It's used as an insult because it's something exclusively of those with female genitalia - females being historically regarded as inferior and inadequate, while the necessary biological functions of female genitalia have been seen as disgusting and repugnant. Hence its use to insult men's masculinity by likening them to women, and to insult women by using the oldest of all words for our genitalia as a term of utter contempt.
Further amendment: male contempt for women has always focussed around female biological functions - specifically, menstruation, childbirth, and the physical aftermath of birth. Female genitalia was seen as receptacles for sperm, and thus for the gratification of male sexual urges, those urges themselves frequently condemned as sinful in Abrahamic religions, and thus the focus of guilt, which men have historically transferred to women as their sexual temptresses.
Some as recently as the middle ages taught that women's bodies were mere receptacles for male 'seed' and had no input into the creation of a new life.
Multiple cultures punish and isolate women for menstruating, teaching that they are 'unclean' and must perform purification ceremonies at the end of each period, and after post-natal bleeding ceases. So evil do some societies imagine menstrual blood to be that a man who is contaminated by coming into contact with it becomes himself unclean; several of those cultures permit him to kill the woman in order to prove he is still a man.
This is the background to the particular toxin contained in the word "cunt" when spat at a woman by an enraged man.
And, for that matter, when applied to a man - it is intended to denigrate his masculinity.
The toxic, uncleanliness of women's genitals is ALWAYS the underlying assumption - no matter how far removed from those superstitions and prejudices a culture might now be.
It is the underlying assumption to the use of the word in the death threats which Marama Davidson received, and her own pride in her female body and rejection of the prejudice and bigotry against her function as a human female that drives her anger, and her determination to "reclaim" the word for women.
I'm with this lady - all the way!
Cunts, ladies, and gentlemen are useful. They have depth and warmth - and they are uniquely productive. And each an every one of you has at least one of them in your life: your mother's.
Author: Cushla Geary
Admin's Note: I love this article. Because everyone knows the woman's position in religions: Women are like sex machine for religions, they must giving birth a baby and, satisfied the husband.
