Not really, no more so than dick, tit, knob, or arsehole. There is no literal connection between the origin of the words and the use as an insult. All body part words can be used as both an insult and a term of affection.
Where is the denigration there?
Even after all these years, I still speak Army Creole and lapse into cursing much too much. I never use it in my writing.
I grew up in South Jersey. Where we were many of us used the F word like a comma. I still do a bit.
I curse, but I didn’t like it when my adolescent kids (now adults) cursed (possible resentment that I would have been killed if I cursed as a kid). The worse words my parents ever said growing up was “jerk” and the very, very rare “damn”.
I swore like a sailor out of their presence starting around 12 years old.
Conscientious people pleaser that I am, I asked my mother for blanket permission to swear when I was seven years old. And her response was “Just don’t let me hear you.” So I went on my merry way cursing up a storm, out of earshot.
I’ve never heard of “pussy” being used as a term of affection. (Or “tit” for that matter.) Looking at “pussy”, it means weak and cowardly because woman are presumed to be weak and cowardly. Whereas “dick” means driven by selfish uncaring impulses (as one driven by base desire is) and asshole means that you’re just a source of nastiness overall.
So yeah, of course there’s a literal connection between the origin of the words and the use as an insult. Insults become insults for a reason - moreso than generic swear words, which half the time just became swear words because yelling something taboo is cathartic. (The other half of the time they became swear words because they were literally invoking God’s wrath.) So without contradiction I assert that “fuck” has no literal meaning when used as a swear, but “bitch” definitely does when it’s used as an insult - and it’s misogynistic, to boot.
Well you need to get out more or use your imagination. Anything can be a term of affection.
That surely comes from the same place as “scaredy cat”. Or that someone is like a “pussycat” in that they are harmless. I’ve never attached it at all the the same word used (affectionately mostly) for the female genitals.
No, I don’t agree that anyone is literally comparing someone to genitals, if I called someone a “nosy bastard” I’m not referring to the appendage on their face nor their heritage. Sometimes words drift well past their origins. i.e. “silly bugger”. You admit as much with your comments about fuck and I assert that the same has happened with the vast majority of body-part profanity.
I get annoyed when someone tells me “don’t swear at me” when I curse about something that isn’t them in a sentence.
When I say “a fucking taxi hit my fucking car!” I’m not swearing at you.
When I say “a fucking taxi hit my fucking car you fucking fuck-head”, now I’m swearing at you.
Personal idiosyncrasy doesn’t change the regular use, origin, or meaning of the word. If I decide to start calling somebody “my little helicopter”, it doesn’t mean that ‘helicopter’ doesn’t retain the meaning of a flying machine, or that my personal creativity has caused it to lose the common connotation for the wider world.
Based on a little bit of googling, it appears that in the origin of “pussy” as a slur is a little uncertain. Pussy-meaning-vagina came from pussy-meaning-cat. (Which came from ancient germanic ‘puss’.) “Pussycat”, a descriptor meaning soft and gentle, derives from the “cat” meaning. Pussy-as-coward (the slur) came after all of this - after “pussycat” came to mean soft and gentle, and after “pussy” came to mean “female genitalia” (with the associated taboo/scandalous aspect). I’ve read at least one person who claims that pussy-as-slur derives solely from ‘pussycat’, with pussy-meaning-vagina having no impact. I find that doubtful, personally, since “pussycat” never had slur connotations.
But yes, there is indeed some uncertainty about whether and how much the ‘pussy’ slur is derived from the term for female genitalia. Now let’s see you find the same ambiguity in “dick” and “asshole”.
Of course you are, don’t be absurd. “Nosy”, in particular, has never divorced itself even slightly from the body part - it’s part and parcel with “sticking your nose in people’s business”. It’s pretty much the poster child for a word that has not been divorced from its literal meaning.
“Bastard”, on the other hand, did have some drift - being without discernible male parentage has been problematic throughout history for a number of reasons, and it didn’t take long for it to just be a difficult-to-disprove way people could slander people they didn’t like. And like how “communist” is now just a word for anyone or anything a conservative doesn’t like, ‘bastard’ got thrown around indiscriminately for so long it now just means “I think you’re a bad person”.
If enough people use a word in a particular way then that becomes the regular usage. The origin obviously can’t change but that’s irrelevant because the meaning(s) of that collection of letters has now been changed or expanded on.
And you’ve admitted as much on several occaisions. I’m just expanding that concept to apply to a wider circle of words.
I’m not arguing about where the words come from, nor what they orginally meant. Words change meaning through general usage and end up being used in ways that have no relevance to their origins.
Just today I said “you’ve been a bit of a dick there” to one of my colleagues. Affectionate and completely divorced from its original genital meaning.
Same can be done, and is done for “arsehole”.
What nonsense. when I call you nosy I’m not in the slightest referring to a part of your body. I’m referring to a set of behaviours that does not include you using your nose.
bingo! (not literally) and that is exactly the same thing that has happened to many, if not most body-part profanties. I mentioned “cunt” upthread, do you accept that when I use it it has nothing to do with female genitalia?
I accept that when you use it it means “helicopter”. Do you accept that a significant percentage of the population may not agree with you about the ‘pet meanings’ you’ve assigned to it?
I mean, you’re basically saying that I should be able to tell somebody that they’re a fucking idiot who doesn’t have the brains to find the exit door of a gazebo, and then follow that up with, “That’s just how I tell somebody I like them”, and then I should be able to reasonably expect that they utterly ignore the usual meaning of words?
I’m sure it’s sheer coincidence that men who regularly use gendered slurs are flaming misogynists.
No, even when used as a slur by me and millions like me it simply means “bad person” and is divorced from its original meaning of genitalia and in some contexts it is even further divorced from its subsequent use as a slur.
It isn’t a “pet” meaning.
Do you think that anyone who uses what you consider to be a gendered slur is sexist?
Okay, let’s slice off a bit of the vagueness:
You mean = bad person.
Word is = misogynistic as fuck.
Sort of like if you had a baseball bat and said, “That’s not a bat, that’s a walking stick. See, I’m using it as a walking stick. How can anybody possibly think it’s a baseball bat?”
You can control what you mean by a word, but not what other people hear and understand. Sure, you might have found a little enclave of people who all agree and understand that when you say “cunt” nobody is going to acknowledge that it’s a crude word for female genitalia, which only became a slur because it’s a crude word for female genitalia. And within that crowd you’ll never be called out for using a word for female genitalia as an insult.
However you’re not in that bubble right now, and I’m not going to ignore what the word means or how it came to have its current usage.
I want to be in your bubble and not the novelty bubble. You get it.
no,it isn’t like that at all.
Do you accept that there is a large population in the world that uses the word “cunt” without any mysogynistic intent at all.
If you don’t accept that, and are attempting to language-police another cultural group then I don’t think we can have a meaningful conversation.
Not every word means the same or has the same connotations always and everywhere. I’m not sure why this is a difficult concept for you.
If I were in the USA I would not use the word “cunt” because I am aware of how it is used there. In my own environment the same would not apply. Same word, different power, different meaning.
Are you saying that me using the word in my own sphere would be mysogynistic?
So you’re trying to claim n-word privileges on the word “cunt”.
Hold on, my eyes are rolling uncontrollably. Give me a moment to get that under control.
I don’t think for a single second that anybody in your sphere is unaware of what the word means. There is no "pussy’ etymological ambiguity here - It’s a word that you all know is directly based on a crude word for the female anatomy. Everybody tossing it around knows what the word means.
Yep. You’re all misogynistic, down the last one of you. Now, violently, actively misogynistic? Probably not (though I don’t know you, so maybe?) This is more of a cultural or institutional misogyny. Sort of like how racism is burned into huge swaths of american culture and law to the degree that you don’t have to be an active racist to participate; you just have to go along with the norm to perpetuate the effect. Casual use of misogynistic slurs is the equivalent of that on the gender/sex front.
what do you mean by that?
Certainly we all know how it can be used and it’s origins. That is completely secondary to how it actually used and what is meant when it is used.
Just like we all know the roots and meaning of the word “fuck” and yet can use it without it meaning to have sex. Thing is, you understand multiple meanings for that word but refuse to accept exactly the same variation for “cunt”.
I think that’s a failure of imagination and not a small amount of hypocrisy on your part.
That will come as a shock to my wife and some female acquaintences that use it with gay abandon…can I say “gay”?
Is it because it can be used to refer to a female body part that causes you such pearl-clutching incredulity?
If I were to refer to someone as a “dick” to mean they were useless and worthless (and I do) would that be equally sexist?