The case for the "C-word." <adult language>

[Shiny212]

Calling a man a cunt or a bitch is undermining to women because its using something feminine to demean someone. Its all over the place in media, effeminate traits are seen as weak and submissive. Like, "You hit like a girl." Girl is the insult, because girl=weak in society.

I would think people shouldn't need to be told why cunt is an offensive word. Nobody uses it in a positive way, its always used in an attempt to offend someone in an aggressive, demeaning way.

Girl is the insult because boys are expected to be stronger than girls. Is that according to you insulting all women on the planet? There are thousands of other words that are also used aggressively to offend someone, few of which are for some reason as grave as "cunt".

[Bigbamboozal]

Doesn't matter. Once you're older, you'll understand.




You seem mad. Like, really really mad. You should probably go relax a bit.

Wow okay that explains a lot, so you misinterpret everything all across the board in an unchanging and even way...whoo! glad to hear it...mad, no...just FULLY enjoying the topic I mean...I'm not being a cunt or anything

[FathomFear]

Words like "cunt" or "dick" or "pussy" or even "gay" are a way of verbally associating negativity with a certain gender or sexual preference. That is really the underlying problem with them.

For example, when someone says "Don't be a pussy" to mean "Don't be weak/wimpy", they're spreading the message that femininity = weakness. Word associations have a long history of being used for this purpose.

Personally, I'm the kind of guy who does swear and curse sometimes. But I save it for situations that warrant it. ie, real anger. And not mindless video game smack talk.

[Cattlehunter]

Words like "cunt" or "dick" or "pussy" or even "gay" are a way of verbally associating negativity with a certain gender or sexual preference. That is really the underlying problem with them.

For example, when someone says "Don't be a pussy" to mean "Don't be weak/wimpy", they're spreading the message that femininity = weakness. Word associations have a long history of being used for this purpose.

Personally, I'm the kind of guy who does swear and curse sometimes. But I save it for situations that warrant it. ie, real anger. And not mindless video game smack talk.

You don't call weak people feminine to associate femininity with weakness, you call weak people feminine because femininity is associated with weakness. That's why the insult works.

Language is a strange and complicated thing. This reminds me of the "euphemism treadmill", where a negative trait is given a word to describe it, which is used as an insult to associate people with that negative trait, which prompts people to invent a new word for the negative trait because the original word has become a profanity... which leads that new word to be used, which leads to the creation of another new word.

Idiot, imbecile, and moron were once neutral terms for a developmentally delayed adult with the mental age comparable to a toddler, preschooler, and primary school child, respectively. In time negative connotations tend to crowd out neutral ones, so the phrase mentally retarded was pressed into service to replace them. Mentally retarded, too, has come to be considered inappropriate by some, because the word retarded came to be commonly used as an insult of a person, thing, or idea. As a result, new terms like mentally challenged, with an intellectual disability, learning difficulties and special needs have sometimes replaced the term retarded.

It can go the other way too. Like, you call the people you hate faggots, because everybody hates faggots. Or used to anyway. Then we get the evolution of language and "everybody hates faggots" turns into "faggot is something you call someone you hate" and, magically, the word "faggot" is no longer actually an insult against homosexuals (even if professional victims will attempt to draw that association, as is in their nature).

Anyway. Language is way more complicated than "you use the word cunt, so you hate women", as seems to be the association that gets drawn by most people who are offended by the word, and ignoring this complexity is either outright disingenuous, or the product of a mentally challenged mind, and I don't mean that as a profanity. Even children understand this quite intuitively, so anyone who claims not to understand it is engaging in either one of those, or is blinded by some other cognitive bias.

[FathomFear]

You don't call weak people feminine to associate femininity with weakness, you call weak people feminine because femininity is associated with weakness. That's why the insult works.

The point is that it's a feedback loop. The language reinforces the association. One of the ways of breaking the association is to actively break the word usage. Hence you see PSAs against the use of "That's gay".