In this thread, specifically post #57, the claim is made that “Cunt is generally acknowledged to be the most forceful term of abuse in the English language.” To which I responded “Really?”
Honestly it seems like a fairly mild term of abuse compared to oh a huge variety of insults of hate speech: oh kike, nigger, spic, fag, a host of others all come to mind and all much worse than cunt.
So I’d really just like a poll. How many here think that “cunt” is “the most forceful term of abuse in the English language”? You are free to offer up words that you think are worse if you do not think it is.
Please note: this is notnot not the place to discuss the wisdom or silliness of any Board rules. Please feel free to discuss that in ATMB if you must. And we are not calling each other any of these names. This is just a poll for informational purposes. Maybe my lack of upset over the word cunt is unusual and most agree that is that forceful; maybe not. Either way I’d like to know. But cunt is not used to incite hate and does not often provoke a violent reaction. Call me a cunt and I’d merely be bemused. OTOH back in the my college years, many moons ago, when I was called a kike by someone twice my size surrounded by his buddies I felt I had no option other than to slug him and seriously thought I was going to die as a result but as I was being lifted off the ground merely thought - “Ah well, I had no choice.” If he had called me a cunt I’d have laughed and walked away.
I’m female, and I equate cunt with dick. It doesn’t bother me more or less. Racial epithets I find to be most offensive. I have rarely if ever used motherfucker outside of quoting movies, but I use fuck pretty frequently in many forms.
Of course, there’s a time and place to use foul language and I do believe that the harshest language is not what I deem harsh to me, but what the subject of my language deems to be harshest. You see, if you’re going to insult someone, you hit as close to the bone as you can.
I’m pretty mild-mannered and non-confrontational, however, and I can’t remember the last time I hurled names at someone.
I also vote for nigger as most offensive word. Even the racial slurs for other ethnic groups - hebe, wop, spic, mick - are thrown around in an amicable way as terms of endearment among guys who work together or are close friends. But I have never heard “nigger” used in this way, which to me is a testament to its vulgarity. I have ONLY heard that word used with the most derisive and hateful sincerity; there is no conceivable way it could be used in a friendly context.
I do remember in Full Metal Jacket, Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin) throwing around the word nigger a lot, but his closest comrade was a black Marine called “8-Ball” and he risked his life trying to save him, so maybe in situations of really extreme stress, like combat, men feel sufficiently close that they can truly break down any racial barriers and use the word “nigger” to break another guy’s balls in a genuinely endearing way. But this is a life that I know next to nothing about. I have heard from others that guys in the military toss around a lot of racial epithets in jest, but I don’t know if “nigger” is one of them.
I understand the use of “nigger” by blacks, to take away the power from what had previously been a long-time insult, but can anyone think of another word that it is alright for one group to use, but not for another?
Cunt just doesn’t register on my offensiveness scale, simply because I equate it with prick.
Nigger used to be flat out offensive to me, but when the black community uses it as a term of endearment (i.e. “my nigger”), it really washes out the original vulgarity. Maybe that’s good, but as a white male, I’m not allowed to judge either one of these words because I just don’t understand. :dubious: Because of the slavery connection to nigger here in the US, I don’t think it should be used at all. But if the black community doesn’t really care, that’s their call. I just won’t use it, but it bothers me that it has become a bit more mainstream.
Now, if women walked around saying “your my cunt” to friends, that would be similar to the urbanization/hip-hop-ization of the word “nigger”. And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
But to me, cunt is a word that women were told they should be offended by, and over the last 2-3 decades, it’s really taken hold here in America. I don’t think the rest of the english speaking world sees it as the ultimate taboo word. (OK, I have one aussie friend and he said they use it all the time.) My sample set is admittedly small, but when I was younger, I remember “bitch” being the rudest word you could say to a woman. Then, men started calling each other “bitches” and the word lost its sting.
I guess it all depends on the context of usage, too. I am offended when Oprah says something about her Va-Jay-Jay because it sounds like pee-pee. Grow up already.
Where do females stand on the word “twat”? As in “You are such a goddamn twat!” as an insult?
you’ve got to remember, we say every rude word all the time here. I’d imagine in the USA this sign, for instance, wouldn’t have lasted nearly as long as it did.
I’d say “cunt” is probaby about the top of the offensiveness list for me.
Anecdote alert:
I was working on a kibbutz about 15 years ago, with a fairly eclectic international bunch, including some Americans. At one point, one of them (female, late 20s) leans over to me at lunch and we have this conversation:
“Is ‘bloody’ a rude word in Australia?”
“Um - no, not really”
“Oh. I thought it might be like Dee Ay Em En in America”
:eek:
I’m thinking most members of this board probably aren’t the sort who feel the need to spell the word “damn” in casual conversation, but what really floored me was the thought of all the effing and blinding we Commonwealth types had been doing around her every day, and how she had possibly lasted as long as she did without going into conniptions every five minutes.
(FTR neither ‘damn’ nor ‘bloody’ pings my offense-o-meter, in case anyone was wondering.)
I remember a few years ago someone on these boards (Askia, maybe?) made the suggestion that the most offensive thing you could call a white American was “racist.” It’s an interesting idea: other than “pedophile,” I have a hard time thinking of a term I’d be more insulted by.
What? My understanding is it’s a common black guy street slang term for one another, no doubt used with considerable irony. Is that only in the movies? I see others in the thread agree.
I think “cunt” is pretty much the highest on the scale of general terms of abuse in Australia. Racial terms might have more punch for particular people but that seems a different issue.
Maybe that was the case at one time, but today, most accusations of racism use a definition so expansive it is meaningless. Once in a while you even hear someone say that all white people are inherently racist simply by virtue of their whiteness (which is hilariously racist in itself). The time when an accusation of racism conjured up images of white cops turning firehoses on black students is long past.
The best contemporary definition of racism I’ve heard is “Someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.”
I am getting the sense that cunt is bitch on steroids or more accurately what bitch was before it lost its power. That to some degree cunt used as a vulgar euphemism for vulva is one thing and is just crude, but that cunt directed at a women as a hyped up more hateful term for a bitch extreme has no male equivalent. And may very well join the hate speech pantheon in that context. Does that seem right?
Yeah, I put Cunt nowhere near the top of the list. While I was growing up it was about the same as Bitch and Twat. Then all the sudden in the mid 90’s the feminists decided they needed a nuclear offense word, because they were losing out on valuable oppression points, and pretended cunt had been like that all along.
Haha! I think this is about as accurate assessment as you can get. Actually, hell, I don’t know if it’s all that accurate, but it’s funny and accusatory of over-sensitive people to my liking.
As for twat, I can’t say it with a straight face. The sound of the word is so funny to me, I couldn’t possibly use it in anger. I especially love the word when combined with waffle and prefer to use it whenever I’m going for insulting with comic effect.
“Generation Kill” contains more like this. Let it it play thru the credits after each episode. You will hear some fascinating recordings made, it seems, in the field while the author was embedded with a company of Recon Marines. There’s one about how everyone refers to each other as “nigger”, “trailer trash” and so on, but they love each other like brothers.
