The 'c' word

Dh and i had a mutual friend at 17/18

Well more dh than me but i knew him

He swore a lot and one easter he decided that he was either going to give up saying fuck OR cunt for lent

Then he realised that he wouldnt be able to say his his favourite insult of 'fucking cunt' oh my goodness he was torn

He joined the police!! Sweary fucker!

No, no banning words. You can tell a lot about a person by the language they use and how they use it. Cunt away I say. I like cunts btw.

Cunty cunty cunt.

I don’t use it as an insult (I currently plump for the sex-nonspecific ‘asshat’) but it’s a good, historically meaningful word that I do sometime use to refer to my vagina/vulva in a non medical setting (hate ‘pussy’ and most other colloquial terms are either childish or have some kind of odd religious connotation).

Even if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t want it banned. Banning words is a slippery slope towards fascism and limiting other women’s language or tone is a non-feminist action (the patriarchy expects us to gender-police each other, while the men get on with the proper business of exploiting our sex class).

I gave up smoking 13 years ago and I'll be fucked if I give up one of my only remaining pleasures which include swearing, grumping and coffee.

It's horrible. I hate it. In fact, it is not comparable to using words for men's genitalia. A word means what it has been used to mean, ie innocuous words become offensive, think cretin, spastic, etc. So, this word has been used as a vile insult, whereas dick just means a bit silly. Here is where the offence lies. I hate all the MN posts that pepper with this and the f-word. You should be able to formulate an argument without base level insults

Are you asking to ban all the words that refer to male genitalia aswell?

‘You, Sir, are a cunt’ never fails to make me smile.

One of my friends had a meme of that come up on her phone if I called her due, I think, to my overuse of the word and that phrase in particular...unless she was actually misgendering me & hating on me at the same time

I find the made up ones childish and unfunny.

I find them childish and funny! I most certainly have stunted development where swearing is concerned.

Personally, I'm ok with it & I want to be able to refer to my cunt should I need to.

I do not support the banning of any words and I think you're ridiculous to want to do so.

Im not a fan of the word but honestly it’s used mostly on here for humour or to accurately describe someone nasty. If you don’t like it that’s ok but to ask that it’s removed? Isn’t the joy of mumsnet the fact we can swear etc?

I don't like it and given its frequent use as an insult for both men and women I'm not convinced that it is empowering and has been reclaimed.

I don't use any swear words on here, and rarely in real life. On here I don't like swear words and I don't think they add anything to the strength of an argument. I find the made up ones childish and unfunny.

I hate the word "bitch". I think it is absolutely unacceptable to describe a woman as a bitch or bitchy but they make regular appearances on MN , even on FWR.

In Scotland, people just use it to mean ‘person’ half the time like ‘where’s that cunt Derek?’

Possibly some people in Scotland might do that. I don't know any who do.

‘You, Sir, are a cunt’ never fails to make me smile.

A feminist who wants to police women’s language on a predominantly female forum.

ODFOD.

As an aside as it's not to do with offence, I've never been keen on the word vagina as it means sheath - so something only a woman has is defined by its relationship to something (penis?) that will be put into it and is not considered something in and of itself.

And yes moist and gusset give me the shudders...

I don't like the words 'moist', 'plimsoll', 'peppy' or 'gusset' but I just get on with it. Oh, but the expression 'poo juice' (nappy spilled over) is worse than anything.

Ah I thought you were going to discuss the three letter word. I don’t like the word cunt, but after watching people tying themselves into knots over the words vagina and vulva, it seems quite simple. We all know what it means and it separates us from those men who like to appropriate the word woman.

Fucking hell. It's pretty difficult to compose a post on fwr without risking a ban for wrongspeak, we don't need anymore banned words.

It's misogynistic to use cunt as a term of abuse but I love the way way it's been reclaimed on FWR to refer to adult human females in the phrase 'women - the cunty type'.

No ban, please.

Oops sorry - you already said that.

Cunt is also Middle English.

Sorry, can't agree that continuing to use a part of the female anatomy as an insult is a feminist thing to do. Is it really empowering to adopt the language of your oppressors? If the worst thing you can call a man is the word used to name the definitively female part of our bodies, what does that mean?

One of the reasons that cock and knob and prick are satisfying to say is that they are all good single-syllable Old English/ Middle English/ Old Germanic words that make good pithy insults.

Am I the only one to have read Dale Spender's Man Made Language?

No, you're not, and I wish more women would read it. It was one of those books that completely opened my eyes to how language is biased towards the male perspective. Sadly, very few people seem to mention it now when talking about classic feminist texts.

I really deplore the use of "bitch"

I don't like 'bitch' because I think it's so unfair to dogs :( The only time btiches are aggressive is when they have pups they're protecting. What's wrong with that?