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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?

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From:

condign.livejournal.com

In which case, the debate has boiled down to disagreement over three facts subject to empirical verification, which means we only need to test them:

a) Is 'cunt' a more emotively-loaded word than 'cock' or 'prick'? I would still maintain that it isn't, or that certainly it's something that varies by location. But I'm certain there's some way to verify this, and break down the results by location.

b) We can then move further to test whether this is the kind of thing that, in general, is holding women back. (True, it may hold back an individual woman, but that does not require the neutering of an entire word.) We simply find some proxy or proxies we like for discrimination (gender gap in pay rates, or whatever) and verify those by location, and see if there's any correlation.

I'm almost tempted to write for the grant application to the National Insitute for the Humanities. :) Of course, there's always (c) 'Do northern Americans have an extreme dislike of unleavened snack foods?' which needs investigating as well...

From:

cardinalsin.livejournal.com

You're right, this is something which we can entirely subject to scientific validation and is not at all about how individual people think and feel.

From:

condign.livejournal.com

Admittedly, my tongue was somewhat in its cheek, but I was pointing out that there have been several assertions on both sides as to what particular insults and curse words mean, and the strength that they have, both individually and relative to one another. There has to be some way to verify that, or they're just particularly raw assertions.

But tongue-in-cheek though it may have been, 'reclaiming a word' from being a swear word is a social act that requires social concensus, my dear Cardinal--in which case if we are to discuss whether it's appropriate, we're talking about the feelings of many people, not just individuals. I'd think that would make it a proper subject for socialogical examination?

From:

cardinalsin.livejournal.com

I agree that this is to some extent a social exercise (I do in fact think that a person can meaningfully be said to "reclaim" a word on their own, and that this might have benefits for them which do not require reference to the rest of society).

I certainly think this sort of thing could be meaningfully examined by sociologists (is that is what you meant).

I don't think these two facts are related, in this context. If people's misappropriation of the word "cunt" does in fact damage the image of women in society, both in the eyes of men and in the eyes of women themselves, it would be extremely difficult to prove in a satisfactory manner. The sort of conclusions we are likely to reach through sociological examintion are "a significant proportion of women feel the casual use of the word 'cunt' is offensive", "some women who find themselves unable to cope with their sexuality blame the casual usage of 'cunt'". We aren't likely to be able to say "in general, women's rights and status in society are threatened by casual usage of 'cunt'".

Without wishing to get melodramatic, I think this last proposition is true. I don't think changing the way we use this word is likely to have major effects. Nor do I think that it is to blame, in anything more than a very small way. But then, I'm sure a single advertising billboard for cigarettes has very little individual contribution to the problem of youth smoking. I'd still object to one being put up in my town, and I'm still pleased they have been banned.

For the most part I think this sort of action (word reclamation) is a positive thing, certainly not something to be frowned upon. I don't think it will have world shattering effects, but that isn't the point.

From:

venta.livejournal.com

Just to seize on a completely irrelevant point...

I'd still object to one being put up in my town, and I'm still pleased they have been banned.

Have they been banned? I missed that.

I remember advertising tobacco on TV became illegal when I was about 7, but there were billboards about quite recently (weren't there?)

From:

cardinalsin.livejournal.com

Yeah, they have. I'm not sure when the law comes into effect though.

Apparently the Lambert and Butler billboards did some kind of "They're banning us sir" "well fuck them, butler" type routine. Which would no doubt be funny if I could remember it properly :)

From:

cardinalsin.livejournal.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/371407.stm says they were banned from July 2001. I am now beginning to feel confused, since I am sure it didn't actually happen until quite recently and hasn't been put into full effect.

:/