A male friend, who fairly frequently refers to people he hates as a 'c..t', recently commented that he doesn't understand my problem with the 'c' word. Heavy, protracted sigh.
My first reaction is to wonder why he doesn't understand why I, and other women would have an issue with it. Okay, deep breath: for a start - and I lament that this is not obvious to him and others - it's extravagantly misogynistic. The pretty much universally agreed-upon worst name you can call someone is a synonym for women's genitals. That part of a women's body that heterosexual men desire, yet conversely also apparently hate.
This man, who, in the throws of anger at someone, will use the 'c' word because, to him it is the worst insulting name he can dredge up from the dark swamp of abjectly hateful insults in his mind, in order to communicate the deep level of hatred he feels towards that person. The female genital area: the worst thing a person can be apparently.
He says to me, "...but 'c..t' is just a sound." Why would I have an issue with a sound? If it was just a sound, devoid of socially agreed upon meaning, and if all words are just innocent, innocuous, meaningless sounds, why not then call someone you hate a 'pillow' or a 'rock' or a 'chair'? The 'c' word provokes an involuntary response in the hearer - the semiotic connection to a woman's vulva, vagina and clitoris is received by the ears of the hearer simultaneously with the velocity and pejorative power of the word as the worst, lowest insult imaginable.
The 'c' word is one of the favoured sexual abusive terms, a porn 'actress' is directed to use towards herself. This is apparently arousing to men: to hear a woman - who is being violently penetrated for male 'entertainment' - moan and beg: 'please fuck me, I am a worthless 'c..t', 'slut', 'whore' etc.. and variations thereof. So women are to be used and abused, raped and tortured because they are dirty, smelly, worthless 'c..ts'. So it is synonymous with 'slut' and 'whore': two of the worst things you can call a woman. The lowest, most reviled thing a woman is considered to be, yet also most desired by men who are aroused by such words and connotations; aroused by porn 'stars' verbally abusing themselves and being verbally abused by men. A 'c..t is essentially a raped body part.: that which must ideally always be available for male use and abuse.
The use of the word as an insult - sexual and otherwise - acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts. The word reduces women to the one essential essence: our offence. There is a movement amongst feminists that seeks to reclaim the word not only as acceptable, but as an honorific, in much the same way that 'queer' has been re-appropriated by LGBT people and the word 'nigger' has been by some African-Americans.
The 'c' word has a long history and there have been times when it was not considered derogatory. But, until another semiotic shift returns it to being inoffensive and to no longer being the worst hatred-grenade of a word that could ever be hurled, then it is a 'sound' that will continue to reinforce women as hateful, second-class bodies that are simultaneously desired and considered disgusting.
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-Mountain Daughter
