# Samantha Bee's "Feckless Cunt" comment. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 31, 2018, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214 "2018-05-31T19:08:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/1 "2018-05-31T19:08:37Z")
[Story here](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44324456). Short story: Bee called Ivanka a “Feckless cunt”. So, are Liberals hypocrites for not getting out raged like they did with Rosanne? I’m sure this will seem like weak sauce to conservatives, but personally, I regard females using the C-word much in the same way as I see Black folks using the N-word. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/2 "2018-05-31T19:16:57Z")
ISTM that nowadays, largely due to influence from British slang in which “cunt” is a more or less gender-neutral derogatory term on a par with “dick” or “asshole”, the most intensely misogynistic connotations of the term are getting blunted. “Cunt” as used in, say, the 1977 movie _Saturday Night Fever_ is indeed an exclusively female-directed insult disparaging the target’s sexual promiscuity as nastily as possible. But “cunt” as used by mainstream English-speaking comedians these days seems to mean primarily “stupid and annoying person” of whatever gender. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/3 "2018-05-31T19:17:22Z")
I wouldn’t have said it, but it’s not at Rosanne’s level of deplorable. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/4 "2018-05-31T19:19:37Z")
I’m probably in the minority as an American woman who has no problem using or (god forbid!) hearing the word “cunt”. Don’t know if Ivanka is feckless or not; does she _really_ wield that much power? Somehow it seems uglier and smaller to comment on another woman’s looks / ethnicity/ religion. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/5 "2018-05-31T19:22:05Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > So, are Liberals hypocrites for not getting out raged like they did with Rosanne? Eh, everyone’s a “hypocrite”. It’s not as though the conservatives screaming about this were calling for Roseanne to be taken off the air. It may be sexist but it’s not racist and that Bee is also a woman blunts the “Sexism!” angle. I’ve already heard people hand-wring about “What if someone said that about _Obama’s_ daughters!” apparently being too stupid to realize that (a) Ivanka is a grown woman and (b) she’s an active part of the administration with an office and title, not just a family member caught in political crossfire. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/6 "2018-05-31T19:29:18Z")
Yeah. When I see conservatives getting outraged over the many, many, many instances of right-wingers (including [at least one Republican elected official](http://newscult.com/texas-politician-calls-hillary-clinton-cunt-deletes-tweet-claims-hack/)) calling Hillary Clinton a “cunt” in various public media, I will start to take seriously their alleged objections to a female comedian’s calling Ivanka Trump a “cunt”. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/7 "2018-05-31T19:33:39Z")
Highly inappropriate language from Bee. If we want a league table, I think Barr’s racism was significantly worse than Bee’s language. Bee’s use of a misogynistic term (in U.S. usage) is somewhat diluted because of her own sex. I think if a man (in the U.S., not in the U.K.) had said it, there’d be a much bigger ruckus, and rightly so. But I think the _tu quoque_ arguments are misplaced anyway. It’s not as though a court of law is judging people for speech crimes and acting with bias. Nobody has violated Barr’s constitutional right to free speech. The question of what an employer will tolerate is up the particular employer in each case, and there is no reasonable expectation for universal consistency among all employers. If conservatives think ABC is wrong, they are free to boycott ABC, just as ABC was free to fire Barr. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/8 "2018-05-31T19:34:09Z")
Leave out the c-word; “feckless” seems spot-on and well-used in describing Ivanka IMO. And I generally don’t police what members of a group to which I don’t belong call one another. For instance, Ed Kilgore’s description of his fellow white Southerners as “Crackro-Americans” strikes me as harmless, though I wouldn’t use the term myself. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/9 "2018-05-31T19:36:09Z")
Meh. I’ll save my outrage for things I care about. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/10 "2018-05-31T19:45:27Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > ISTM that nowadays, largely due to influence from British slang in which “cunt” is a more or less gender-neutral derogatory term on a par with “dick” or “asshole”, the most intensely misogynistic connotations of the term are getting blunted. Bee is Canadian and I’m guessing that like the UK, the word is less of a powder keg there than it is in the US. I don’t think its use here is getting blunted though. Women may occasionally get a pass on grounds they have “C-word privileges” but a male who uses it is just asking to get shot, stabbed, punched, fired, or subjected to a long string of HR-mandated gender sensitivity therapy sessions. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/11 "2018-05-31T20:06:33Z")
I don’t get what the big deal is about it. It’s nothing compared to what Roseanne said. :shrugs: ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/12 "2018-05-31T20:12:41Z")
Ivanka was just in China on your country’s business. Or was she really? Oh, and while she was there she was granted over a dozen patents for her personal product line. That’s not a conflict of interest at all, right? Just a coincidence no doubt. Somehow I find feckless less accurate than the other descriptor, to be honest. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/13 "2018-05-31T20:14:08Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > I don’t think its use here is getting blunted though. Women may occasionally get a pass on grounds they have “C-word privileges” but a male who uses it is just asking to get shot, stabbed, punched, fired, or subjected to a long string of HR-mandated gender sensitivity therapy sessions. :dubious: None of those seems to have happened to Texas Republican Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller who, as I linked above, tweeted that Hillary Clinton was a “cunt”. In fact, Miller’s still going strong with the “provocative” social media posts, [having just posted a “controversial” photo of Whoopi Goldberg that he deleted after learning it was photoshopped](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas-politics/2018/05/30/sid-miller-shares-deletesdoctored-photo-whoopi-goldberg-wearing-violent-image-trump). Tell me again how [an American man using the term “cunt” for a woman is bound to be hit with horrific consequences](https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/sarah-silverman-twitter-troll-san-antonio/). ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/14 "2018-05-31T20:14:12Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > It’s not as though a court of law is judging people for speech crimes and acting with bias. Nobody has violated Barr’s constitutional right to free speech. The question of what an employer will tolerate is up the particular employer in each case, and there is no reasonable expectation for universal consistency among all employers. If conservatives think ABC is wrong, they are free to boycott ABC, just as ABC was free to fire Barr. All true. And, let’s be honest, if ABC thought that it wasn’t going to hurt them, they wouldn’t have canned their top rated show. No one at ABC was saying “Finally, a chance to fire this dirty Trump lover and cancel this show getting prime ratings!”. “Full Frontal” isn’t prime-time family programming and TBS can have very different standards without being political about it. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/15 "2018-05-31T20:16:01Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I don’t get what the big deal is about it. It’s nothing compared to what Roseanne said. > > :shrugs: Can you elaborate on this? ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/16 "2018-05-31T20:18:52Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > Can you elaborate on this? I’m not sure what you need. “Feckless Cunt” is not that bad compared to “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj”. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/17 "2018-05-31T20:20:46Z")
A person can’t help the color of their skin, so using a term of opprobrium that’s exclusive to those of that color is racist. A woman can definitely avoid being a cunt, so calling a cunt a cunt is not sexist. And yes, women get a pass for it just like other members of marginalized groups get a pass for using terms of opprobrium intended to denigrate those of that group. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/18 "2018-05-31T20:23:44Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > Can you elaborate on this? The ape comparison draws on a long history of racism including ape comparisons. It is insulting to all black people due to its history. It attacks Jarrett on the basis of her looks and heritage because Barr didn’t like her politics, despite the fact that her politics and looks have nothing to do with one another. Bee was calling Trump an asshole in extremely harsh terms but the implications don’t extend beyond Trump. You don’t think “Well, Bee must think ALL women are cunts!”. Bee was also calling Trump that as a direct attack on Trump’s job as Assistant to The President where she has failed to make any meaningful impact on the president regarding taking immigrant children away from their parents (and then apparently losing track of them). One can be insulted by both but I don’t think both are really in the same sphere. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/19 "2018-05-31T20:30:18Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I’m not sure what you need. “Feckless Cunt” is not that bad compared to “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj”. Eh, IDK, I hesitant to push back on this too much because I’m pretty much of the same opinion you are. But that’s the thing that kind of bothers me. Republicans are claiming: “See, you’re a hypocrite! you only get outraged when it’s a conservative that crosses the line!!” I’m just concerned that maybe there is a modicum of truth to that. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214/20 "2018-05-31T20:44:19Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > I’m just concerned that maybe there is a modicum of truth to that. IMO, there’s never the threat of this happening with anything modern Republicans say, do or write. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samantha-bees-feckless-cunt-comment/815214.md?page=2)