GRGR C-Word

[hb]

I've always liked Barry Hannah's word used, simply, "sex"
ex.  "Her sex was narrow"....etc



At 10:43 AM 1/14/97 -0800, you wrote:
>>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
>
>