Cunt |
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Perhaps the last word to retain any degree of real scandal when used in `polite company', `cunt,' traditionally a derogatory term for a vagina, is a real dirty word. What is most powerful about it is that it has not lost it's effect as a incantory transformer - to call someone a cunt is to mutate the subject into one. It is, in the true sense, a naming word in the way that `fuck' is not. |
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Etymology.
Cunt is a historical word that originally sprang from the evocation of a cave, the `cunta' which conotated wisdom. The word starts to get it's current usage in the 17th and 18th centuries. Several poems are extant from this time which show it's clear use as a modifier rather than a namer, part of the possible series of usages that cascade from vagina, and specifically used in relation to a vagina that is sexually aroused. That this becomes a derogatory word from here can only be attributed to a deep masculine horror. |
`Cunt"
(1879 Anon. First 4 lines)
"Cunt is a greedy, unsatisfied glutton, |
Rearticulation?
When will cunt find it's bracket of common usage in that way that `bitch' has? Maybe when post-feminism pushes further out into bad girl territory, and it can be used as a word which adheres to the process of identity creation, like current usage of `bitch' and `slut', rather than being derogatory. It is this process of rearticulation that is more important to this essay as a whole, the way a word, or self, slides around through it's definition and usages... |
Interestingly, cunt is a much easier word to use in Australia than in New Zealand. Are Aussies more `advanced'? |
Words; slippage and rearticulation of their meanings... |
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