You cunt! I mean, you dick! I mean...

[hadespussercats]

What do you think about using slang for genitalia as insults?

Are some words okay, and others not? Why?

Are some more offensive than others? Why's that? or- why not?

Do the layered meanings of some of these insults reveal a heritage of misogyny or misandry?

Do some genital-style insults carry extra connotations of stupidity, repulsiveness, etc., that speak to how we actually view the genitals in question?

Why are slang words for genitals used as insults, anyway? What's so bad about genitalia?

I hope you see where I'm going with these questions. Feel free to add your own, in the same vein-- this thread is for discussing the whole gamut.
We could even discuss the genital words that have positive meanings, and question them, while we're at it.

That is, if you've got the balls, you stupid twats.

[SteveB]

Context and stuff, you dumb cunt.

[Animavore]

Some people are just whiny cunts who think words are imbued with offense for no logical reason what-so-ever. Words are just sounds and the same sound in another language might mean something innocent like "dog". Also some pedantic cunts just have nothing better to do than worry about dictionary definitions of elastic words which have meanings beyond the noun.

Me? I'm a straight-up, no-nonsense cunt with a commoner tongue. No bourgeois cunt is going to tell me how to speak.

[hadespussercats]

A little context--

the idea for this discussion started here:

Yeah, I love how they use the sexist term "don't be a dick" -- as if dicks are inherently bad. That's offensive.

The use of genital and sex words and phrases as insulting epithets is worthy of its own discussion. Would anyone be interested in a thread on that? Should it be in the general/philosophy subforum, or the Language, Culture & Anthropology subforum?

in this thread: http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 75&t=39083

I realize that my leading questions don't cover sex phrases in general. I think they could be an interesting point to explore, as well.

Unless you're going to be all butthurt about it.

[SteveB]

Some people are just whiny cunts who think words are imbued with offense for no logical reason what-so-ever. Words are just sounds and the same sound in another language might mean something innocent like "dog". Also some pedantic cunts just have nothing better to do than worry about dictionary definitions of elastic words which have meanings beyond the noun.

Me? I'm a straight-up, no-nonsense cunt with a commoner tongue. No bourgeois cunt is going to tell me how to speak.

Say cunt again!

[FBM]

I can only imagine that it started by calling them a body part that's usually less pleasant, such as asshole, and then just migrated around the body. Word play, I guess. I like Carlin's invention: "twunt."

[Animavore]

Listen, I'm speaking a language forced on me by foreign invaders. Whatever hang-ups English cunts have over that word they're not mine. Yi mad cunt.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Generally speaking I don't tend to find the actual meaning of swear words particularly important to their use.
Indeed sometimes (mostly when frustratedly swearing at my computer) I will just cobble together something random, despite it not even making any logical sense - something like "you cunting arse-fuck!" or "arse you, you shitting wank-bollocks!"

[Audley Strange]

The way I see it is that swear words seem to work as meta-symbols which are entirely dependent on the emotional aggregations of tone and context rather than the direct meaning of the word itself. They are in short hoots, exclamations.

However as I tried to point out before swear words are swear words because they are taboo. Words like gadzooks! were corruptions of the exclamation "Gods Hooks!" which of course was blasphemous and therefore forbidden. I guess when you have a culture which is founded by anti-sex puritans, the genitals are taboo. Now we have anti-free speech puritans we have various other words which are taboo.

One day we might have hardcore atheists pronouncing that the word "The" should be banned being that it refers to the platonic and is derived from Theos meaning that all form of "the" are religious expressions.



So making words and concepts taboo, means that they will be used to offend the sensibilities of those who do not want their sensibilities offended by such words and concepts.

[Animavore]

Steven Pinker has a whole chapter on this called Seven Words You Can't Say on TV in his book The Stuff of Thought. I'll get it when I'm in my mother's tomorrow and do a write up.

[hadespussercats]

It's funny to me how comfortable I am with the word "cunt," compared to how I used to feel about it.

In the States, "cunt" is probably the worst of the basic sex swear words-- the one that will make a room fall silent as a fork falls with a clatter on the floor. In my mind, it seemed gross and meaty (back then, these words seemed more unsavory than they do now.) "Cunt" was foul-- it was "Bitch" expanded exponentially, and unlike "Bitch" there was no friendly version you could use to describe a snarky friend or a gay man or a righteous woman.

It still isn't my favorite word for describing my vagine, my jay, my snizz, my snatch, my coochie, mah laydee bizness... etc.

But hanging out with UK and Commonwealth types has really changed my sense of it. It feels as lighthearted and generally applicable as dick or fuckface or...

And now I have to watch myself, because this word that is still extremely taboo in most of my social circles is pretty likely to come tripping off my tongue (heh) without my really thinking about it, and then it'll be Penn Gilette all over again, but with better hair.

[hadespussercats]

Generally speaking I don't tend to find the actual meaning of swear words particularly important to their use.
Indeed sometimes (mostly when frustratedly swearing at my computer) I will just cobble together something random, despite it not even making any logical sense - something like "you cunting arse-fuck!" or "arse you, you shitting wank-bollocks!"

[Animavore]

My friend was in the States eating in a diner and some guy went by outside on a motorbike standing on the seat with his arms outstretched. My friend turned to a work colleague and said, loudly, and excitedly, "Did you see that mad cunt?!"

the one that will make a room fall silent as a fork falls with a clatter on the floor.

happened.

[John_fi_Skye]

As a student, I laboured with some guys who were much more ready to use such terms that I was. Guys for whom "fuck" was sprinkled liberally in every sentence, with to my mind no discernible semantic significance. As to whether there was some deep-seated and offensive value-judgement on females or on love-making contained within such discourse, I'm not qualified to say, but I do think nothing of that existed for these guys on a conscious level. My guess is that such usage developed at a time when society was less liberal and these words were "unmentionable". You still see the same thing when young kids daringly use terms they think aren't allowed, or will shock: Flanders and Swan used to sing a song on this subject whose refrain was, "Pee, po, belly, bum, drawers."

Some posts earlier in this fred use "cunt" in the sense of "person". I have known people who would use the term thus. Such folk would describe somebody they didn't like as a "bad cunt", but it was the "bad", and not the "cunt", that conveyed the odium.

I once worked under a foreman whose use of "fuck" and "cunt" was more prolific than that of anyone else I've ever met. On one occasion, he was so exasperated at one of my workmates that he ran out of words, and called him, impotently, "Ya cuntin......CUNT!"

[Tero]

In Finnish the vocabulary is mostly around the female and a verb made out of it. Vituttaa. Or vittuilla.
vittuilla fuck with
vituttaa pissed off
vittu cunt
Cunt is not used as in English.
kyrpiintyä, from dick, google can't tranlate