Cunt (3 page)

(wûrd) n.

a tidy little prelude

On the choice occasions popes and politicians directly refer to female genitalia,
the term “vagina” is discreetly engaged.

If you will be so kind, say “vagina” out loud a few times. Strip away the meaning
and listen solely to the phonetic sound. It resonates from the roof of your mouth.

A “vagina” could be an economy car:

“That’s right, Wanda! Come within five hundred dollars of the actual sticker price,
and you’ll win this! A brand new
Chrysler Vagina!
”

Or a rodent:

“Next on
Prairie Safari
, you’ll see a wily little silver-tailed vagina outwit a voracious pair of ospreys.”

Say “cunt” out loud, again stripping away the meaning. The word resonates from the
depths of your gut. It
sounds
like something you definitely don’t want to tangle with in a drunken brawl in a dark
alley.

A “cunt” could be a serious weather condition:

“Next on
Nightline
, an exclusive report on the devastation in Kansas when last night’s thunder cunt,
with winds exceeding 122 miles an hour, ripped through the state.”

Or a monster truck:

“The City Arena is proud to present the Coors Crush ’Em Demolition Round-Up competition,
where Randy Sam’s
Beast of Burden
will challenge Mike Price’s undefeated
Raging Cunt
in the 666 barrel jump.”

Moving from phonetics to etymology, “vagina” originates from a word meaning sheath
for a sword.

Ain’t got no vagina.

I came across the power of “cunt” quite accidentally. After writing an article for
a newspaper, I typed in “word count,” but left out the “o.” My editor laughingly pointed
out the mistake. I looked at the two words together and decided “Word Cunt” seemed
like a nice title for a woman writer. As a kind of intraoffice byline, I started typing
“Word Cunt” instead of “word count” on all my articles.

The handful of people who saw hard copies of my work reacted strongly and asked why
I chose to put these two words on my articles. After explaining my reasoning to editorial
assistants, production magis, proofreaders and receptionists, I started wondering
about the actual, decontextualized power of “cunt.”

I looked up “cunt” in Barbara G. Walker’s twenty-five-year research opus,
The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
, and found it was indeed a title, back in the day. “Cunt” is related to words from
India, China, Ireland, Rome and Egypt. Such words were either titles of respect for
women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of the names of various goddesses:

The words “bitch” and “whore” have also shared a similar fate in our language. This
seemed rather fishy to me. Three words which convey negative meanings about women,
specifically, all happen to have once had totally positive associations about women,
specifically.

Of the three, “cunt” garners the most powerful negative reaction.

How come?

This was obviously a loaded question to be asking myself, ’cause the answer evolved
into quite the life-consuming project.

According to every woman-centered historical reference I have read—from M. Esther
Harding to bell hooks—the containment of woman’s sexuality was a huge priority to
emerging patrifocal religious and economic systems.

Cunts were anathema to forefather types. Literally and metaphorically, the word and
anatomical jewel presided at the very nexus of many earlier religions which impeded
phallic power worship. In Western civilization, forefather types practiced savior-centered
religions, such as Catholicism. Springing forth from a very real, very fiscal fear
of women and our power, eventually evolving into sexual retardation and womb envy,
a philosophy and social system based on destruction was culled to thriving life. One
of the more well-documented instances of this destruction-oriented consciousness is
something called the Inquisition. It lasted for over
five hundred years.
That is how long it took the Inquisition to rend serious damage to the collective
spirit of non-savior-centered religious worshippers.

, The Inquisition justified the—usually sadistic—murder, enslavement or rape of every
woman, child and man who practiced any form of spiritual belief which did not honor
savior-centered phallic power worship.

Since the beginning of time, most cultures honored forces which were tangible, such
as the moon, earth, sun, water, birth, death and life. A spirituality which was undetectable
to any of the human senses was considered incomprehensible.

One imagines victims of the Inquisition were not hard to come by. Women who owned
anything more than the clothes on their backs and a few pots to piss in were religiously
targeted by the Inquisition because all of women’s resources and possessions became
property of the famously cuntfearing Catholic Church. Out of this, the practice of
sending “missionaries” into societies bereft of savior-centered spiritualities evolved.

Negative reactions to “cunt” resonate from a learned fear of ancient yet contemporary,
inherent yet lost, reviled yet redemptive cuntpower.

Eradicating
a tried and true, stentorian-assed word from a language is like rendering null the
Goddess Herself.

It’s impossible.

Ancient, woman-centered words and beliefs never, like,
fall off the planet.
Having long done taken on a life of their own, they—like womankind—evolve, and survive.

Chameleon style.

For women this has involved making many, many concessions, such as allowing our selves,
goddesses, priestesses and words to be defined and presented by men.

Many words found in woman-centered religions, such as cunt, bitch, whore, dog, ass,
puta, skag and hag, along with the names of just about all goddesses—over time—assimilated
bad connotations. As matrifocal lifestyles became less and less acceptable, “cunt”
survived,
necessarily
carrying a negative meaning on into the next millennium.

Words outlive people, institutions, civilizations. Words spur images, associations,
memories, inspirations and synapse pulsations. Words send off physical resonations
of thought into the nethersphere. Words hurt, soothe, inspire, demean, demand, incite,
pacify, teach, romance, pervert, unite, divide.

Words be powerful.

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults
are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground
response to almost any verbal taunt is “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but
words will never hurt me.”

I don’t beg so much as command to differ.

For young girls in this society, coming into the power we are born with is no easy
task. As children, our power is not culled out of us as it is for boys. Still, culling
power is—above and beyond all social conditioning—a very surmountable task to which
womankind collectively rises higher each day.

But we need a language.

A means of communication demands and precedes change.

I posit that we’re free to seize a word that was kidnapped and co-opted in a pain-filled,
distant past, with a ransom that cost our grandmothers’ freedom, children, traditions,
pride and land. I figure we’ve paid the ransom, but now, everybody long done forgot
“cunt” was ours in the first place.

I have lived the past couple years of my life writing a book called
Cunt.
When people ask me what I do, sometimes I bypass the whole conversation and say I’m
a taxidermist. Reactions to a book called
Cunt
always lead to an intense grilling. Ain’t never encountered ambivalence. At this
juncture, I am still absolutely unable to gauge reactions to this word.

Living with the title of this book as such a huge fixture in my day-to-day life has
been a very weird anthropological study unto itself. “Cunt” is a bad, bad word, but
damn
if it don’t
intrigue
people when it’s the title of a book instead of a meanspirited expletive.

Since everybody already knows that the diabolization of “cunt” is an absolute reality
of our language, nobody has to waste time and energy defending its honor.

A cunt by any other name is still a cunt.

“Cunt” is a highly satisfying word to utter on a regular basis.

Every girl and lady who is strong and fighting and powerful, who thrives in this world
in a way that serves her, is a rockin’, cuntlovin’ babe doing her part to goad the
post-patriarchal age into fruition.

“Cunt” is the crusty, disgusting bottle in the city dump pile that is bejewelled underneath
and has a beautiful genie inside.

Here is a nice story about the transformation of destructive negative, crap-ola into
constructive, positive brilliantiana.

Once upon a time, civil rights activist Dick Gregory went into a restaurant and ordered
some chicken. Three or four men who wore pointy white hoods for their nighttime fashion
statement presently came into the restaurant and said, (I’m paraphrasing here) “Yo,
boy. Anything y’do tah dat chicken, we’re gone do tah yoo.”

Mr. Gregory looked at the chicken on the plate before him and was silent.

The men repeated, “Anything y’do tah dat chicken, boy, we’re gone do tah yoo.”

Everybody in the restaurant stopped what they were doing and stared.

Mr. Gregory sighed, picked up the chicken and gave it a big ol’, sweet ol’ kiss.

Perhaps, as some “historians” may have it, I fabricated the historic considerations
in reassessing the way we presently perceive “cunt.”

Even if “cunt” were simply four spontaneous letters someone strung together one day
’cause his wife didn’t have dinner on the table when he got home from a hard day’s
labor offing witches or indigenous peoples, it is still
our word.
Demographically, the women who have
no chance
of negatively being called “cunts” throughout life can be found in totally cloistered
nunneries and maybe Amish communities.

Based on the criteria that “cunt” can be neither co-opted nor spin-doctored into having
a negative meaning, venerable history or not, it’s ours to do with what we want. And
thanks to the versatility and user-friendliness of the English language, “cunt” can
be used as an all new woman-centered, cuntlovin’ noun, adjective or verb.

I, personally, am in love with the idea.

(
) n.

an eentsy kit of math

If it were my job to mathematically figure out which women despise more: being called
a cunt or having one, I’d be hating life.

I’m glad that is not my job.

Instead, my job at present is to discuss some of the different ways ’n means women
learn to hate our cunts, which still isn’t the most savory task on earth, but it is
attainable.

Women comprise over 50 percent of this country. Women comprise just over 50 percent
of this planet. There’s plenty of power in numbers. If we don’t have power, it can’t
have anything to do with mass.

I conclude it must have to do with some stuff inside ourselves.

To know oneself
truly
is to love oneself. Whereas women do not learn the veritable nature of ourselves
in this culture, the likelihood that we love ourselves and/or one another is highly
suspect.

All cunts belong to
all women.

The responsibility sits between our legs.