Uhhh, huh huh. He said “tool”…
Beavis & Butthead…
As many have pointed out, trying to draw equivalence between cunt and nigger is ridiculous.
If one needed to be offensive to a black woman, what’s the recommended course of action? Which one should one chose?
If one wanted to use both, what’s the right order?
They were acting like kids; got treated like kids, and responded by acting like kids.
My SO is one of these. I’ve come to the conclusion the reason it’s so offensive is that it can be so apt. Bitch just lacks the gravitas we associate with cunt.
One of my favorite lines was In the movie Stuck on You. Cher was contrite and apologizing for some previous “unreasonableness”. “I was a bitch with a capital ‘C’”. My SO never thought it was funny.
“Cunt” is indeed a good word. It has weight and feeling to it.
I think “bitch” has similar weight, but its overuse has made it seem tame. Maybe some women want to disarm their detractors? 
How about neither? “Dumbass” would seem to fill the bill without offending anyone else… I can think of many others. Shall we make a list of acceptable offensive insults? I’m fairly good at “tailor-made” insults in both “interwebz” flames and IRL. I will be happy to do the “Cyrano” bit, only insults, instead of “love poetry”, if someone will pay me for my “expertise” (heh, heh… Cyrano never got any, so why not throw a few “bombs”). The rules on vulgarity, here, are considerably weaker than the ones on boards I decided to leave, but the rules on “flames” are a bit stronger. The flames on the ones I left degenerated into nothing but spewing of “the allowed” vulgarities. No-one ever won one of those. Someone (frequently me) could always “out-obscene” you.
I, for one, welcome our new <SDMB mod> overlords. [maybe:D]
CH
BTW, I just realised, “CH” could be taken as “Cunt Hair”. “When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd”… “I can tell you about the 'Wizard of Oz, or Peter Pan [There’s a dirty old man]”…
How is neither offensive? I don’t get it. Yo mama is a neither. Nah. Doesn’t work for me.
Almost. They may have been acting like kids, got treated like kids, and now respond by acting like kids. If they were treated like adults, they may have wound up responding as adults.
And even that’s not quite it, because getting all offended by the specific words someone uses, and trying to force them not to say those words is itself a childish thing to do. It’s the same thing as the sixth grade tattler. (Or actually, a bit younger.)
Well. almost, because a sixth grade tattler would be told “Sorry, but that’s not against the rules. You need to work this out amongst yourselves.”
Dumbass
Oh, and that was my suggested alternative.
There is an issue here that I am just not getting. I have always believed that the use of the word cunt is designed to be offensive. In the Wikientry for the word, there several references to that:
I obviously recognise that a person’s upbringing, and the mores of the section of society that he frequents will condition his view of how offensive the word is and should be. But it would be disenguous to not recognise that for many people it is a deeply distasteful word. Therefore, in a mixed society, such as the SD, those who choose to use the word must surely accept that it will offend some people. The society should then decide whether the need for freedom of speech should override the sensibilities of the offendees.
There are people who have claimed in this thread that the word is not offensive. Fair enough, that’s you’re opinion, and I accept it. But I asked one poster - twice - if it is not being used offensively, what is its purpose? Both times he didn’t answer that. Can anyone educate me?
My personal observation on the use of cuss words as insults…
Men get called everything: dick, cocksucker, penishead, asshole, bastard, etc.
Women used to typically get one universal word*: bitch. Doesn’t matter what a woman did, she was a bitch.
Somewhere along the line, bitch morphed meanings. Instead of meaning a “difficult woman with extreme attitude”, it came to mean “subjugated person” - “He’s my bitch.”
When that happened, people needed a new insult for women, so cunt became the replacement word.
Pussy, while referring to the same article of genitalia, was directed at men who act weak, wimpy, cowering. Thus it wasn’t appropriate for replacing bitch.
My experience is that cunt is directed at women, not at men. Apparently YMMV.
Drain Bead said:
Bing bing bing, winner. The word isn’t applied to men, like pussy, it’s applied to women.
malkavia said:
That’s some other inherent cultural sexism. Male traits are “strong”, “bold”, “daring”; female traits are “meek”, “submissive”, “helpless”.
*Actually, that’s not entirely true. Women would get labeled for sexual promiscuity with whore or tramp or hussey, but that was for a specific kind of beef. All other situations were “bitch”.
Not when two black guys are saying it to each other.
Beautiful rant, Cheshire. People need to learn that accidentally causing offense to someone** is not only not the end of the world, but actually necessary to get all this shit straightened out.
I’m female and not offended by the word cunt. I actually like the word; it’s handy in erotic fiction. Bitch bothers me a little more, actually, because it’s a far more common insult that tends to be thrown around with little discretion. To some people, a bitch is a seriously awful/mean woman. To other people, a bitch is an assertive woman or a woman who doesn’t find their sexist jokes funny. And then there are men who casually use ‘‘bitch’’ interchangeably with ''female"–they do exist; I’ve known them.
In general, I don’t understand why people are so afraid of words. I understand why they are offended by them, but I don’t understand why they’re so afraid of them that they have to control the speech of other people.
I don’t think it’s that people are afraid of words. It is that those who control a group (I don’t know if you were specifically referring to the SD) are aware that some words are offensive to some people, and have decided to legislate on their behalf. But they won’t be able to please everyone, so they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
I love this and I can’t believe everyone else let it go…
You call the women of your family cunts and bitches and you think they’re hard to please?!
My favourite swearword is “shitstain”… when can we have a thread about that?
Suggested title:
On the use of that S (compound) word and WHY it is not an issue…
So, GD or GQ - which one should it go in then?