to be dispirited by the fact that there are properly outraged threads about Saatchi and Inverdale no here today, but

[curlew]

....... they are being described as "cunts" and "fannys".

They are obviously both despicable in their attitudes to women. But when we reach into our " terms of abuse" vocabularies we pull out words for women's genitals.

I, too, believed the point of the thread was discussion Buffy and there is some great discussion taking place but why are people opening a thread they have no interest in and taking pot-shots about how shit they think it is?

One of my bugbears. Nobody's forced to open, read or comment on any thread.

Right, got that out of the system, deep breath and I'm back

I do still like cunty chops so there's some common ground.

Maybe there's hope

given that there are milder words relating to female private parts, might it be just accidental that the current strongest word is a female one?

"It's all a bit dull really, just criticising how others use their language to express themselves.

It doesn't make the world a better place, just more dull."

Ah, you, see, I think it's really interesting. And important. Language and how we use it is incredibly important! Because that 's what makes us human.

Even the 'funny' sounding names given to the female anatomy were designed to ridicule, again enforcing the misogynistic view that women are less than equal to men.

For instance; tits, fanny, jubilees, hole, beef curtains, piss flaps etc. these are all words that raise a titter and as such, make it acceptable to ridicule the anatomy of women.

I can't proclaim to be a feminist, I really don't know enough about the movement (see! I don't even know if feminism is a movement) to make such bold claims but as a woman, I fully support what feminism has done and continues to do for us.

It's important, for my own understanding of being a modern day woman, to at least try to educate myself in the trials of our fore sisters. I hope I'm making sense. I had little to no sleep last night and my head and eyes are heavy

Yy to this > Buffy "relaaaaaax, I wasn't trying to insult your intelligence by saying you'd made a stupid mistake or that you didn't realise words had different meanings, or anything. It's sunny! The tennis is on!"

"We all interpret things differently, all the time. It only becomes a problem (in my opinion) when people get dogmatic about it or argue themselves into a corner that they're too proud to come out of."

Feegle, aren't mens bits ridiculed just as much?

as for taboo words, well there's the n-word, arguably a stronger taboo, although possibly a red herring for the purposes of this discussion?

What about taking an historical perspective Buffy, what were the most powerful expletives of yore?

'these are all words that raise a titter'
^ ya see what you did there :o

'Feegle, aren't mens bits ridiculed just as much?' Probably more, but if a woman says 'You're a dick/wanker/knob' to a bloke, I do believe he has no right to complain as he is the oppressor. Or so I've been informed.

Where do wank badgers fit into this debate?

Won't someone think of those poor masturbating badgers?

I'd have thought you'd know I'm far too proper and erudite for that, I know fuck all about swearing.

I think there's a fairly long history of swearing involving insults to women (eg. bastard, mother-fucker). But dunno about genitalia used as an insult.

I did read recently that patriarchial cultural structures are embedded in what they've reconstructed of proto-indo-european language, though, so I am fairly sure that even if specific gendered swear words like 'cunt' don't go that far back in history, the 'weight of history in language' argument holds.

Except (she says, warming to the theme), I do know that people back in t'day were possibly more warm-and-fuzzy (no pun intended) about genitalia. There's loads of cutesy little nick-names for penises that compare them to little furry animals you'd love to stroke, and 'cunt' means 'cute' or 'quaint' in Middle English. The really vindictive nasty descriptions of female genitalia tend not to be in the context of swearing or colloquial language, but in the context of misogynistic clerics talking about how foul ladybits are.

I'm not quite sure where this gets the debate, so I'll leave it to the wisdom of wankbadgers for now.

(I really want TheWisdomofWankBadgers as a MN name now.)

They are brainless lumps of flesh, whether they're bell ends OR cunts. As I've said elsewhere, the noun cunt is a satisfying swear word as it has 3 hard plosives in it - C,N and T, but I have no idea why the word CAN'T does not have the same effect though I could happily thump DH when he says this. You'll notice many swear words have plosive Ks in them. They are stupid, that's all it means. Do you disagree John Inverdale and Charles Saatchi are just neuron lackingly STUPID???!!!

Vagina means 'sword sheath'. I prefer cunt TBH.

It's a fair bet, buffy.

nay - I think it's to do with the position of your tongue and lips with 'cunt', which is satisfyingly grunt-ish.

I do think both men in question are absolute tossers, FWIW, and I would describe them as such, rather than as 'cunt'.