Just to let you know, in a remarkable coincidence I just this minute heard that “coarse language” is the discussion on ABC’s Radio National Interest program this evening at 6pm. Finger on the pulse, Sheep. Finger on the pulse.
Whenever I hear a man called a cunt I experience a disturbing frisson of indignation, as if my territory has been encroached upon by colonisers lacking any pretence to gender sensibility.
Please take note. A man cannot be a cunt. A man can be a prick or a dickhead but he cannot be a cunt. This is common sense. Nobody should have to be taught that only a woman can be a cunt.
On the other hand, women can’t be pricks and dickheads. This is the natural fucking order of things, people.
Now, if you have a situation in which an individual has undergone sexual reassignment you can then have a man who is a cunt, but a late-onset cunt. Likewise you can have a woman who is a late onset prick and dickhead. Simple.
In the case of non gendered people they can be cuntpricks, or prickcunts, and they can choose for themselves which sex they’ll accord priority at any given time.
Anybody can be a motherfucker provided they have a little imagination.
Why we don’t have fatherfuckers I don’t know, but it’s about time we did.
Then there’s no restrictions on cocksucker, that belongs to everybody.
I’m aware that the word cunt is regarded as more insulting than prick when applied to a man, suggesting as it does that as well as being a fucking dickhead bastard motherfucker, he has qualities society genders as female that are not considered honourable when they manifest in a human male. This is sexist bullshit and everybody needs to get over it. If we have to use our genitals to abuse one another, and it seems that we do, let’s be accurate about it.
As a woman, I think it is a little sad that men haven’t come up with an obscenity of their own to convey ultimate contempt, and have had to resort to co-opting female genitalia to do the job for them. It really doesn’t work, because everybody knows it’s stupid, and biologically impossible. I’m not generally a fan of biological essentialism but in this specific instance it fucking well matters.
Personally, I’m rather fond of the term rat fucker and I learned that from Kevin Rudd when he said at Copenhagen that the Chinese were rat fucking him on climate change. Men could take that for their own and leave cunt where it belongs. I mean, how much lower can you go than fucking rats?
No Place For Sheep 
No, am not sure blokes can’t be cunts, if the term is used in its perjorative sense, indicating bastardry.
The male sense of the word probably comes from male frustration at the acessability of the offending organ. In these terms a man can be a cunt in the sense that he is “tight”, irrational and spiteful; denies reasonable access out of capricious reasoning, can’t be approached even for or on a fair cause, is a natural killjoy.
I would roundly dispute that someone like Meredith Hellicar could not be appropriately called a right cunt of a person, quite independently of whether she actually possess one. Or an utter prick or dickhead, same as her male colleagues, also when it comes to Bernie Banton and co.
It is true that many women would feel that men can’t be called cunts, because cunts are useful. Its probably fair to say that to call a bloke a cunt is to hint at some thing intractable in the individual’s nature,something anal or witholding. There is a personality or character flawed involved, as with the thrusting heedless prick of an individual (Joyce, Abbott, Murdoch?) governed by dubious- selfish-impulses, that denote a certain lack of generosty of spirit in both examples.
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What is really interesting is how we use our genitals as the ultimate form of insult. Toe rag or even arse hat doesn’t come anywhere near genital profanity!!
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Thinking on it, if Abbott gets up and bangs on about Qantas or refugees, you’d agree you can’t really respond by just calling him a “naughty mouse’s ear”, or “silly fireman” (after Cartman), there is simply not the ambience or impact in such an alternative epithet.
Language is some thing held in common across the species, not something possessed by any one group. You surely employ the most effective means possible in indicating the intensity of a problem, if the problem is serious enough to raise an alarm. Can’t see that a person ‘s genital configuration especially matters; language is “out there”, I’m justing employing lingua franca, what’s available at the given moment. When I call someone a c-nt or a pr-ck, its not really to do with genitals but in emphasising a talking a point using genitals as a commonly understood metaphor or signifier for certain traits.
I can still beleive there is more to women, say, than them just being “cunts” (eg in a different sense to the perjorative one used against Abbott, as exclusively mobile shagging machines).
But I can’t for the life of me see why calling Tony Abbott a cunt or a prick should be of offence, per se for feminists, provided the context is there and vigorous language is an accepted part of the framework within which a given group may operate.
Surely worse if he does something egregious that’s left unreported, than reported using colourful language.
Personally I try to not to employ four letter word language in mixed company because its strength can be a force for distress in some people. If I’m to give offence, I’ll gladly cease using a word that is not effective in a situation due to resistance, right or wrong, in the beholder.
What’s probably as important as the language I use is the corroborating evidence I may have for my assertion and some sort of cohernet explanation that informs as to the mind set of the criticised individual.
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Been a while, Jennifer, but still keeping pace via RSS (O:
You and Paul both make some good points, and at the core of this is the adoption/appropriation of genitalia-specific pejoratives. Given that language, in all its forms, is an ever-evolving and rolling wave, the use (or misuse in some eyes/ears) of gender-centric interrogatives when making a point seems to me somewhat moot, given that words are often, but not always, geographically and culturally proscriptive. Meaning, the pejoratives of one culture/region mean nothing to other’s whose culture defines those terms differently, or has no reference point for those terms.
The classic (and hackneyed) example is the word ‘nigger’. It has a rich history, and varied, and is no less debated over as to who has ‘ownership’ of the term in its fair and foul usages.
At the end of the day, some will take offence at ‘the word’ – but I ask you both, why so much angst over a word that is, and always will be, a slang term for the female pudenda? It is lazy and trite in all of it’s usages, and satisfies none with its mixed heritage of use and abuse. Feminist may claim it in the same manner that Afro-insert country of diaspora claim the bastardised form of Negro, but its currency is in the milieu of the everyday, the common vernacular, slang – its domain is no different from the word cup or book or cat. Why not claim ‘quim’ or ‘gash’ or ‘bearded clam’ as well? No, it is a nonsense and a folly to expend so much energy over a term that is pejorative to begin with, and then attempt to clean it up.
As an aside, there was a wag who, back in the reign of Malcolm Fraser, quipped, “Tammy’s got one; Malcolm is one!” – I rather think that applies equally to the current Moonshiner.
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Well, I have to agree with you Tiga Bu – “it’s a nonsense and a folly to expend so much energy over a term that is pejorative to begin with and attempt to claim it back” – in theory. In practice, it might well always be slang but it’s MY slang!
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Dr. J, I think it would be fairer to say it’s everyone’s slang, but it’s definitely your pudenda 🙂
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Ha ha, well said Tiga Bu! It’s nice to have you back BTW.
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Needed to add that I use the terms ‘culture’ and ‘region’ to refer to not just the world, but even to distinguish between local cultures and regions; culture, literacy and currency all being different in some form or other, even as closely as from suburb-to-suburb, town-to-town, region-to-region.
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I think I understand Jennifer’s point, her body is healthy, is what life’s provided her with for life’s journey and she’s done her best with and against the hand she was dealt with in life.
She knows that men will apply harsh language to women in the process of the disciplining of the sexual economy, she’s taught from an early age that her “box” is “mischeivous” and its alleged inevitable failures,includingthe accomodation of desire, are put down to a failure of effort on her part in her monitoring or surveillance of herself.
Feminists suggest this is a battle women can’t win, this pressure from males often employs shaming and a resulting sense of abnegation, that encourages the “submission”, to quote the US conservative politician Michele Bachmann, of women to men, on false asumptions about moral superiority or inferiority.
Like any healthy feminist, Jennifer heartily and healthily rejects that she wears some sort of implicit mark of Cain simply on the basis of a secondary configuration of her physiology- she can read Doestoyevsky, same as and probably better than me, understands the sort of issues you’d find discussed on a Chris Uhlmann/Julia Gillard tv interview; knows why its nice to spend a day at the beach reading a good book. Knows that sex can be “good”, but on terms that allow her the choice of partner, timing and location that will allow for her fulfillment in bed, too.
As I said above, she knows she and her body are healthy and says, “well, don’t compare someone who is a mug to my body, I’m not ethically grotty like Abbott, my body is clean and useful”. She suggests that we compare a brainless, thrusting, heedless individual like Abbott to a prick, as more a more accurate analogy.
Also is the suggestion that name calling is quite useless if threapeutic at times, in political conversation, better for the understanding and avoidance of future errors, to think over an issue in detail and explain it through a more effective and considered use of language.
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Hallo Paul 🙂
I do not believe the in the ‘mark of Cain’ and nor do I see it as fitting analogy in this expression of Jennifer’s – perhaps the analogy of the sinful Eve is closer to the mark, but I see the point you are driving at.
Abbot is useful; he is a personification of what many of us don’t want, but can any of us ever truly claim to be ‘clean’? There are taints and there are taints… “Oils ain’t oils, Sully”
To use another (again, hackneyed) expression, the claiming of the term slang/pejorative ‘cunt’ as a form of self identification is akin to the “fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity” type of effort.
Really, ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will only cause permanent psychological damage’ (with apologies to Lano & Woodley), and is about as useful in this discussion as expressing the view that I get upset when someone asks me for my John Hancock.
If you choose to assign the pejorative to represent you, then, so be it; no one can force that upon you, but when you take offence at those who use its oldest form through the vernacular, I can’t really see any of the sexes has a leg to stand on.
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Oh, well said PW. “Don’t compare someone who is a mug to my body…” Yes, yes yes!
“Brainless, thrusting, heedless individual like Abbott…” is most certainly better called a prick!
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Hmmm, I don’t, errr, I don’t buy in to the binary opposition of traditional notions of gender and the worst of what each one’s respective bits get called. And so for me, the usefulness of calling Tony abbot a cunt only really comes from my understanding of him as the sort of man who might be offended by gender-related slanders – that is, it’s a more effective way of calling him an arsehole, because it’s also a challenge to his masculinity, which is something he all too obviously holds dear, but nonetheless all too obviously has a difficult, tenuous relationship with. By contrast, I imagine that if you called him a prick, he would simply smile and think to himself, “oh yes I AM!”.
I like the term “vermin” as an insult. It’s a bit more classy than rat fucker, and doesn’t carry the latter term’s implication that an element of free choice exists. Just a shame it’s not an offensive-sounding word. “Rat Scabies” is perhaps a good middle ground, but he’s a member of the Damned, so the effect is a bit, eeerr, muted.
However again, it all depends on the perception of the person you’re calling “vermin”, or even “lying rodent”. My sense is that John Howard loved being insulted, because it helped him to feel significant. Probably the reason he lasted so long was that his megalomania just got amplified with every question time.
*sigh* Better just to find a patch of ground to call your own, and shut out anyone who thinks differently from you.
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Actually no scrub that last sentence. I was just walking up to my favourite sushi shop when I heard this woman walking the other way, Aussie, late-30s, mutter “fucking Japanese nucular fish”. Ha, faith in humanity restored!
People are truly fascinating.
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Nucular? That just goes to prove people did listen to George Bush.
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re last sentence: I thought I’d done that but I was lured back into dissent and chaos.
I recall placards with pictures of Howard’s head and the word CNUT writ large cross his face.
Bunch of chunts is OK.
Somebody told me, I can’t recall who and I’m sure they would have told me not to tell anybody but as I can’t remember who it was I don’t feel bound by that injunction even though strictly speaking I probably still am…where was I ? Oh yes, somebody told me Abbott ALLEGEDLY had close same sex encounters. This may go some way to explaining his ALLEGEDLY tenuous relationship with his masculinity.
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Sent that before I’d finished. …Given that someone like Abbott probably wouldn’t consider anything ss as compatible with his notions of masculinity which I venture to suggest are entirely hegemonic. Phew.
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