GRGR C-Word

[David Casseres]

>As in this passage, when in literature it is not used as an 
>expletive, cunt (oh, no! here come the internet police!) makes me 
>think of D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller. In many contexts, there 
>really is no better word for "it", other words being too clinical or 
>actually more sexually loaded, eg "pussy." 

I agree.  It's a very tricky minefield, in which every one of the 
available words has something seriously wrong with it -- too smirky, too 
medical, too much used as abuse, too obscure, too cute, too inaccurate, 
etc. etc.  It's worse than naming the penis, which is hard enough (Paul 
Theroux offered a bit of liberation on that one by referring casually and 
factually to "dicks" in his Oceania book).

But sometimes a writer has to write about that thing, and "cunt" has at 
least one thing going for it, namely that it's ancient, plain, and 
universally understood.  That it's also universally offensive in most 
contexts is a result of history, I think, and something the writer just 
has to be aware of and deal with.


Cheers,
David