "Hey, somebody shoot that cunt with a bazooka! It's gonna step on the candy store!"
This kills me about the US. People love to pontificate endlessly about 'free speech' and lecture you on how 'free speech' makes the US superior. Words can't hurt, people should be allowed to say whatever they want, best it's out in the open, and so on and so on.You're a little confused about how free speech works. "Free speech" means that people should be able to say whatever they want without the government putting them in jail. It doesn't mean that you get to say whatever you want and people can't think you're a jerk. It also doesn't mean that I can't kick someone who uses a racial slur out of my living room.
Despite the EEOC's policy reversal, the legal battle over sex-segregated ads continued into the 1970s. Technically, the EEOC ruling on help-wanted ads did not have the force of law. Unlike other agencies, the EEOC was not authorized to issue formal administrative regulations, but could issue interpretive guidelines, subject to judicial review. Immediately after the EEOC's ruling, the ANPA and the Washington Star sued the EEOC in federal court to enjoin enforcement of the help-wanted guidelines (American Newspaper Publishers Association v. Alexander 294 F. Supp. 1100 [1968]). Although the district court ruled in favor of the EEOC, the publishing industry continued its legal campaign against the agency's guidelines. As late as 1975, the issue had still not been completely resolved (see Freeman 1975:77- 9). Nonetheless, by the early-to-mid-1970s, many of the nations' newspapers had desegregated their help-wanted ads "partially because of local regulations prohibiting separate listing of want ads and partly because of feminist pressure" (Freeman 1975:79)Or, if you have JSTOR, here's a cite
Oh, Lord, those are vulgar words—wicked, ugly, immodest, not fitting for respectable girls to speak. I would not utter those words in the presence of the lords of France for all the world. Ugh!
Do you have an expurgated version that you expect your kids to read or something?No. At least, we didn't. What we did do was talk a lot about the development of the English language, including that words can have different connotations in different times and places. I take it they don't teach this to you when you read it for O levels, because this seems to be too subtle an observation for many English people.
I think what most people are asking in this thread, given that the preponderance of people on the site are American, and the word has such negative weight here, is that we just don't use it here.I don't think anyone is saying that, actually. What they are saying is that you shouldn't use it about a woman because you really, really hate that woman, and you think that cunt is the absolute worst thing you can call a woman. If you do that, you are using it in the deeply misogynistic sense in which it is typically used in America, and misogyny isn't cool on this site.
It's more to do with the fact that because Americans are offended by something, the rest of the world is expected to kow tow before jumping into line.As has been pointed out many, many times in this discussion, the person who used the word is in America, and he used the word in its misogynistic American sense. I am not objecting to any use of the word by anyone. I am objecting to people using a word that, in their culture, expresses hatred of and contempt for women in order to express hatred of and contempt for a woman.
Unless an American decides to use the word, in which case it then becomes great comedy (a la George Carlin) or great television drama (a la Deadwood.)It seems entirely in character for Al Swearengen to use the word cunt, so I don't have a problem with it. I don't think I'd want to hang out with Al Swearengen, though.
To follow up what theyexpectresults said, I've worked in Glasgow engineering works where the word means no more than "person": 'Any of youse ____s gaun tae the chip van?'That's great! If people want to use it in that sense, it's fine by me. But we know, because he said so, that it's not the sense in which skygazer was using it. He called Sarah Palin a cunt because he really hates Sarah Palin, and that's the nuclear weapon of insults against women in the U.S. "Sarah Palin is a person" doesn't have the same force, no?
Blazecock Pileon: I doubt very much that whoever is manipulating these Tea Bagger brownshirts really respects the ideals of democracy and civility very much to recognize human rights, if they were to ever take office. That much is plainly evident, at least.posted by cortex (staff) at 3:40 PM on March 26, 2010
Sadly, not many will make such a sophisticated deduction. What could be more repellent than what Palin (that fuckface fascist CUNT...ahem), said today.
Look, let me be perfectly clear, I don't think any (fuckface cunt, whore-bitch from hell with bloodyminded desperation for power and the ignorance to see people get hurt over a democratic vote and deserves nothing less than a boot up her ass) person who feels the need to have a squadron of flying monkeys, should be in office.
It may not always be an attempt, but it can easily be an unintended effect, as it has been (apparently) here - and that's why there's so much agreement on avoiding its use on the site. There may in fact be people who don't intend to denigrate women but are just plain unaware that the word has been used so often and so widely to denigrate women that a certain large number of people are not going to be able to erase their minds of those connotations, no matter what the intent may have been. Maybe in a small group of friends who you know well, you can call a woman a 'cunt' with no intent to denigrate her and have it be received that way (or at least look lilke it's received that way). But in a large discussion group where at least 90% of the people you're talking with are strangers to you, there may be an effect you wouldn't have in other contexts.I get that some people want MeFi to be a neighborhood pub and act accordingly, expecting a certain level of benefit of the doubt to questionable statements. Others want to be able to read a thread without being offended. Both sides are entirely reasonable and frankly both were way past good taste in defending their positions in this thread.
And my advice for people who are trying to say "look really don't use that word here because it's a big bad one"Except that, as we've pointed out again and again, the problem isn't really the word. (And we have to point that out again and again, because if we don't, we get the whole "prudish American who is ignorant about how people order chips in Glasgow" argument.) The problem is that the entire comment, and not just that one particular word, expresses gendered contempt for women. The problem with calling Sarah Palin a "fuckface cunt, whore-bitch from hell" is not just the word cunt. It's that you are marshaling every profoundly gendered, profoundly sexualized insult that you can think of to insult a woman you hate. The entire phrase derives its power from the misogyny embedded in all of those words.
Also, thank you, and here I'm serious for putting away the accusations of "misogynist" and "hate-speech," you were using before so casually and freely.FWIW, I'm not backing away from that. What you said was misogynistic hate-speech. That doesn't mean you're a misogynist. This isn't about what you are. It's about what you said and why it's not acceptable here. Nobody is passing judgment on you as a human being. We're just trying to explain why it was deleted and why deleting it was the right thing to do.
You know what, read the thread. Read the whole fucking thing, and then think about what you just wrote and how un-necessary it was. Thanks for your self-righteous concern.Ye-ah... You see, that's where the rest of my comment, that you didn't quote, comes in. You said you were having trouble figuring out why you were getting so much opposition, and I pointed out that there are a lot of people having trouble figuring out why you're digging your heels in. There's a feedback loop.
Satire, lampoon refer to literary forms in which vices or follies are ridiculed. Satire, the general term, often emphasizes the weakness more than the weak person, and usually implies moral judgment and corrective purpose: Swift's satire of human pettiness and bestiality. Lampoon refers to a form of satire, often political or personal, characterized by the malice or virulence of its attack: lampoons of the leading political figures.Like quantumetric, I can see that the flying monkeys idea had good potential to be developed into decent satire. I get that you intended the flying monkeys and the swearing to be a seamless whole and thanks for clarifying a few times that the intent had nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny.
[Lampoon:] a work of literature, art, or the like, ridiculing severely the character or behavior of a person, society, etc.
A caricature grossly exaggerates a distinctive or striking feature with intent to ridicule
This thread is closed to new comments.
If your British passport says you're Malcolm Tucker, maybe. Or you're an Israeli with a fake British passport that says you're Malcolm Tucker.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:02 PM on March 24, 2010 [18 favorites]