| i thought that this was interesting...
"I hate men. I HATE them.
I'm a straight woman, I'd like to have a close, lasting relationship or marriage someday, possibly with kids, but I don't think I'll ever meet anyone again because I just really, really hate men, even though I try not to.
I hate men for all they have done to me and to women everywhere. I'm convinced that all men, even the two men in my life that I love-- are secretly selfish, lying rapists whose deepest moral conviction could not withstand the temptation of using a woman.
I'm seriously beginning to worry that this hatred is not something that will eventually work itself out in therapy, but is intractable and may turn me into my mother."
this too
"Kate Millett sums up the word's uniquely despised status: "Somehow every indignity the female suffers ultimately comes to be symbolized in a sexuality that is held to be her responsibility, her shame [...] It can be summarized in one four-letter word. And the word is not fuck, it's cunt. Our self-contempt originates in this: in knowing we are cunt" (1973). Specifically, she identified this attitude in the novels of Henry Miller: "His interpretation [...] is that woman is no more than "cunt," though she is occasionally said to redeem herself by having babies" (1970).
When used in a reductive, abusive context, female genital terms such as 'cunt' and 'twat' are notably more offensive than male equivalents such as 'prick' and 'cock'. Joan Smith calls 'cunt' "the worst possible thing - much worse than ['prick'] - one human being can say to another" (1998) and Simon Carr calls it "the worst thing you can say about anyone" (2001). As Deborah Cameron notes, "taboo words tend to refer to women's bodies rather than men's. Thus for example cunt is a more strongly tabooed word than prick, and has more tabooed synonyms" (1985). Jonathon Green concurs that "the slang terms for the vagina outstrip any rivals, and certainly those for the penis [...] They encompass what is generally acknowledged as the most injurious of monosyllabic epithets [and] that ultimate in four-letter words" (1993), by which, of course, he means 'cunt'.
This linguistic inequality is mirrored by a cultural imbalance that sees images of the vagina obliterated from contemporary visual culture: "The vagina, according to many feminist writers, is so taboo as to be virtually invisible in Western culture" (Lynn Holden, 2000). Censorship of both the word 'cunt' and the organ to which it refers is symptomatic of a general fear of - and disgust for - the vagina itself. The most literal manifestation of this fear is the myth of the 'vagina dentata', symbolising the male fear that the vagina is a tool of castration (the femme castratrice, a more specific manifestation of the Film Noir femme fatale)."
things aren't black and white like this. there isn't a sign on every corner saying "cunt go home". and that is perhaps why it is so true. hatred of women permeated societies like menstrual blood (itself considered the most taboo and repulsive bodily "fluid") does white cotton panties. there is an almost universal hated of women, stemming back in some societies as far as childbirth itself. true, here i can not point out a male that "hates" women, nor one that is aware of it. however, this hatred is a fact that hovers over our society, reinforced by everyday messages. we in the states are the fortunate ones, only reminded of our status as lower beings by inpalpable social "tendancies" and expectations and subliminal messages. the gears have been slow to turn, yet by contrast this is one of the most liberal societies in the world. i can't think of a better way to end this, so i'll just stop here. |