Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
we've had discussions about the gay community reclaiming the word "queer," or the African-American community reclaiming the "N Word" or altering the word slightly to give us the new word "nigga."
now, Zoe Williams argues that feminists must do the same thing with the "C Word."
(i can't even type it).
[q]The feminist mistake
It's not the v-word that needs reclaiming, it's the c-word - the rudest one in the English language
Zoe Williams
Wednesday June 14, 2006
The Guardian
[...]
There's a problem here, isn't there, a problem which is not covered by the fact that she's American and we're not, that American feminism (now on its third wave - why haven't we got a third wave?) has different concerns, and some cool and unusual moves. It is fair to say that, wherever you are in the Englishspeaking world, the controversial word is not vagina, but cunt. More to the point, Ensler knows this, which is why the talking point of the Vagina Monologues was never its use of the word "vagina", but rather, the bit where it required of its audience that they all stood up and reclaimed the word "cunt". The reason nobody said vagina 10 years ago is the same nobody says it now, apart from doctors and, at a pinch, art critics who have already said pudenda twice in the one paragraph.
People who hate women, or find us disgusting or terrifying, do not use "vagina" casually, as an insult. People who think of themselves as post-feminists, who delight in the shock of an apparently unsisterly sound emitting from them conversationally, do not say "vagina". I got chatting to a guy the other day wearing a T-shirt that said "I heart vagina", which, I think, says it all. Not that the T-shirt was funny, particularly, but if "vagina" were in anything approaching common usage, it would have been actively unfunny. It was weird because it was unusual, and funny because it was weird. And for all her many good works, it's a disappointment that Ensler has wimped out here. Saying the word once doesn't have much impact if you thereafter eschew it in favour of something more "responsible".
A correlative would be if the gay rights movement had started out reclaiming "queer", and only claimed credit for reclaiming "homosexual". Because it's not explosively insulting, because it's formal and a bit technical, because you can imagine it appearing on a legal document and not bawled across a bar in provocation, "homosexual" would have been a polite sort of coup. The mistake feminists make, when they object to the c-word but never approach it, and never use it, is to think that it will slip discreetly out of the language. Of course it won't! It's the rudest word we've got, in the entire language. It's like thinking the secret of nuclear fission is just going to disappear. (This was a point not lost on Inga Muscio, who made a splash with her book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1797082,00.html
[/q]
thoughts?
what does it mean to reclaim a word? what is the cultural process of doing so? what else is reclaimed along with the word? is something lost? does the word lose it's power or is discourse coarsened?
thoughts?
now, Zoe Williams argues that feminists must do the same thing with the "C Word."
(i can't even type it).
[q]The feminist mistake
It's not the v-word that needs reclaiming, it's the c-word - the rudest one in the English language
Zoe Williams
Wednesday June 14, 2006
The Guardian
[...]
There's a problem here, isn't there, a problem which is not covered by the fact that she's American and we're not, that American feminism (now on its third wave - why haven't we got a third wave?) has different concerns, and some cool and unusual moves. It is fair to say that, wherever you are in the Englishspeaking world, the controversial word is not vagina, but cunt. More to the point, Ensler knows this, which is why the talking point of the Vagina Monologues was never its use of the word "vagina", but rather, the bit where it required of its audience that they all stood up and reclaimed the word "cunt". The reason nobody said vagina 10 years ago is the same nobody says it now, apart from doctors and, at a pinch, art critics who have already said pudenda twice in the one paragraph.
People who hate women, or find us disgusting or terrifying, do not use "vagina" casually, as an insult. People who think of themselves as post-feminists, who delight in the shock of an apparently unsisterly sound emitting from them conversationally, do not say "vagina". I got chatting to a guy the other day wearing a T-shirt that said "I heart vagina", which, I think, says it all. Not that the T-shirt was funny, particularly, but if "vagina" were in anything approaching common usage, it would have been actively unfunny. It was weird because it was unusual, and funny because it was weird. And for all her many good works, it's a disappointment that Ensler has wimped out here. Saying the word once doesn't have much impact if you thereafter eschew it in favour of something more "responsible".
A correlative would be if the gay rights movement had started out reclaiming "queer", and only claimed credit for reclaiming "homosexual". Because it's not explosively insulting, because it's formal and a bit technical, because you can imagine it appearing on a legal document and not bawled across a bar in provocation, "homosexual" would have been a polite sort of coup. The mistake feminists make, when they object to the c-word but never approach it, and never use it, is to think that it will slip discreetly out of the language. Of course it won't! It's the rudest word we've got, in the entire language. It's like thinking the secret of nuclear fission is just going to disappear. (This was a point not lost on Inga Muscio, who made a splash with her book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1797082,00.html
[/q]
thoughts?
what does it mean to reclaim a word? what is the cultural process of doing so? what else is reclaimed along with the word? is something lost? does the word lose it's power or is discourse coarsened?
thoughts?
