So I’ve been skimming through the mass of comments that the Daily Beast piece on the Men’s Rightsers now has trailing in its wake. So far I think this is my favorite exchange.
Yep, that’s DriverSuz — aka Suzanne McCarley, “Senior Editor” of A Voice for Men.
And yep, that’s Angry Harry, the fellow that many MRAs call “the father of the men’s rights movement.”
Some critics of this blog complain whenever I quote some crackpot commenter rather than one of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement. Sometimes, it turns out, the crackpot commenters ARE the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement.
Just remembered a short story from one of the”Dangerous Visions” collections, “In The Barn”. The protagonist visits a parallel Earth in which there are no ruminants, and humans have developed techniques for using other humans as livestock. It’s rather nasty, all in all, and I don’t think the author intended it any other way.
Thank you for the welcome pack kittehserf. I will admit I availed myself of it many months ago and have been enjoying cloudiah’s updates.
Oh heck, as I sometimes seem to spend half my life with my head up my arse you’d think a small shift in position wouldn’t be much of a reach for me! But I still can’t do it with the c-word. I could never, ever call my cave of wonders by that name 😉 I know people don’t believe it, but I really truly don’t associate the word with female genitalia or ‘it’s female/a vagina therefore its bad’. It’s a word for appalling behavior. Always has been, always will be for me. But I rarely use it, and I’d never use it here.
OK. It seems the fight for my lovely word has already been lost – too many people only see it, as you’ve pointed out yourself, as something that “specifically tries to demean the man by invoking the image of women’s genitals.” Well, for a short and glorious time *perhaps* there was a part of the world where that divorce had been well and truly made and the word was it’s own insult in it’s own way. But like the idea of “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” it couldn’t survive. Like I said, I’m just a sad old idealist…
I just checked and wow – it was by Piers Anthony. Color me surprised.
@Terrene, Yeah, sorry if I was mean earlier, it’s just that we get so many trolls. I really think the problem is with using it as an insult. It’s not the word per se.
You’re very welcome to hang out here with us, so don’t feel like one wrong step ruins everything. I once posted a terrible video, and everyone was very forgiving. 🙂
“Cave of wonders” now that I like!
Though I’m thinking of stalactites and stalagmites and hard hats now, so maybe not. Though I s’pose they’d put a different slant on crusty undies. 😛
Cave of wonders makes me think Disney’s Alladin and the Genie.
@ Aphrodite
Not sure if you were being sarcastic or not, but either way. I cite Poe’s law 😀
I was specifically not talking about 3rd world countries – I was talking about history in general and women inventors throughout the ages. Fact of the matter is that in the past, women contributed equally to the development of mankind. Only later did the patriarchal system come into place that hindered development because it stopped majority of women from doing specific kinds of work. (Also, “popping out children” has always been risky, even more so in the olden days. Plus they had to do all sorts of work besides being pregnant and caring for kids – simultaneously. Which was not the sole responsibility of the mother (or even just the mothers) for the majority of human history.) It’s also worth noting that men had the freedom they had because they were privileged over women and other groups, depending on time and place, since they didn’t “need” to partake in the more “mundane” activities – important as they were.
This, however, did not stop women from being awesome. There has always been great female thinkers, inventors and the common laborer is just as important. There are several technological advancements invented or developed further by women, several scientific discoveries, influential thinkers and mathematicians etc.
Once again, this is despite the fact that their lives have been negatively impacted by those who were in privileged positions.
If those forces were not enforced in the first place, humanity would have advanced at much faster pace.
And the same can be said about any class who have been put down by the more powerful classes. No doubt we have lost countless potential lives who would have changed the world if they were not enslaved in one form or another to serve the oppressors.
so the thesis of this is what? “be grateful you womenfolk are only treated as subhuman playthings rather than actual chattel because big strong manfolk could have been so much meaner and they weren’t”? What?The?fuck?
So I’d just like to make a stand for the non-US usage of the c-word. As a non-genital related term of abuse that has a very well-established history as the ultimate and most serious accusation one can make against another person, and one that (perhaps interesting in its irony) is used to describe *men* far more frequently than women. Cuntish behaviour is that displayed by the very worst of people – politicians who close down a country’s manufacturing base, oil companies who destroy habitats, religious orders that cover up sexual abuse. And that git who cuts you up on the motorway and nearly causes an accident. The definition of a cunt is someone who *knowingly* and with no sense of social responsibility does harm to others. It’s a term for the most reprehensible in society but conveys the disgust, anger and challenge that just saying “you’re reprehensible” ever can. So it’s no good saying “there are other words you can use” because there aren’t. Nothing trumps the c-word when used in the non-US way. That’s what it’s evolved to be – the worst thing you can call a person.
And why is that?
Because it’s a woman’s genitals.
And having been with the British Army, yeah,there are ways in which it’s not quite like that; but it is.
Or is the UK lexicon of swear words (which, I’ll guess is probably one of the biggest in the world,
Brits have nothing on the Russians.
re godamned vajajay: It’s from fucking television; and a show which takes place in a hospital for fucks sake (Grey’s Anatomy). They could say penis, but vagina… no. They had to make a new euphemism.
Fucking hypocritical shits.
Worse, I have heard it used without irony (we won’t even go into the idea of, “vajazzling”… ghunnh!!!!!!)
Beaver isn’t about teeth, but about their soft pelts.
Shit like “bearded clam” always drives me up the wall.
I hate those ones too, pecunium. Every damn slang term that appears is a put-down.
And even the clinical term “vagina” is badly misused these days too, used to mean any old part of the vulva.
Yup.
Extra stupid, isn’t it – the term so many people shy away from using is the wrong one anyway, most of the time.
At least “pudenda” has gone out of usage, even if too many people still seem to think women should be ashamed of having genitals.
Do you have a kids term for the vulva? In Sweden, the word “snippa” was purposely made up by feminists some years ago to have a kid’s word for it. Because we already had “snopp”, which is a kid’s word for penis, but no kid’s word for vulva existed. AFAIK they were pretty successful and the idea that just like you can use “snopp” for penis you can use “snippa” for vulva has been fairly generally accepted among kids and parents with little children.
Most feminists I know also use “fitta” in an attempt to reclaim it… which I guess is the Swedish equivalent of “cunt”… although not quite. It’s always been considered a dirty word, but it hasn’t been extensively used a slur or curse word until relatively recently, so I can see how it would be possible to reclaim it as a neutral word for genitals. For some reason Swedish cursing has traditionally been making use of Satan rather than genitals. Cursing with genital words is something that’s become more popular as a result of the influence of American pop culture, but might still be a reversible trend.
Whut? Are you sure it wasn’t “Anastasia Grey’s Lobotomy”?
In Finnish a rude word for vulva is a really common swearword, mostly dissociated from its literal meaning like English “fuck”. It’s not usually a personal slur, except if you tell someone to “go fuck themselves”, that would be literally “smell the cunt” or “crawl into a cunt”.
I guess this sounds horribly misogynistic when translated literally into English, but then again the English usage of “fuck” would sound horribly rapey in Finnish.
But your point is that it isn’t misogynistic, and that Finnish speakers understand this?
I really think these arguments of “in my language we have word X which just happens to mean both vulva and something terrible, but you see, the two meanings of X are totally not related, it’s not the case that X means something terrible as well as vulva because vulvas are seen/have been seen as terrible, it’s just a complete coincidence that X happens to mean both” are getting a little tedious. Nobody has claimed that everyone who uses X to mean “something horrible” is being consciously misogynistic. Just that it’s probably not a complete coincidence that lots of languages have a word which means a) vulva and b) something terrible.
But yeah, expressions using “fuck” could probably do with a bit of discussion as well, once we’re at it…
I should have added, “Not that that it isn’t somewhat problematic in Finnish context, just like “fuck you” is somewhat problematic in English, even though people mostly dissociate it from rape threats”. I’ve certainly seen some feminists criticize both issues, although most don’t seem to care. I realize I sounded like a clueless Englishman on the issue of “cunt”.
Also, now I think we’re foreignsplaining English to native speakers here 🙂
Haha, foreignsplaining! A new splaining-term has been coined!
@Aphrodite
“You mean the unpaid labour sitting at home popping out children? And inventions such as the plane, the computer, the development of Lapalce’s transforms, general relativity, cars, Hindu-Arabic numeral system? Oh yes, I forgot the invention of the chocolate chip cookie; I think I can live without them. Even today, the vast majority of hard work is done by men – from fighting the wars, to garbage cleaners, coal miners, fishermen, to construction. You don’t need to look to the 3rd world, just look at the west!”
THIS!!
I wonder what response these girls would give…
Yeah, well, if you think you can live without chocolate chip cookies.
🙄
“Even today, the vast majority of hard work is done by men – from fighting the wars, to garbage cleaners, coal miners, fishermen, to construction”
And to fight among this injustice, we will… rabidly attack any women who try to get into these spaces! We’re geniuses!
(mistake on the previous comment)
“Even today, the vast majority of hard work is done by men – from fighting the wars, to garbage cleaners, coal miners, fishermen, to construction”
And to fight against this injustice, we will… rabidly attack any women who try to get into these spaces!
Fun fact, the word “vittu” (lit. cunt) originally meant a hole or cave. Though not many people know this.
Like, everyone knows that the word refers to female genitalia, but it’s very rarely used in that context anymore. Another swearword for vagina/female genitalia in general has taken the place of it in that context. Vittu is generally only used to tell somebody off nowadays.
Also, the term “vituttaa” means to be extremely angry and annoyed, another very common usage. I don’t know the origins of this phrase, but it’s rather interesting that the word has almost completely lost it’s meaning as a body part.
There are also a couple of ways to insult people by referring to them as the male genitalia. (Mulkku, meaning the same and used the same way as the word dick. Not to be confused with murkku, which children often mispronounce as mulkku. Murkku is a cutesy name for an ant 😀 ) Then there’s also the relatively tame munapää, which can mean either egg-head (not a smart kind, but the opposite) or dick-head.
There are, however, slang terms that use a swear word meaning penis in similar context as vituttaa is used. I have for a decade or so heard some people say “kyrpiintynyt” which basically means extremely annoyed and tired of someone’s shit, or the like, and derives from a very impolite way of saying penis. I don’t know if it’s in wider usage, but I’ve heard it used a couple of times by people who did not learn it from me, so it likely isn’t just something me and my brother used as kids. Kyrpäotsa also literally means forehead-dick…. And so forth.
Long story short, Finnish language is very into it’s cussing and swearing, and a lot of words are nowadays so tame that they only raise eyebrows in more “professional company”, and a lot of words get turned into insults or cusswords for no specific reason…
Not that this necessarily takes away from them being offensive in origin or nature, but at least it appears to be fair game when genders are concerned 😛
The Finnish words for “cunt” can’t really be used in the same context either, unless literally talking about a cunt. And there more than one equivalent words, one of which is commonly used instead of vagina or vulva, albeit once again, not in polite company.
This has been a short lesson in useless Finnish terminology that you’d probably be better off without.
Ps. not really, I know one French person who some jokester douchebag taught swearwords instead of polite greetings when she visited Finland, and for some time she did use them sincerely thinking she was being polite, until somebody pointed out to her that she was just dropping random swear words to cashiers.
Anybody who claims that most work done historically or today are done by dudes, and that women haven’t contributed to the list of inventions that has made modern life what it is, are ignorant, and need to go read some books on history. (TBF, most history books are woefully ignorant about these facts as well. I wonder why?)
Secondly, caring for a home is hard fucking work in itself, and in no way deserves to be brushed off as unimportant.
I all ready ranted about this in a previous comment, but I’ll say it again ; the fact that the unprivileged classes were forced to do the work later dismissed as unimportant (which it wasn’t), is one of the reasons males have dominated history writing and shit. This did not still stop these underprivileged people from contributing. List of influential women and other thinkers and investors are easy to find, so ignorance is a lousy fucking excuse.
Srsly, between soldiers, garbage collectors, miners, and the rest, there are almost 7.5 million people in these dangerous occupations, virtually all men! That’s a whopping…2.5% of the population!
There are a whole 570 men in fishing alone!
(OSHA statistics: Kind of fascinating.)