Because people seem to be more shocked when you say “Cotton-headed ninny- muggins” than when you say “Farty pants.” Just wondering.
I’d be much more concerned about a Flock of angry seagulls than a pack of Cocker Spaniels.
I would have to say yes, it is more shocking because it is more rarely used. And that’s a good thing IMO.
I think the F can mean so many different things that it’s less offensive (and more versatile!) F can be a verb, adjective, exclamation, etc. It can mean the action, but also be used in anger, frustration, or even as a positive - “effing awesome!” The C-word is almost always used only as a noun and in the most negative, hateful sense and only towards women. It’s always derogatory while the F is not. JMO 
I consider the C-word the worst thing you can say to me as a woman. I would be totally offended if somebody said that to me and would take it really personally. I don’t really appreciate the F-word and wouldn’t appreciate it if someone directed it at me, but I wouldn’t be as offended by it as I would the other word
Cilantro?
This is almost purely and American (and maybe Canadian?) thing. British people can say “he’s a cunt” and it’s not so gendered. Maybe it will change here. I remember when “ass” was much more verboten in the 80s.
I find fennel and cilantro equally offensive.
There was more shock value in “ass” than “cunt” 
What part of what country?
At thirtysomething, I’ve reached a level of depravity that allows me to type “cunt.” I still couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, though.
The F-bomb on the other hand has been my principle and favorite vocabulary word for over a decade.
“Cunt” is a part of any “country”.
Rosanne Cash, while performing in NYC, sang a song and then said to the audience, “Well, I guess that put the “cunt” back into country.”
Unbeknownst to her, Johnny and June were in the audience. How proud they must have been.
I’m fairly certain thelurkinghorror meant the word “ass” was more verboten in the 1980s than it is now. I know Ward Cleaver, Howard Cunningham, and Mike Brady never could have gotten away with using it like Red Forman (That 70s show premiered in 1998) did.
As said above, that must be a regional thing, whether it’s all the US and Canada or just some but it doesn’t necessarily apply elsewhere.
In Aus it’s still a step up from Fuck which is almost conversational, but doesn’t carry the same sort of impact as that.
See here video of a TV commentator referring to a footballer (AFL not soccer) in an interview as “An old cunt”, quickly correcting himself to “old campaigner” and the bloke grins, and made a joke out of it on twitter later.
Whether it's used as an insult or a term of endearment is all about tone and context.Missed the edit window.
True Confession: In the Coast Guard, we did refer to the garrison cap (aka overseas cap) as a “cunt cap” when no females were present. And when calibrating some electronic equipment, very fine adjustments were necessary if something was even a “red cunt hair”, or RCH, off.
Yes, more than it is nowadays. Back then, some parents even had a problem with “butt.” Now I hear the latter word very rarely in real life and pretty much never on TV.
That’s contractor lingo, too (“red” is optional I think). And I’d expect better from them!
Crikey!
“Offensive” is a funny word. I remember an interview with a comedian (Dara O’Briain, I think), where he said that offense is taken, not given; that really stuck with me. At any rate, I feel that (in my neck of the woods) saying “cunt” when a lady is present is ungentlemanly. There are contexts where saying “cunt” will raise eyebrows, but saying “fuck” will not.
There’s truth in that. Older Jewish people I know are still having trouble getting used to hearing gentiles throw the word “shmuk” around, and it’s because Lenny Bruce used to use it because he could get it past the censors, but it is a very terrible word among Yiddish speakers. When I was a kid, you got your mouth washed out with soap for using it.
Gentiles don’t really use it correctly, either-- they think it means “nebbish,” or “shmo,” when it really means someone truly despicable. A guy would would prepare for a date by making sure he had some rohypnol is a shmuk. People who make and use counterfeit handicapped parking placards are shmuks. People who think animal abuse (even the simulated kind in movies) is funny are shmuks. When the words was on a marquee a few years ago, I really squirmed.
That said, I agree that the c-word is much worse, because I (in the US) can’t imagine a situation other than one where the word is being used to put down a woman. The f-word is sometimes just what comes out of my mouth when I drop something on my foot.
Most people my age have been used to hearing the F-word all the time. I didn’t start hearing people start using the c-word that often till maybe the late 2000s, and because I hadn’t heard it that often it sounds more vulgar for some reason. The only times I heard it prior was in some old school movies, and even than it was rare, but it was usually directed towards a woman and I assumed it was way worse than “bitch.”
Now the word is becoming less an less offensive since it’s being thrown around like “bitch.” I think Mark Millar even had a comic magazine titled “CLiNT” to mean the curse word.