venta | Parental Advisory

You're viewing

venta's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

Does anyone know anything about The Vagina Monologues ?

I'd been told, by people who I'd regard as reliable, that they were extremely funny. Last night, I accidentally found a performance on the telly. The 2 minutes I watched seemed to consist entirely of a woman explaining how she'd "reclaimed" the word cunt, and then repeatedly saying it in different silly voices.

Which the audience seemed to find hilarious. Which I found incomprehensible. It's not like I found it offensive, it just... wasn't funny.

[One Notional Kudos Point to anyone who realises why I suddenly remembered about this :) ]

Current Music: Anti-Nowhere League - So What?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

condign.livejournal.com

The idea being that 'cunt' is an obscene word in a way that none of the slang terms for a penis are, and as such somehow denigrates females. Thus people (women in particular) should use the word in a non-pegorative sense, not be scared of it, let it regain it literal meaning, and general rejoice in the empowering femininity of it all.

I was being sarcastic as to not knowing what the idea of reclaiming a word is. But the concept is both silly and in this case self-evidently wrong. If you'd like to prove that, I suggest the following experiment.

a) Find human lab rat. [Insert lawyer joke here]
b) Take said lab rat to pub across from my apartment, and pick a suitably burly local.
c) Instruct said lab rat to call said local a 'cock', 'dick', 'dickhead', or (if we can go for actions involving same, 'wanker' etc. etc.). I believe we will see observably similar results as if he'd said, 'cunt.' (I'd also recommend a 'double-blind' trial, in that both the lab rat and the local should be 'blind' to the fact we set it up.)

But no one's going around asking for the 'Penis Monologues' or trying to 'reclaim' the word 'cock.' And if they tried, it would be silly. It's a word that causes offense, and is used because it's offensive, not because it's actually related any more to the literal meaning of the word. Sorry for the rant, but really, is 'cunt' a word that anyone really wants back?

From:

venta.livejournal.com

Instruct said lab rat to call said local a 'cock', 'dick', 'dickhead', or (if we can go for actions involving same, 'wanker' etc. etc.). I believe we will see observably similar results as if he'd said, 'cunt.'

Well, obviously we'd need a lab rat to test this, but I think you're wrong. In many people's eyes, cunt is a much more offensive word.

I know a number of people who object if you say 'cunt' in their hearing, and who will actively ask/tell people not to say it. I've never heard this for any of your other examples.

Of course, this may be irrelevant to the original meaning. Must look in my dictionary of slang when I get home - the entry for cunt has a long section on why it's seen as extra-offensive. As far as I can remember, it's something to do with an early dictionary-maker refusing to include it, when he did include other swear words.

From:

jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com

I was always amused by the report on Channel 4 News about the reports of which words were believed to cause most offence. Can't remember the order, but the top three were cunt, fuck and motherfucker. The report had a remarkably fine balancing act to straddle neutrally-reported science, coyness and self-parody. (I'm pretty sure I've seen the ordered list somewhere on The Register.)

I think I can remember the report having been produced in both 1998 and 2000, so hopefully there was one last year as well. Smutty thrills for when you're in the mood!

From:

jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com

Easy to find, really - just Google for register cunt fuck motherfucker and it's there as result #7 below only a couple of porn site links and George Carlin's "seven dirty words" routine.

Will look into this and try to see whether there have been any changes between 2000 and 2002. Academic interest, natch. Sort of.