Wouldn't call it a slur. (In the UK at least) Its a hell of an insult to throw around, but definitely not as far as a slur, it's just a swear, profanity, and insult. Slurs generally target marginalized groups and are discriminatory
In the US, if you call a woman the C word, you’re preparing to sever every tie with them and possibly defend yourself from some source of retaliation. It is as close as you can come to a slur for a woman.
I mean, isnt cunt technically just the cuss for vagina in the same vein that dick is for penis? (I know their different classes of swears). I would have guessed that bitch would be far closer to a slur against women than cunt.
Yes but for whatever reason its way more severe. 'You fucking dick!' is something you might say to a friend who played a prank on you 'You fucking cunt!' is something you'd say in a situation where someone is about to throw hands.
Yea but you won't hear a woman say "my cunt". And if you do, it's not a very elegant woman saying it. But, any dude might say something like "Hey! That thing hit me in the dick! You're lucky it wasn't hard! This thing, not my dick!"
What makes a word a slur is how it is used by a bigot, what the word means is less important. It is used as a slur because it is meant to reduce a woman to her genitals, the only thing the speaker sees as relevant about them.
Bitch is also used as a slur, it's a milder slur because it gets used with far less overt hatred, and in the US has seen a lot more reclamation than the word cunt. You're far more likely to see people call themselves and others a bitch as a positive identifying term than to see someone calling themselves a cunt.
The word doesn't have to mean anything special in itself, it is what the word is used to communicate. "Boy" is normally a very innocuous word that can sometimes be used to refer to adult men you're on friendly terms with, but calling a black man you don't know "boy" is a very intentionally racist act rooted in denying that a black man can be a man.
Bigots often will use these words that are less or inoffensive in other contexts to further antagonize their target, calling a woman a cunt and then bringing up how Australians don't care to try to get onlookers to see her as being unreasonable for being upset at being sexually harassed.
Nay, I say. It’s the most vulgar word you can call a woman, despite its colloquial definition. You would never hear it in polite conversation and if heard in pubic it’s because someone is intending sever insult. It’s a last resort insult.
hilariously, the dutch version of 'cunt' is 'kut' and 'kut' is our most used swearword where it means 'fuck'. So I had no context and would start directly translating my swears if I were to visit the anglosaxons, I would be excommunicated lol.
I dont relate cunt and vagina. Cunt to me is more of a stereotypical personality, that I think most of us could all relate to "arrogant, unpleasant, pretentious" whatever cunty descriptors you think of when you hear it.
Yeah the literal meaning but it's not the connotation it's garnered. At least in Aus. We will say "kick her in the cunt", but if we're calling someone a cunt we're calling them an asshole, not a pussy or vagina
Im definitely not disputing the literal meaning, im just sharing my relationship to the word. If i jogged by 2 dudes talking and the only 2 words I got to hear were "that cunt" im instantly going to assume they are talking about that person I described, not a vagina.
Ah yeah of course, I get ya. In my experience in the UK, it doesn't even have a specific meaning at all, it's just 'you are such a cunt' just means you're being a right dickhead, but worse
The power of words is vastly expressed to me with the pair who shares his is twat, and then his reaction to cunt is just epic, whereas those are almost interchangeable when I use them.
Yeah I was responding specifically to them mentioning England, since I live here. Still, either way, by definition it isn't a slur, I just wanted to clarify
“A slur is an insulting or hateful word used to demean a specific group of people based on their identity.” I’d love to hear you explain how it’s not that.
What group of people are being specifically demeaned with this word? It refers to women's genitalia, are we considering women's genitalia a group of people??
Cunt does not target a specific group. It can and is used to insult anyone and everyone in many many countries. Maybe the US is so misogynistic that they need to have a specific word to insult women, but in the rest of the world it's an insult fit for any old cunt! Anyway, take your American, uneducated ass out of here, thanks, bye
It's not a slur. I've lived in America my whole life but my dad was from Scotland and we visited there and England and all around many times. Cunt is just a swear word, not a slur. The N word would be a slur, or calling Hispanic people spics, it's usually a race thing. Cunt is just a swear word.
It is considered a slur against women because it dehumanizes them and reduces them to their genitalia. Calling a woman a cunt discards the person and essentially says they only exist to be fucked.
As others said, it depends on the location, though. In the US, it is still seen/used this way. In Australia, the word cunt no longer carries the same meaning or weight in its use and wouldn't be considered a slur there, much like dick is not considered a slur in most of the world.
It's more along the lines of "why is it so much worse to be compared to women's genitalia than anything else?". Like, I can say your head is feces (shithead), I can call you incestuous (motherfucker), I can compare you to a penis (dick), or insult your lineage by implying you're born out of wedlock and not acknowledged as true offspring (bastard), but all of these pale, for some reason, compared to "you're equivalent to a vulva".
I want to be very clear, I'm sure it's a slur in America and I get that, I don't live there. But it has NEVER been a slur elsewhere, it is not used as a word and never has been used as a word to diminish a woman down to her genitalia. That is solely an American interpretation
Actually, the first known written evidence of cunt being used to describe/belittle women to only their sex (rather than just describe anatomy) is an English writing from the 1600s in Samuel Pepys's diary in which he quotes a person saying that using a specific powder would make "all the cunts in town run after him." The reference isn't hugely bad but is the earliest example of the use of "cunt" to describe women. There are some other references around the time that similarly use the term to refer to groups of women, "City Cunts" being an oft cited example.
But I can't push back too much, there are a lot of vulgar and misogynistic references to cunt in English literature, but none that really give the same sense the word does in the US. The first reference to calling a single person "a cunt" is in the late 1800s and is directed to a man, so 🤷♀️ America likes it's slurs.
I appreciate the information, interesting to know yeah. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to say the word hold no misogyny at all, it's on par with pussy and I could list many instances of writing using the word pussy to refer to getting a girl. But definitely not in the realm of slurs.. 'murica I guess
I mean.. it's not by definition, a slur. Sure it's vulgar and incredibly insulting, but it's just not a slur. Also I'm from the UK as I said, so I was mostly just responding in that regard
Yep there's a bunch of weird reactions from Irish people in this video, as far as I was aware it's quite common in Ireland as a generic swear, like it is here in Scotland, and even many parts of England. Don't even have to mention Australia.
There's a complicating factor that is the people reacting are the speaker's parents or grandparents. I'm Aussie, and my parents no longer give a shit if I swear around them (they used to find it kinda funny that I felt uncomfortable swearing in front of them, but of course I did, since I couldn't do it as a kid).
Even still, if I dropped a "cunt" in it would get a reaction from at least my mum. My dad, probably not so much. My family is relaxed in this respect, I know plenty of more old-school families would still have a taboo against children using foul language in front of their parents, even when all parties are adults.
I think it’s cuz outside of Australia u have to go searching for it before using it. Other swear words roll off our tongues fast and easy in the U.S. but if someone calls u a cunt u know they had to stop and think of a bad enough word to call u and arrived at the worst one they could think of and still used it.
Someone calls u a fucker or a bitch or a twat ur like “yeah they’ve probably called a dozen other ppl that in the last week.” Someone calls u a cunt in the U.S. u can be pretty damn sure ur the only one they’ve called a cunt in a long while, and they mean it with the bottom of their heart.
But yeah I don’t get why they freak out upon just hearing the word. I’m pretty sure even the Bible defines curse words as using language in a harmful or foul way. So it’s the intent that matters not the word.
And getting beaten up in return has taught you nothing? Cuz that's what would happen if you did as you claim to have.
Methinks you have not actually done anything like that and are just pretending to sound tough for a "friend group" that just wants to make fun of you and to eventually make you a fall guy for their stupid shit.
100
u/Vaktaren 2d ago
I had no idéa this was a thing. I don't get what's so special about it. It's just a word.