Let’s Call a Cunt a Cunt!
And, let’s not perpetuate the usage of a perfectly good word for one of our body parts as an insult
The infamous C-word recently came up with my partner after we cloned our privates in plaster.
—I want to clone your vulva, he told me. —You want to clone what???
I wasn’t shocked by his suggestion as much as I was by the word he chose to refer to my lady-parts. Sure, vulva is the correct term, it’s neutral, politically, and anatomically correct. But, it’s also a very clinical term, and it doesn’t sit right with me in this setting. I never look at myself naked and see a vulva. I don’t gently stroke my vulva to have an orgasm. I don’t spread my vulva for my lover.
Nope! In those cases, I either say my pussy, or, whenever I need a word that is less sweet—something stronger—I use cunt.
Cunt packs a punch!
—Isn’t cunt a bad word? boyfriend hesitated. —Only because we made it one, I insisted back. I like the word cunt. I’m going to take it back!
Cunt has an unapologetic ring to it. There’s nothing neutral about cunt; a cunt doesn’t take shit. Instead, she knows what she wants and goes for it.
I want to be a goddamn cunt; a cunt with a cunt.
And, why is it that a word that simply refers to the female genitalia has become one of the vilest words in the English language? If you google it, you’ll come across the Wikipedia article, which opens like this:
Cunt is a vulgar word for the vulva or vagina and is also used as a term of disparagement. Reflecting different national usages, cunt is described as a “usually disparaging and obscene” term for a woman or an “offensive way to refer to a woman” in the United States by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but “an unpleasant or stupid person” in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, and “a contemptible person” in the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English.
Where does the word come from?
This great article in The Establishment discusses the word to great detail and shows that its origin is confuted. Personally, I’m not sure if it matters to me whether it stems from the Hindu Goddess Kunti, The Great Yoni of the Universe, or if its origins are from the Old Norse word ‘kunta’, referring to the vulva. It could come from the old Anglo Saxon word-sound, ‘cu’ which evolved to ‘cow,’ ‘cunt,’ and ‘queen,’ or the Latin ‘cunnus’, which also means vulva. All of them sound plausible and perhaps they’re even related?
What does strike me as significant though, is that in all of its supposed origins the word is simply a reference to the female body part, and even has ties to divinity and queendom. Its original uses were never derogatory, so why is it that it’s now described as vulgar, obscene, and offensive?
Women are the Devil’s gateway
If you guessed that religion had something to do with it, you’re right. The shrines of Kunti were mostly destroyed by puritans in South Asia who believed female genitals to be the source of all evil.
While man was associated with the spiritual, the reasonable and the godly, woman was linked to flesh, matter and the world. Good and evil were given their clear sexual counterparts. According to this view women actually caused evil to come into the world. As a result they must atone for their collective guilt and redeem themselves.
How? Patriarchal religion says women are redeemed by willingly accepting their gender roles. They should bear children, keep their sexuality under control and be prepared to subordinate themselves to male wishes.
When I say that the word is only bad because we made it so, this is what I refer to: Women have been viewed as evil incarnate and the gateway to the devil by Judeo-Christians since the Middle-Ages. Before that a cunt was simply a descriptive word found in medical texts. The word was later shunned and feared, parallel with the empowered female sexuality as a whole.
It’s not only men who fear the cunt, women do too: Articles, like this, in She Knows, pleads that I simply use the word ‘Vagina’ instead of 50 other slang words, but I refute. Further, I wonder why a women’s magazine will print words like ‘Meat Curtain,’ ‘Axe Wound,’ ‘Sausage wallet,’ and ‘Penis Garage’ uncensored, while insisting on writing the C-word with three asterisks: c***.
As a self-respecting woman, I also respect my body enough to call my parts what they are. I won't dance around the subject and cutify them with words like ‘vajajay’, ‘lady business’, ‘hoo-haw’, or ‘cha-cha’ to be more subdued or befitting either. Sure, I will use the correct medical terms when the situation calls for it, such as when talking to my OBGYN.
But, any other time, I will proudly wear my cunt—not just as an act of rebellion against the patriarchy, but because it feels empowering—and, whenever I feel like it, I will refer to it as that.
If that makes me a cunt, that’s another badge I’ll wear with honor.
Faithfully, your fiery cunt,
While writing this, I found this stunning poem by Rachael Hope which I think should be appointed the official cunt manifesto. Have a read!
Further, Cunt is a Christian Word, an underground poem from the 70s about the repressed sexuality of women, and in particular, nuns, caused a huge stir and even lawsuits when it was printed. It’s GRAND!
Further reading in Cosmopolitan, Hypatia, The Establishment, and New Nationalist
