in response to the OP [GASP], I agree with those who have asserted the importance of context.
I would wager that the majority of U.S. women have only heard the extremely negative and demeaning context (“Where’s my dinner you stupid cunt?!”), and are thus sensitive to it. Women who are desensitized to the word are usually those who have adopted it as a jovial slang term among friends - or would simply like to think of themselves as not offended by much of anything.
However, I’m positive that less women would be offended by hearing a women refer to her “cunt” than hearing a man call his wife a “cunt” – just as many are unoffended by Samuel L Jackson calling Ving Rhames “nigga” yet cringe when Quentin Tarantino starts going off about “dead nigger storage.”
I agree to a point that all words are just squiggles on paper, but yes, I find “cunt” offensive. I’m not even sure why. It’s just an ugly, nasty word. I say “fuck” without batting an eyelid, so I’m not trying to justify my stance here. It’s just the way I feel.
Why did “Oriental” and “Negro” become offensive when their etymology would show them to be harmless? I don’t know, but the fact remains that they did. It becomes a matter of consensus: if one crazy old man living in a trailer with a pet skunk is for some reason offended by the words “wheelbarrow”, “earlobe”, and “automated ticketing system”, that’s his problem. If a majority of society finds “nigger” and “cunt” offensive, then they are offensive. It doesn’t need to be justified.
So thinks you! But I know full well what you just said, and am very, very offended to see such language even in the Pit! I mean really, the “B” word! That’s just beyond the pale.
No one is trying to disagree with you on this point. I would point out that NOT ALL whites shouted this word “with glee.”
What several (women) have also pointed out is that they feel just as denigrated by the “c” word because of womenkind’s history of sexual oppression, abuse and inequality.
You shouldn’t interpret this as lessening the horror of the “n” word - instead, you should use it as a new insight into just how denigrated and subjugated women have felt historically. It is shared ground between you as a man of African American origin and them as a woman. One wrong does not overshadow or negate the other.
You still haven’t apologised or admitted to your error in judgement of DDG. You were wrong, and it is to your discredit that you continue to try and justifty your judgement of and attitude to her.
Being a white male, I have never been called either of these words. And to be honest, I’m not 100% sure what is meant by ‘offensive’. I cannot say that I was ‘offended’ by anything said to me. (unless ‘offended’ just means ‘angered’, which may be)
So, do I find these words personally ‘offensive’? Well, no. Unpleasant, sure. And I would always assume that the person who used those words was mean.
Will I think less of the person who uttered these words? Youbetcha. Mostly because I would think that the user (aside from being mean)was less polite and less intelligent, than someone I would like to hang around with.
Offense is subjective. Telling women they shouldn’t be offended by a particular word is like telling someone he doesn’t really have a toothache. I have used “cunt” under extreme circumstances to mean “a truly revolting human being who happens to be a woman.” Since many women apparently understand it to mean “a woman who, like all women, is a truly revolting human being,” I have not been communicating clearly. Can someone think of the word I should use? Something that means “a truly revolting human being, sex unspecified” would be OK too.
If a woman deliberately gets herself pregnant by Guy #1, tells Guy #2 it’s his baby because Guy #2 has more money, and then, when Guy #2 doesn’t stick around, proceeds to throw the now useless baby in a trash compacter, I’d like something stronger than “inappropriate.”
Sometimes it pays to judge a person by whether or not they use certain words, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Since spooje would find someone like me less intelligent than someone else simply because I’ll use the word ‘cunt’ in conversations with my friends, I suppose he’d miss out on a pretty good friend. However, it isn’t my loss if someone decides that word is the dealbreaker of friendships.
It’s hard to judge a person’s character by a single word that offends some of the population, but some people are really into judging.
Sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not. Based on 4+ decades of primarly white, middle class living it has been my experience that people who use powerfully pejorative words like “cunt” as part of casual conversation with little attention to it’s very high impact nature, are almost invariably poorly educated, poorly socialized or grew up in distressed circumstances where basic politeness and social etiquette skills were not emphasized.
Sometimes female college age students and posturing social philosophers enjoy using these words to shock their parents or make some tired statement about the relativism of language, but oddly when they start raising young kids of their own somehow this laissez-faire attitude toward language often goes right out the window.
What a shocker that I am not of either type of person you describe.
I’m an already-educated professional who grew up in a house where social etiquette was thought very important. I just don’t see that word as inherently bad and likely never will.
Oh boy, here we go again. I didn’t say all, read what I wrote, my statement refers to those whites attending and in approval of the “festivities”.
Note that what I, and others, including the original OP where trying to find out was why this is so, as opposed to, it just is, is it wrong to want some additional information?
I look at it differently, as a protected class yes they’re are and were subjugatged because they’re held up as prize possessions, and because of that, they(white women) do possess a certain kind of power that women of color don’t and power that got men of color killed because they just looked at them “funny”. But I digress, it still doesn’t explain what the deal with “cunt” is.
No apology is required nor any admission of error. I reserve and will excercise the right to question the intentions of those throwing the “n” word around or in this case claiming that a peach is a piece of coal. In my mind and in the mind of those that run the board it clearly is not.
Regardless of the fact that you don’t feel offended by this word, or any other for this matter, do you use this word to convey praise or to compliment people OUTSIDE your circle of friends? Regardless of the fact that you don’t feel offended by this word,or any other for this matter, have people OTHER THAN YOUR FRIENDS taken it as a compliment when you have used it when referring to them?
In my country people don’t use the word “negro” when describing people. It has racist connotation*. I don’t know why, in Spanish negro = black, the colour black. It is just a simple word, with no more etymological moral charge (WTF?) than words such as blanco (white), rojo (red) or violeta. How has people in this community arrived to the conclusion that negro = insult, I don’t know. It should be the logical word and preferred way to describe people of dark skin. I find people’s reaction mindboggling, but the end result is there. However you can call people moreno (dark-skinned) without them batting an eyelid, so go figure.
The thing is that although I am flabbergasted at the social connotation of that the word negro has acquired in my country, and the fact that when referring to myself I call myself negra and I don’t see offense in someone calling me that, I have to recognize that my sensitivity (or lack thereof) is not shared by most of my fellow citizens, therefore I have to adjust my vocabulary in order not to offend people, even if it makes no sense to me.
I think we have a valid comparison here. YMMV.
*[sup][sub]I have to admit that my country is a society in which race is not seen in the same way as in the US. Comparing the two would be unfair to both countries. I am not talking about race here, I am talking about words.[/sub][/sup]
No one sees any word as inherently bad, with the possible exception of a few of the weirder linguists still hanging onto strong linguistic determinism. I don’t know why you have such difficulty grasping this, or why you want to continue participating in a discussion on language when you clearly have a subnormal comprehension of the way language works, but if you want to continue making yourself look ignorant please continue insisting that obscenities aren’t “inherently” bad so there’s no reason to be bothered by them.
Lamia, what I’m talking about are the comments from some posters in which the main idea was that the word ‘cunt’ itself, absent any kind of context at all, offends them.
When asked ‘Why is it offensive?’ the answer has been given many times that ‘I don’t know; it just is.’
That to me sounds like people are asserting that the word itself is inherently bad. The entire point of contention is why that word is seen as offensive, because even those who are offended by it continue to say nothing more specific than ‘Well it has historically offended people.’
My question is still why it does. When and how did the word ‘cunt’ become so much more awful than dick or pussy or asshole?
EasyPhil - you are the only person differentiating between black women and white women in this thread. As far as everyone else is concerned, women-in-general have been oppressed. It is the issue of womenhood/the “c” word that is being discussed.
Of course, if women are subjugated, and black people are subjugated, it may well be that black women are the most subjugated of all.
And frankly, to continue your assertion that DDG or anyone has been “throwing the n word around” is cretinous.
istara, I and others are waiting for someone to come along and explain why this word is the mother-of-all insults to women. Is it too much to ask for something more than, “it just is”??? I mean, is that too much fucking to ask? Does anyone even know? Hello? HELLO??? Is this thing even fucking on?
Not only “some posters” but obviously a fairly large segment of the population, male and female, think that this word is offensive. Check your dictionary.
We have explained ad nauseam that society agrees on the meaning of words. Why this specific combination of letters was chosen to mean what it means is unknown to me. IT JUST IS. Maybe the word “spaguetti” would have made a better job. Maybe if you and I start calling well-known disreputable women “spaguetti” soon people will catch up and in 10 years we’ll have a “Why is Spaguetti an Offensive Word” thread. I suspect that’s how words come about their meaning.
It is offensive cause my mom said so. And then I rarely ever saw it used as anythign but an insult. Society just agreed on that, why? Obviously a word was needed to convey the exact same meaning that “cunt” does. It could have been “windowsill” or “knuckles”, but it wasn’t.
How interesting that a female can use the word and it is perfectly acceptable, just as a person of color can use certain words, all of them off limits to caucasian males. Does that not form the basis for a sort of reverse discrimination?
As a lover of words, and also my fellow man/woman, I’ve come to know many women that I’d never apply that term to, and some for whom the moniker was all too appropriate. In the same vein, I have black friends and business associates who are well respected, deservedly so, and then there are those to whom I would refer using the nasty pejorative term.
Every race and religion seems to have come up with words to describe their own members, and others, some of those terms being offensive. Rather than accepting this as an evolution of speech, the PC Nazis (see-my own insertion) would have us cleanse our speech with double bleachings such that no evil pass our lips to any one, or any thing, at any time. If we accept that notion, I’m at a loss to understand how we will communicate.
Compare language to a well stocked multi-cultural supermarket: if every group gets a chance to remove what they don’t like, the shelves will be laid bare and we’ll all starve.
There is no such thing as a word in the absence of any kind of context. Words cannot exist outside of some sort of social context. If I happened to find a piece of paper with nothing but the word “cunt” written on it then that would be about as close as I could ever come to encountering the word absent any kind of context. And you know what? I’d still feel a bit icky, because even in this case there’s a context – my understanding of the word, how it is used, and what it means. I would think “Someone wrote this word down because they wanted to be vulgar or insult someone.” I might be wrong about that, but as that could only be because of factors I was unaware of relating to the original writing of the word then it would not be a part of the context of my encountering the word.
The only way I could encounter a word absent any kind of context at all would be if I did not have any idea what the word meant – and in that case, it wouldn’t be a word to me. It would just be a nonsense string of letters like “sdakggasg”.
Then you misunderstand what the word “inherently” means. An inherent quality is one that exists in the very nature of a thing. If a word were inherently bad then it would be the word in and of itself – the actual combination of letters or phonemes – that was bad. Have you seen anyone here claim that the word “cunt” is offensive because there is some special quality of that particular combination of letters/phonemes that makes it so? No. So no one has asserted that the word is inherently bad.
No, they have said they are offended by the word because it is a word that is commonly and currently used as an insult, or at least a vulgarity, and is virtually never used with any other intent. If “cunt” were commonly used to mean “a very nice, intelligent, and attractive woman” do you think people would still be saying they were offended by it? No, and that’s because (once again) the word is not inherently offensive. It has no inherent meaning at all. It is offensive because it is commonly used in an offensive way. Even when it is used humorously, as you say is common among your friends, the humor is a result of the usual expected offensiveness of the word.
In English, as in many languages, names for the genitals or words relating to sex are often considered obscene. Referring to a person as a particular body part is also considered at best mildly insulting (even in cases like, “Hey Brain, what’s the answer to this question?”), as it is reducing a complex human being to a mere thing. Combining these two is of course even more insulting. But as to why any of this is, or why “You cunt!” is worse than “You pussy!” the only reason is that that is the way the word is used and that is the way people understand it.
I don’t know what other kind of explanation you expect to get here. Words have meaning because of the way they are used. Human society is the context of language. It is possible to imagine a society where “cunt” has a positive or neutral meaning, but we don’t live in that society. There’s no point in arguing about this. It’s like saying “I don’t see why ‘red’ should mean this color: :mad: . There’s no inherent reason why it should, and whenever I ask people they just say it’s what the word has historically meant and how it is used today!” If words did not have commonly accepted meanings we would be unable to communicate.
When? The early 18th century, if memory serves. How? Beats me. I doubt anyone bothered to write down an explanation at the time. Does it make any difference how it happened? Would knowing how it happened change anything for anyone? The origins of words and the way their usage changes over time is a fascinating academic subject, but it is of little practical value when it comes to understanding the way people commonly speak today. People use the word “cunt” as an insult with no knowledge of the history of the word, so understanding that history is not going to provide much insight into why such people use the word as they do.
