It's amazes me how a few whiny women keep one swearword out of thousands out of the mainstream enough so it can't retain it's power. If cunt could be used as frequently as fuck without infuriating .002% of super-uptight, stick-up-the-cunt women, we'd be hearing it 60 times in a South Park episode and no one over the age of 10 would be laughing, as usual.

Keep keeping cunts cunty, cunt-offended morally upstanding, supposedly leftist, supposedly feminist cunt-gargling cuntosaur of a commenter!

Sometimes the internet really makes me sad. Cunt really shouldn't be used as an insult. Cunts are pretty cool in general, I'm sure all of us who indulge in them can agree on that. It and "pussy" are the only two words that encompass the entirety of a woman's genitalia. And yet when we call someone a cunt or a pussy we mean it in such a demeaning way. It's really not cool that one of the two words for everything that women have got going on down below is used with such vitriol. And while I'm loathe to get involved in this thread because a lot of you peeps seem to think that women should just get over it, it still just doesn't seem right.

@101 It's not about keeping it out of the mainstream so it can't retain its power. It's about reclaiming the meaning of the word from an insult to its real definition. Besides which, I think that's a flawed argument. "Nigger" is in the mainstream and it's still powerful.

So did Inga write this?

@103 Yeah, because calling someone a dick, prick, cock or penis is such a positive thing. You write like it is ONLY women's genitalia that gets a bad rap.

You also forgot twat.

Look at this. He didn't need to defend himself because he knew regular readers would. *That* is what makes this weird. I don't know if he hates women or not. Using "cunt" isn't proof either way, but I'm not going to jump in and defend him, because that's something he can do himself.

Oh, calm the fuck down. It's a word. Dan's long history of advice columns show compassion towards women; as someone who's worked with domestic violence victims (of both genders, but mainly women), I've read his advice in those situations and thought he was spot-on. The woman he's describing is, indeed, a cunt.

Rhymeswithlibrarian: My apologies (belated, due to sleep), but I thought you wrote the letter to Dan (because of the whole saying you were a sophomore thing). I was wrong and hence my advice was unnecessary (although I still think the actual letter writer should heed it). Parentheses!

cunt is the original anglo-saxon word for vagina. The french took over, made french the prestige language, and all the germanic words took on a dirty characteristic. Why is this whiny bitch ruining linguistic equality with her cunt-o-phobia?? OH THE HUMANITY!

I've been reading Dan for a long time, long enough to know that he is most definitely not a misogynist, and is in fact a huge supporter of women. He just has certain blind spots I really wish he were willing to challenge more. And, yes, he has every right to be angry as fuck at that woman. That said, using cunt as an insult is demeaning to women as a group, not just the target, no matter how gleeful this thread gets in splashing around in it. In other words: what rhymeswithlibrarian said. This thread is fucking depressing.

Irish people throw the word "cunt" around like other people say "shit." It's all in the context.

@Women's Studies Question (#7 first post): Freshman, or freshman-level feminist consciousness (nothing beyond); by sophomore to junior year, we discuss things like postmodern feminism and queer theory, where we start to really dissect HOW language and other symbol systems operate, not just THAT there are hate words for women with long, storied histories. This is part of why feminism and women's studies continue to have bad reputations: someone reads one or two Lesbian Separatist books from the Seventies, adopts the label "feminist", and starts running around repeating theoretical perspectives that were discredited (though still very valuable in terms of developing contemporary feminist theory) twenty years ago (there are plenty of other reasons of course, having to do with privileged groups feeling threatened and even unprivileged groups feeling trepidation as disrupting the status quo). This excellent xkcd comic illustrates the universalization of "bad" characteristics for the a marked group very nicely. In this case, the "Women's Studies" comments serve only to universalize THIS particular person's view to all of Women's Studies, which reinforces institutional norms far more than Dan's comment by mocking and marginalizing an academic discipline that challenges the extant interlocking systems of oppression in our society. Shame on you. :-)

As for Dan's use of "cunt": I think it's perfectly appropriate. Part of the issue may be a perspective bias: the gay-male community has done a better job of reappropriating "fag" and "faggot" than the women who are trying to reappropriate "cunt" have done, or even black people trying to reappropriate "nigger" (a word is only successfully reappropriated when it's not longer "our word", when anyone can use it acceptably without venom e.g. Yankee, queer). It's only by TREATING THE USE OF THE WORD AS COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE that one can actually disempower it; by reacting negatively, one only further perpetuates the notion that the word is a powerful hate word in every instance. Didn't you all read Harry Potter? The whole thing with Voldemort's name is the same deal; it's all about disempowering the name by using it and reacting to its use in a way consistent with its disempowerment.

Language is ENTIRELY contextual; words have no intrinsic meaning. Dan's deployment of "cunt" here isn't serving to rebuke a women for stepping out of her socio-normative role or to further misogyny. It's serving to rebuke a woman who's trying to force sex-and-gender norms on others; it's a subversive use, deploying "the oppressor's" language to malign a woman complicit with the ongoing oppression women and gays (at the vary least). There are enough instances of actual sexism perpetuated by actual bigots that it's not necessary or even advisable to run around reading sexism into innocuous or even anti-sexist subversive comments.

That said, cut the letter-writer SOME slack. Calling HIR (lots of assumptions that sie is a woman; sie gives no indication of hir gender) a cunt IS inappropriate. Sie may be uninformed and hir comments may lack a certain critical reflection, but that alone doesn't make hir a cunt. If Dan's use wasn't sexist, a lot (not all) of the cunt-calling here is. Sie may have a (or several) specific traumatic experience that's associated with being called a cunt. I know two gay men who will never be comfortable with the word "faggot", no matter who's saying it, because they associate it with the times they were beaten by violent homophobes. Of course, sie starts to undermine a sympathetic position with the last sentence when sie describes what "A real man" would do, invoking gender-normative language to coerce Dan's behavior. One loses credibility if one does the exact thing one is criticizing in one's criticism, especially after claiming that one isn't going to stoop to that level: "If I really wanted to call you a sicko (I don't; and you can substitute any other hate word for gay) right now..."

@21: "Dick", "prick", "cock", etc. don't have the same histories of hatred/oppression, so they're not really the same thing. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc. are problematic because they're institutionalized; a lone bigot can be ignored, but e.g. sexism as part of one's social context cannot be avoided. That's why people flip out over "nigger" but not "cracker"; there really is no such thing as hate speech to describe privileged groups because privileged groups don't feel threatened by the use of hate words without the institutional framework to back them up.

@49: I lose hope for humanity whenever I hear "va-jay-jay"; what the fuck am I, six? Are YOU, person who is saying "va-jay-jay," six? Why are we discussing your vagina if one of us is six? Were there not enough euphemisms already that we needed another one with the same number of syllables as "vagina" and the syllabic duplication characteristic of toddlers?

@78: There's a difference between calling something that you don't like "gay" (the implication being that gay is bad) and calling Rebecca Hagelin a cunt (the implication being that her only value is as a sex-object): Rebecca Hagelin's only value IS as a sex-object because she's a hateful, gender-norm-pushing, anti-freedom bigot. It's subversive, not misogynistic. It's like saying a boring gay pride parade is "totally gay" - one is calling attention to the absurdity of the deployment of "gay" to mean bad by calling something that is bad AND ALSO ACTUALLY GAY "gay". It's like Chris Rock's sketch making the distinction between black people and niggers (or the very similar speech given by the Martin Luther King Jr. character in an episode of The Boondocks), because the people they're calling "niggers" ARE niggers (lazy, entitled, disrespectful, ignorant people with dark skin who are buying into and actively complicit in perpetuating a slave-caste ideology that they can't be anything else). Language is contextual and has no intrinsic meaning: this particular piece of writing ISN'T disrespectful to WOMEN, it's disrespectful to a PARTICULAR WOMAN who strongly deserves our disrespect.

You don't have to be a racist to use racist language.

You can not hate women and still use misogynist language.

Fauxgressives. Use your heads FFS.

@104 Yeah, and men have had such a long history of oppression.

You're right, I did forget twat.

Dan doesn't need to defend himself against idiots. Anyone who read his column over the years should know better than to think he hates women. I wonder, is the letter writer against strong words in general? Hatred and hate speech isn't at all about using strong language... hope she figures this one out sooner or later.

@55 for the win.

One of these days I need to get off my ass and start watching South Park.

I do think there's a fine line here. In American English we do have some words that describe people as a class that are off limits. You lose your job if you use the 'n-word,' 'f-word,' even 'r-word,' but the c-word isn't among them. Why? Is it that Shakespeare makes it OK?

I think there's a difference between saying you'd like to call a woman a cunt and saying that all women are cunts. Saying that you think one woman is a cunt doesn't make you a misogynist. It means you have extreme dislike for that person's conduct. Saying all women are cunts would indicate a general dislike for all women, and therefore lead one correctly to infer misogynistic tendencies in the speaker.

Conflating the two due to your sensitivity to a word means you're overreactive and unnecessarily sensitive, in my opinion. In my opinion, 'cunt' is just an insulting adjective describing character based on behavior. Disallowing it in this context makes me wonder if insulting any woman in any way for her conduct is ever acceptable, or if any such critique is always a symptom of hatred for women as a class. Basically, are all women beyond reproach?

It's not okay to use the word cunt to describe a woman, even if that woman happens to be a terrible person (especially if that woman happens to be a terrible person). If Rebecca Hagelin were a black person instead, would the poll have read, "Is it okay to call this person a [n-word]?" No. Or at least, I hope not.

You know that feeling white folk get about the n-word; how most of us blush when we even read that word in a Mark Twain story? We should feel the same innate wrongness about calling a woman bitch or cunt or slut or whore, etc.

I mean, if Dan Savage had to ask (tongue-in-cheek or not) in a pole if it was okay to call Rebecca Hagelin a cunt, clearly it's not just a throw-away word. There's a message in calling a woman a cunt. It reduces her to a body part.

Furthermore, I love my cunt. I don't want my cunt or other women's cunts to be associated with a homophobe. Leave the cunts out of this. There are so many more useful and creative derogatory modifiers.

I had no idea this thread would go on so long. So I'm gonna add some fuel to the fire and post the link to two VERY NOT SAFE FOR WORK videos about the use of the cunt word. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBWAjn2a3…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaUfBSFq4…

Warning, NSFW

Wow, I didn't know people were still that offended by the word cunt! Cunt cunt cunt cunt, I say it all the time! Why not, I have one!! and I can totally BE one! When I was in my Womens Studies class I was the only person who wasn't outrageously offended by using the word cunt...I thought it was because I lived in Wyoming but apparently I was wrong! Even people in the big ole city hate the word, it's a WORD, get over it. My favorite usage is "cock-juggling thunder cunt" but that's just me

@113 Your original argument has no basis in your new argument.

Argument 1: Why are all the words for women's genitalia also derogatory names? Haven't women been liberated enough to avoid this?
Rebuttal: It's not exclusive to women.
Argument 2: Yeah, but only women have been oppressed.

This isn't a valid supporter of argument 1. If you want to play the "women should be liberated" card, then realize that men also call each other by derogatory names derived from their units. If you want to play the "women are oppressed" card, then we agree that your genitalia should only be positive glowing orifaces of life and shining light...as long as you stay in the kitchen, bear us crotchfruit, and STFU.

As I continue to think on this, I keep coming back to the question of whether a word is an epithet, or a gendered adjective.

In my experience, bitch, slut, whore, and cunt (as well as asshole, dick, sonofabitch) are gendered adjectives describing behavior. A woman who's offensive is a cunt, a woman who's argumentative or annoying is a bitch, etc. The speaker does not mean that the woman is literally a vagina, literally a female dog, or even merely female. They are referring to behavior.

However, offensive adjectives that describe people as a class are Nigger, Chink, Kyke, and so forth. I'd include bitch and freak in this list because I hear them in hip-hop music referring to women as a class. I find all to be offensive because they group people as a class into a negative stereotype.

And I think this epithet vs. adjective theory is strengthened by my personal experience with epithets, as well. I've never heard anyone describe a Chinese person as a chink as a way to describe behavior. He didn't act 'chinky.' I've never heard of anyone being 'a complete nigger.' What would that even mean? But I do hear of a guy being 'such a dick,' or a woman being the 'cuntiest bitch whore I've ever known' because that person's conduct was egregiously offensive.

Excuse me, Dan DOES have plenty of compassion. But that woman he called the c word is on a mission to make life miserable for gay boys AND GIRLS. So STFU.

I see only one hatemonger here, and it's not Dan.

The thing about terms like dick, cunt, asshole, cock, whore, etc... is that their sex- and body-hating, not really woman or man hating.

Now bitch is woman hating because it implies femininity as evil. Pussy is woman-hating because it implies femininity as a cowardice.

When people attempt to make 'reasonable' arguments as to why gay people don't deserve to have their humanity recognized you cannot reason with them. They do not care that their arguments hold no water. I think it's evil, immoral and just plain heartless the way the right wing can calmly discuss the reasons couples like Dan & Terry are not a family or they can tell children to stop being gay and we'll stop picking on you. While I personally think name calling is childish sometimes it's all ya got to vent your frustration. A little civil discussion would be nice but these people use the 'baffle 'em with bullshit' mode of communication & banging your head against the desk sometimes doesn't cut it.

With regard to Dan not liking or respecting women. Please! He's one of the most compassionate people around. Not that fake compassion where everyone's a victim. Nope. Dan deals in the real thing.

Dear Rebecca Hagelin,

Dan says you're a cunt... you're a cunt... cunt... cunt... Continuing source of inspiration to assholes.

Now do we all feel better?

Arguing strongly use the word 'cunt' when you know it's offensive to many people doesn't make you evil or even a dick or an asshole. But it does make you a douche.

As a woman, I think its stupid that people take more offense at the word "cunt" than its widespread equivalent "dick".

This letter is totally gay.

Ok. What about "twat"?

So it's sometimes ok to call a woman a cunt, but never ok to call a black person a nigger (unless you're also black). Why is this?

I have that book but only got about halfway through because it seems that the author thinks that cunt vs. cock is a zero-sum game. Can't we celebrate both?

Personally I call women 'dicks' or 'douche bags' and men 'cunts or bitches' when they're being awful. It's no effort at all and it feels good. I think this annoys a lot of people, but I don't care, because I'm a huge dick sometimes.

I especially enjoy the look on a man's face, when I calmly tell him to "stop being such a little bitch," if he's acting sexist.

I'm not comfortable using racial/religious slurs, unless they are originally meant to apply to a group I'm in, nor 'faggot' as an insult.

I do not know if there is any sense behind this or not. But it feels right to me.

Ooh, ooh! Can I get a pat on the head too? C'mon hetero-normative culture that privileges guys before gals! If I, a woman, say cunt all the time, that totally makes it fine and dandy! I cancel out all other women, so don't listen to them! Woohoo! Ow-ow! Let's all go throw money at strippers and call people we think are weak "girls"! Then lets make tons of jokes about rape! None of this adds to a culture that devalues women! None of it! Aw, yeah! Bring it! CUNT! WHORE! BITCH! PUSSY! LIL CUNTWHOREBITCH PUSSYBITCH! And if you don't like it, you don't deserve to be on the internet!*

*seriously, someone upthread (or maybe in the other cunt thread) said this shit in response to someone whose argument they didn't like.

I'm a long time fan of Dan Savage, and in my community - the biggest feminist I know.
Dan is one of my heroes, and I have been increasingly impressed by his ability to empathise with Women, and moved to hear a man publicly rip into mysogynists who call or write to him.

Admittedly, I've used the word 'cunt' in a hateful way, and found it pretty satisfying. But I kind of agree with the writer of this letter, in the sense that as a man, and as a role model, Dan is being a bit irresponsible using this word in this way. I mean, if he wants to say 'faggot' in a hateful way that's one thing, but to say 'cunt' in a hateful way, really is a bit backward, and sets a bad example to the kiddies, you know?

Dan, I know you'll say whatever you want no matter what we say, but perhaps you crossed the line here. 'Cunt' is a word which isn't yours to reclaim as a hateful pejorative.

Sometimes I get tired of Dan's attitude, too. Like when I'm listening to a podcast and he goes on a five minute rant about how "I'm soooo glad I'm gay! Have I mentioned that yet today? Omg I'm sooo glad I don't have to deal with pussy!" Yeah, we know. And guess what? Most of us are sooo glad we're not cock-sucking fags. Not that there's anything wrong with that, we're just soooo glad we're not. See how that statement doesn't really accomplish anything, Dan?

Dear Dan,

I experienced you as quite an intense misogynist when I worked with you at the Stranger for five years. Why you feel the need to use my book cover to bolster yourself, I do not understand. After your initial move to Seattle from Chicago back in the early 1990s, you have never had a kind word for me or supported my work in any way. You have, in fact, disrespected me at every opportunity.
And no, Riz, I did not write that letter.

Love,
Inga

Does context matter? Yes, woman have been and are oppressed, to varying degrees at different times and places in history. But we are talking about a straight white woman in contemporary America. Whatever sex-related oppression straight white women suffer from here and now, it is nowhere near as bad as how black people and gay people are treated. A "slur" against women is not as bad as a slur against black people or gays, not because women are more oppressed, but because they are less oppressed. So please stop analogizing the word "cunt" to faggot and nigger.

@141
Women got the right to vote in 1920. 19-fucking-20. Black people got the right to vote in 1870. Keep on dreaming, kungfujew.

I said "contemporary America." Not 1870. Not 1920. Show me where there are ghettos occupied primarily by white women in 2010 America. And please don't use metaphorical ghettos like "we're under-represented in art galleries."

Again, I'm not saying sexism isn't real in 2010 America. It is real. I just don't think it's as bad as anti-black racism. I don't think this is based on me dreaming. I think it's based on objective realities; odds of being uneducated, odds of having poor health care, odds of being incarcerated, life expectancy, odds of being a victim of crime, odds of being profiled by police.

Of course, my position that a slur becomes more offensive the more oppressed the group it is used against is subject to its own critique. Maybe even if black people do have it worse than women, the "c" word is just as bad as the "n" word. But then we have to get mad at people for saying "honkey", which we probably shouldn't.

Contemporary America is informed by its recent history. Regardless of how oppressed you think a group is, it's not your privilege or right as an outsider to use their re-claimed slurs in your own speech. The fact that women may not be the most oppressed group in America doesn't negate their claim on the word "cunt". Furthermore, you may want to consult the statistics on violent crime committed against women before you dismiss slurs as merely a matter of 'sexism', with no correlation to oppression whatsoever.

@123 FTW

sung to the tune of 'don't call me....etc.' by sly and the family stone..
don't call me faggot, nigger
don't call me nigger, faggot
don't call me a cunt, faggot
don't call me faggot, ..etc.

Love is the answer, and we all know the question!

I'm hoping that #111 was written as a parody. If so, it's brilliant.

I'd just love it if Dan would answer his own letters of criticism every once in awhile ... Not that you guys don't do a great job of proclaiming that Dan is god and that the people who criticize him (for whatever reason) are idiots, cunts, assholes, whatever -- but he's using you like little Dan-minions. I'm sure that there are also intelligent, well spoken, and articulate people who send him emails of criticism as well, but you only ever see the crazy. You don't find that manipulative?

I'll just go ahead and call myself a bitch to save you all the trouble.

@ rhymeswithlibrarian: you're awesome.

Anti-woman? WTF?? Where does THAT come from?? That is just the craziest fucking thing I have ever, ever heard. Dan's columns are gender neutral. What they are not, is asshole neutral. If that asshole happens to be a woman, he calls them out -- period.

People should be licking his boots for all of the empowering work he has done, and all of the shame and pain he has helped people overcome.

He is the Mother Theresa of sexual empowerment and enlightenment. And saving particular women from their own assholism is a gift to them, and to all of us.

Dan, anti-woman? Full of hatred?...

Easier to imagine that the LW is full of hatred.

As she herself says, just because she has suffered it doesn't follow she doesn't hate others.

Wow, I spent about two thirds of that wondering who this asshole was. That was aimed at Dan? I don't see it.

Dear LW: what is hate?

As many victims of hatred (which you maybe are, I don't know anything about your life), you are making the terrible mistake of overgeneralizing. You are placing meanings in words that aren't really there; you are falling into the "dictionary fallacy" (that of believing that words exist out in thin air, or in some big book somewhere, with their meanings preordained and precisely defined).

Often victims become perpetrators; often victims of hate become hatemongers who dish out what they received. You are probably trying to attribute this attitude to Dan -- without realizing what a good example you yourself are of what you criticize.

By assuming that "hate" is behind every word that was used by hateful people against you -- instead of understanding that hate was IN THOSE PEOPLE, not in the word -- you are doing your part to guarantee that hate will survive, that hate will continue to harm and hurt people all around. I am sure this is not what you want, but this is what you are doing.

Please sit down and think; please try to understand, to see beyond the surfaces, to probe the depth which every human being (regardless of the level of her or his hate) undoubtably has -- and realize that things are not as simple as you believe.

Words don't hate. People do.

There's still time to change your attitude, and to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The #1 law is: look at the people and what they're doing.

Many haters would avoid words like 'cunt' like the plague; this doesn't make them any less haters. After all, Hitler never used the word.

Please don't go the wrong way; don't let yourself become entangled and lost in semantic labyrinths. Look at people, look at hearts. Look at truth instead.

There is still hope for you.

All the best,

kungfujew: you are totally forgetting about intersectionality. Black people? Gay people? Those groups are composed of both men AND women. So your argument that women are less oppressed is bullshit. Sure, white women don't have the same degree of oppression that a woman of color does, because the woman of color has race AND gender discrimination to deal with, whereas the white woman, while oppressed as a woman, is privileged by society for her whiteness. Bring in class and this shit gets complicated. Way to disappear half of the population, guy.

@142 - "Women got the right to vote in 1920. 19-fucking-20. Black people got the right to vote in 1870. "

Wrong. Black people's "right to vote" was a mirage right up until the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s. Don't play that game.

@ 140
Dear Inga,
I don't think Dan hates women. I think he just hated you.
I've been reading the Stranger for lo, these 20(?) years, and I remember your writing. With the exception of the porn (you know, the story about the girl orgasming to death looking at pictures of tree frogs?) it was crap. You are deeply self involved, intellectually lazy, personally irresponsible (how many unplanned pregnancies was it? Because birth control wasn’t “natural”?) and so full of woo that it makes me want pin your eyelids up and force you to read back issues of Scientific America. Oh, and deciding to rewrite the etymology of words to fit your fantasy of some Perfect Prehistoric Matriarchy™ from which all modern English *reeeeeealy* originates, isn’t feminist. It’s stupid. Breathtakingly stupid.

As far as an oppressed class reclaiming derogatory words goes, I am all for it. To wit, the gay community can use faggot and queer, African Americans, can call each other nigger, and gals can call each other cunt until the cows come home. But I’m sorry Straight White Boys, due to the fact that you are the dominant paradigm your use of these words is, at the very least, in poor taste, and at worst, just another example of your inability to let go of your privilege as White Male=Default Human.

@John Horstman and @Babydaddy: Although I don't agree with your conclusions, I do appreciate your thoughtful posts; they're a refreshing change from the "whiny cunts should STFU" theme that permeates this thread.

But, I don't think that you quite understand the issue with calling Hagelin a cunt (or at least, MY issue with it). It's not that calling A WOMAN a cunt is demeaning to all women; it's that calling a woman A CUNT is demeaning to all women. If anything, the fact that Hagelin is a woman confuses the issue, so I'm going to give some clearer examples.

Suppose I have a Korean boss who is treating me unfairly, and I say that he is "trying to jew me out of my pay". I think most people would agree that that's a racist statement; but why exactly is it racist? It's not offensive to Koreans - there's nothing in what I said that implies that I think all Koreans cheat their employees, just this one. No, it's offensive to Jews - but using the name of their group as a pejorative term, I'm implying that all Jews cheat their employees.

Another example - and I'm only picking on you, John, because you used a real (or realistic) name. Suppose your friend Sam does something stupid, and that this stupid action has nothing to do with you. Now suppose that your other friend Lucy says that "Sam really pulled a Horstman." Sure, she insulted Sam - but she also insulted you, by using your name as a synonym for stupiditiy.

Hagelin isn't above reproach because she's a woman; based on her statements, contempt is an entirely appropriate response. But if you use cunt as shorthand for "person I have contempt for", there's a clear implication that you have contempt for cunts. And since cunts are the most strongly female-identified body part, contempt for cunts is contempt for women.

Also, Babydaddy said:

"In my opinion, 'cunt' is just an insulting adjective describing character based on behavior."

It's true that it's a common practice to use cunt in this way. But, how did cunt become an insulting adjective? Don't you think misogyny had something to do with it?

When a certain usage is common practice, it's possible for somebody who is not actually misogynist to blithely carry on this usage - as Dan did here. But, as progressives and thinking people, we have the ability to examine the assumptions behind the common practice and decide whether we want to go along with it.

@157 now there's a proper post that earns a: FTW!

@154:

"kungfujew: you are totally forgetting about intersectionality. Black people? Gay people? Those groups are composed of both men AND women."

No, I did not forget about this. D Savage's target here is a straight white woman; which I specified (@ 141) for a reason. Straight white women in America are, on the whole, doing better than gay people (male or female) and black men (gay or straight), so (assuming I am right about the notion that a slur is worse when applied to a more oppressed group) calling her the "c" word is not as bad as using the "n" word or the "f" word. I'm not advocating the use of the "c" word, I just take issue with those above who have analogized it to anti-black or anti-gay slurs.

"So your argument that women are less oppressed is bullshit. Sure, white women don't have the same degree of oppression that a woman of color does."

Let's not use the broad "of color" term, OK? I was referring specifically to black people, as earlier comments mentioned the "n" word. And I wasn't comparing white women to black women, I was comparing them to black men. Not because I'm "forgetting" that a person can be both female and black, but because comparing white women to black men is a simpler way of comparing sexism to racism- a comparison which others here brought to the table in attacking D Savage.

Reading comments like this, I understand why so many black women; even ones that don't take crap from men, feel alienated by white (I'm not assuming you are white, but have a lot of white women compare sexist slurs to the "n" word) feminists. You don't force them to choose between their sex and their race- you force them to choose between fantasy and reality. Do white women get locked up regularly for crimes they did not commit? Did white women get hanged often by vigilante crowds (please don't bring up witch-burnings, I am talking about recent American history) in the 20th century? Is there a very high rate of white women being homicide victims? Do white women live in ghettos? Are white women statistically less likely to get access to education?

"because the woman of color has race AND gender discrimination to deal with, whereas the white woman, while oppressed as a woman, is privileged by society for her whiteness."

So? How, if at all, does this support the position that sexism in America is as bad as racism? The fact that some people are oppressed on two levels does not mean that both those types of oppression are equally bad. Black women don't live in ghettos because they are women- they live in ghettos because they are black. Due to sexism, they may have it worse than black men living in the same ghetto (let's leave aside for now the growing body of data showing that black women are beginning to get more educated and out-earn black men), but the black men living in the ghetto still have it worse than most white women.

"Bring in class and this shit gets complicated."

It's not that complicated. There are plenty of poor white people in America, but white people are statistically less likely to be poor than black people. Also, white people who grow up poor are statistically more likely to escape poverty than their black cohorts. So even if you bring in class, it's fair to say that white people are better off. Having said that, the upper 1% of white people in America is screwing the bottom 20% pretty hard and not many people want to discuss it ... but that's a conversation for another day.

@ 156 and @ 157: I agree.

OK, to uncomplicate things, here was my point.
Women make up half the population. Therefore, the term cunt, used as Dan did, negatively affects half the population.

I don't play oppression olympics. Who's got it worse isn't my game. You should really read @156--rhymeswithlibrarian has already explained exactly what I think more succinctly than I can.

I find it interesting that Dan asked "Permission to call this PERSON a cunt" (emphasis mine) because he only references women in regard to the term:

"Now "cunt" isn't a word I use often or toss around lightly. I think the last person I called a "cunt" in print was my grandmother—and, hey, I was quoting my mother."

So first, we know Dan knows it's not bunnies'n'bluesky to use the term "cunt;" it's probably why he DID use it, to attract traffic, etc. And he's asking permission. Then it's supposed to be okay because, hey, his own mother, a person with lady-bits!, called his grandmother, another person with lady-bits!, a cunt, which makes it ok.

The issue this woman has is in regard to the rights of gays and lesbians to participate in our culture equally. I understand the intersectionality of those issues with race and class. It's just that it's gays/lesbians and their so-called "agenda" and "propaganda" she's attacking--last time I checked you can be gay or lesbian and be any ethnicity concurrently.

@160. Ha, if that's the case, we agree (except for @156's first paragraph) ^_^.

Though I will say that the term "hates women" is thrown around in the feminist blogs as an exaggeration in order to call out unconsciously misogynist stuff--shit people say, like "cunt", without thinking about what what they're saying actually means. I get how that can come across to folks unused to that kind of shorthand sarcasm. It's basically used to show how pervasive the devaluing of women and girls is in contemporary culture; more of a big picture, see the forest AND the trees kind of thing (see how these many misogynist trees, while seemingly singular, combine to create a forest of patriarchal culture?).

In any case. SLOG and its commentators are, for the most part, sensitive about every other issue out there, but women's rights always seems to get short shrift, if any at all. When it does, the comment threads illustrate just how fauxgressive a lot of folks really are. At least American culture recognizes that the n-word's status as a hateful slur is not negotiable. The same cannot be said for: cunt, pussy, bitch, whore, slut, etc etc etc.

makes me kind of sad to see this warring over the internet - cyberbully style.

Both Dan and Inga are my heroes. You have both helped me very much in your writing.

Keep up the good work.

@156.. lissa way to veer way off topic
so you didn't/don't like inga's writing. fine. lovely that you took some time to hate on her while not giving a shit about her being drawn into a discussion by proxy.
and...so you don't have problem with dan. in fact because he's not a 'straight white boy' dan can say 'cunt' but straight white boys can't. or dan can appropriate an image of inga's book , which you and 'the stranger' hated , without any context of their history together. nor without identifying the writer of the letter. or making clear that inga has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand - except that she happened to write a book that bears the topic's title.
dick gregory wrote a book called 'nigger' back in the day, you'd be fine with say ann coulter using that book to illustrate her points about rascism ? probably not. but then again, given the wild lack of logic in your second paragraph, maybe YOU would.

@rhymeswithlibrarian: thank you so much for being a voice of sanity in this thread. i was about to claw my eyes out.

thank you, rhymeswithlibrarian, for providing this thread with a dose of sanity.

...oops, i thought it didn't work the first time. my bad.

Methinks the word has a different connotation in the US than here. I've always contended that it is perfectly permissible to use the word (and I do all the time) liberally to describe anything at all, except (underlined if I could) a girl or her girl parts. I especially appreciate Ricky Gervais' use of the word as an adverb, as in "it's cunting hot today".

If there's one thing I hate about the later day feminist theory, it's this compulsive war on language. Get fucked, cunt, you give the word the power that you fear. If you didn't care, neither would anyone else.

So what IS an acceptable term for someone who acts like a cunt?

Isn't the question here really "why has cunt - of all words - been adopted as the insult that can be used when no other word is hateful or powerful enough"?

I admitted earlier on this thread that I sometimes use the word as a hateful slur, when I want that extra impact. But the fact that I'm part of the "using the word cunt as an insult" community, doesn't blind me from the fact that it likely has its roots in mysogyny.

Language can be insidious in the way it carries with it the prejudices of earlier times.

I remember Dan posted a video of a scene from some tv show - (don't know the name, but it had one of those Bearish guys from the Silverman Program in it). and he was playing a Gay man who was playing cards with his straight dude friends, and they were talking about him being Gay, and one guy asked him how he felt about the use of the word 'Faggot.' and He told the story of how it came from the old word for kindling, which was faggot, and how Gay men were used as kindling when they burnt the witches.

I don't know when the word 'cunt' was first picked up as a perjorative. But it's pretty similar. And Dan seems to be aware of the importance of recognising the history and meaning of words.

We shouldn't underestimate the power of language. Its one thing that's hard to escape. It follows us long after laws against discrimination are passed.

And sorry to hog this thread, but while we're on the 'critiquing Dan' wagon,
I just want to say that his latest campaign to hold a "masturbate to Christine O'Donnell day." is the only thing Dan has done that's actually offended me. I can live with the use of the word 'cunt' as an insult. But I think in this instance Dan has gone to far. Dan is inciting sexual harassment of this woman. Using her wrongdoing as a right wing anti sex nut job as justification for him inciting sexual harassment.

I've seen this kind of thing before. It seems to be a patterns. Where otherwise progressive people jump at the opportunity to be vile towards women, using the woman's right wing politics as justification.

Henry Rollins did it to Anne Coulter when in his youtube letter to her he says "I want you to be my Anne Friday, my housekeeper, submissive domestic, you will treat me like a god, and the best night you had in the sack, but most of all, you will just shut the fuck up.'
Sandrah Bernhart did it to Sarah Palin where she said she wished Palin would get raped by her "big black brothers."

People should learn to project their anger and hatred at bigoted women in a way that doesn't use their gender as a weapon against them.

@172 Try going this route, as @174 proposes: "People should learn to project their anger and hatred at bigoted women in a way that doesn't use their gender as a weapon against them."

That's going to be VERY challenging for most people.

@ 174: Well said overall, but encouraging people to masturbate in private to a person who is a public figure does not amount to sexual harassment, nor is it something D Savage would refrain from doing with regard to a male public figure.

@ 173: The TV show is "Louie", starring Louis C-K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_%28TV…

Watch it, folks.

@166
I apologize for being imprecise. To be clear I absolutely think that Dan is out of line using the word ”cunt” pretty much for every reason that rhymeswithlibrarian has already so eloquently laid out. 100% not cool, and now that you mention it, I agree using the cover of Inga’s book as an illustration was *more* than ill advised especially considering their long standing animosity.

As I said, I am fine with members of an oppressed class reclaiming pejorative terms for THEMSELVES. So no, while I don’t think Dan hates women, I do think his male privilege (which ya’ll have- straight, gay, black, white, what have you) disallows his use of misogynist pejoratives. Just as I, a white woman, cannot, and will not, EVER use the word “nigger”, because my white privilege supersedes my membership in a different oppressed class if you will.

And while off topic, (as you so rightly point out), and deeply satisfying as hating on Inga is, it has nothing to do with her feminism, genitalia, or desire to repurpose the word “cunt”. I support her in this endeavor 100%, but I've been waiting 15-20 years to get that off my chest, and I do not take back one single word.

"People should learn to project their anger and hatred at bigoted women in a way that doesn't use their gender as a weapon against them."

"That's going to be VERY challenging for most people."

@ 174, and 175, I completey agree with you both.

@178..
we cool.

Okay, I'm late to this party, but for whatever it's worth, I do think Dan has some misogynistic tendencies, which tend to express themselves when he's talking about female genitalia. Perhaps that's why Dan feels that "cunt" is the only fitting insult for this Hagelin scumbucket: because, as he periodically reminds us, pussy makes him want to hurl. Well, I don't expect Dan to love pussy, but I do think it would be wonderful if he would (a) shut the fuck up about how much he dislikes pussy and (b) stop calling women "cunts." (To be fair, he doesn't exactly make a habit of calling women "cunts," but even once is too much.)

As many other posters have already noted, "cunt" is a gendered insult, and it packs such a powerful punch because it comes loaded with centuries' worth of misogynistic implications, even if those implications aren't consciously intended. Did Dan undo the accomplishments of feminism and send the entire female half of the species back to the kitchen, pregnant and barefoot, just by calling Hagelin a "cunt"? No. But it was still in poor fucking taste.

When a woman is a lying, cretinous bigot, why not just call her a lying, cretinous bigot? Or if you feel compelled to go with the more earthy, bodily-related insults, as Dan often does, why not call her a pusbubble or a crotch maggot or a festering herpes sore on the anus of humanity? Why resort to insulting her on the grounds of her gender?

@ 180
Thank you. That means a lot to me actually. :)

Maybe it's just me, but I think the poll was the more offensive of the actions... personally, I call people cunts, and maybe I shouldn't, but I don't really care... but in a country where gay rights are being held back based on the theory that "majority rules", I'd hope that SLOG wouldn't use the same "majority rule" tactics. Either it's ok or not to call her a cunt, and no number of commenters can shift the balance.

@178 Gay men give up their male privileged if they are effeminate or if they come out of the closet. At that point we are the most hated and feared minority in the world. It's easy to forget that in our little urban socially liberal islands. Gay people are the only minority in the United States that are 2nd class citizens by law, and not just culture.

@178 - I beg to differ. Just today SLOG covered the criminalization of miscarriages in Utah--reproductive rights affect women and also gay and lesbian couples who want to adopt/create families. Oppression Olympics get ugly; oppression sucks all around--no one ever wins. I particularly find anti-feminist sentiment from my gay allies ugly, especially since I (and every feminist organization I've ever known of) champion gay rights on an equal basis as I do women's rights--I find the two inextricably linked.

I also beg to differ because illegal immigrants are, in terms of rights, second class citizens by far, if not third class citizens (re: the term "citizen" here: they work and participate in our society, regardless of their documented status). Again, no one wins at the oppression olympics.

oops! I meant @185, not @178. that'll teach me to toke'n'comment.

Male privilege?! What the fuck are you stupid people talking about? What privileges have I been granted for being male? Really, you are a bunch of misandrists.

@ 189

I understand 'white privilege'; I'm a meek/nice looking skinny white dude. People don't look at me and think, "keep your eye on him, he's trouble!" But at the same time, I can't (or wouldn't) get away with several of those things you mentioned but do know women that could. For example, I know women that can have multiple sex partners (I can barely get one and rarely at that), I can't drive expensive cars (cause I don't have one and who would let a stranger drive theirs), and its way easier for a woman to talk back to the police (I've seen plenty of examples).

But regardless, who mentioned anything about race? You're an idiot.

It appears some people haven't heeded the comments at 161 & 185 about the futility of 'oppression olympics' (love that term btw),

The posters who have hijacked this thread to talk about male oppression are reacting to comments which have not even been made, (no one on this thread has stated or implied that men are free of any kind of oppression). So why the need to bicker?

I doubt there are women or gay men lurking around internet discussions on racial oppression jumping in to remind the men that white Gay men / women are oppressed, because it's blatantly off topic.

this is a thread about the use of the word 'cunt' it's about women and mysogyny.

It's not entitled 'white men know no hardship or oppression' so why are we going there?

175: I'm down with that, as long as we amend it to "People should learn to project their anger and hatred at bigoted (or otherwise dispicable) people in a way that doesn't use their gender as a weapon against them."
After all, a person's gender has no bearing on what they believe, or the way they decide to express those beliefs, so why should it be used in arguing against those beliefs and expressions?

@ 193: I'm a guy, and I don't agree with the guys who say male privilege does not exist.

However, I don't agree with your assertion that the existence of male privilege or lack thereof has no relevance here. You say: "this is a thread about the use of the word 'cunt' it's about women and misogyny", but since we're really addressing whether it's OK for a man (D Savage) to use the "c" word, and since your position is that he shouldn't because it reinforces a paradigm wherein men have more power than women, the amount of power that men have is an integral aspect of this discussion.

Having said that, men will usually find a way to bring any conversation back to men- it could be a class on female poets and some dude will go and start comparing the lady poets to Longfellow. So maybe it's just that general tendency that is annoying you.

Also, as to "It appears some people haven't heeded the comments at 161 & 185 about the futility of 'oppression Olympics'"- femwanderluster conveniently overlooked that the original author was the one here comparing the oppression of women to that of gays: "I hear gay bashing is fun for homophobes, too, just a fun night out—fuck em if they can't take a joke, right ... If I really wanted to call you a ... (substitute any ... hate word for gay) right now, would it be cool if I made up a humorous poll to do so? Or would that just be a sleazy, cowardly way to spread hate speech?"

In other words, the author is saying that D Savage Calling a woman the "c" word is like a straight person calling a gay man the "f" word. Regardless of whether this position is accurate, answering the question of whether it is accurate necessarily involves weighing the oppression of women relative to that of gays. If I were to say that a black person calling me whitey is as bad as me calling them the "n" word, the absurdity of this position could only be demonstrated by engaging in "oppression Olympics." No, I do not think the oppression gap between women and gays is anywhere near as wide as the gap between white people and black people, but I do think there is a gap and that it is legit to point that out- again, in direct response to the author herself. (I realize that you probably were not responding to anything I wrote, but femwaderluster was.)

@157, rhymeswithlibrarian essentially made the author's point better than the author herself. Using a female-based word like the "c" word to put a person down is bad because it reinforces the notion that there is something bad about women. There never was a need to compare the oppression to women to that of gays, but since the author brought it up, it was fair game. (@35, 46, 49, 62, 72,116,117, and 134 brought up the "n" word as a natural progression out of the author's comparison of women to gays.)

194 addendum: In fact, we should limit our hatred of other people to how they behave and the ideas they express, rather than attributes they have less or no control over like their weight or how old they are or how attractive we consider them or how sane we percieve them to be...
As previously stated, "That's going to be VERY challenging for most people."