Last week I wrote about the fondness of a certain Men’s Rights website for a certain four-letter word starting with the letter c. This week they’ve topped themselves — with a postering campaign based on the c-word.
Yep: A Voice for Men has thrown its support behind a postering campaign with the slogan: “Having a vagina is no excuse for being a C*NT.”
They don’t use an asterisk.
The postering campaign, spearheaded by a Youtube antifeminist calling himself Bane666au, feature what purport to be real quotes from feminists alongside not-exactly-subtle stock photos depicting comically angry women. For example:
I’m the one who blurred out the c-word; they left it intact. Other alleged feminist quotes include:
If a woman has drunk any amount of alcohol, she can’t consent to sex.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than the suffering of men.
Historically, women have been oppressed worse than black slaves.
That last one is a tad ironic. Not just because it’s a bit odd to contrast “women” and “black slaves” when half of all black slaves were women and girls. And not just because I never hear feminists making this claim. No, it’s a tad ironic because AVFM is constantly comparing men to slaves and suggesting that men are being “enslaved” by everything from child support payments to the women they date.
But I digress. You may wonder where exactly all these alleged quotes come from. In the comments to his AVFM post promoting the postering campaign, AVFM’s Dean Esmay blithely assures readers that “most or all” of the sources of the quotes can be found “right at the end of the video.”
This is not — how should I put it? — true. In fact, the percentage of quotations accurately sourced at the end of the video is a lot closer to “none” than to “most.” Bane666au, for his part, only claims that “all comments are based on actual comments I’ve seen or heard from self proclaimed feminists.”
Apparently he has an extremely loose definition of “based on” because only a couple of the actual quotes from Tumblr feminists he includes at the end of his video bear much resemblance to his, er, paraphrases.
Many of the alleged “hateful” quotes are obvious jokes, taken completely out of context, taking aim at popular perceptions of feminists. Here’s one screenshot from his video (with the name of the poster blurred out):
So who is the terrible misandrist who posted this terrible thing? I went and looked at her Tumblr. It consists of a lot of arty photos of her, mixed with pictures of favorite bands, some of her own artwork — and various pictures of various boyfriends, all evidently remembered with much fondness. On Valentine’s Day she posted some Valentine’s Day cards she designed and drew, inspired by The Smiths and Fleetwood Mac. She’s an excellent artist. There was no hatred to be found there.
And it’s a little hard to see how anyone but a misogynist who has named himself after a Batman villain could possibly interpret this comment, from another Tumblr feminist, as “misandry.”
And speaking of reasonable statements interpreted as misandry, here’s my favorite poster in Bane666‘s batch of posters:
Now, I hope I don’t shock anyone here by saying it, but the wage gap is real. There’s some debate over the size of it, and to what degree it is appropriate to attribute the gap to women’s “choices” rather than discrimination. But it exists. Even the study most cited by those who like to downplay the gap, a 2009 Labor Department report prepared by the CONSAD Research Corp., found a roughly 5-7% wage gap that couldn’t be explained away by women’s “choices.” (See here for more.)
But MRAs have convinced themselves that the gender wage gap is a “myth.” Having failed to win over the rest of the world to this incorrect belief through the power of simple repetition, the folks at AVFM have evidently decided to move on to gendered slurs.
It will be interesting to see how this works out for them.
Yeah, we operate on the basis of decent human being 101 around here. Too bad you can’t.
@ thebewilderness
You first
Meh. Not impressed with Laci and never have been. She panders to dudebros, not to mention allowing really gross comments through on her videos. Like seriously, I don’t need to know about how some idiot wants to stuff a roll of tube socks in her mouth (to shut her up hurr hurr) and fuck her from behind. Not a safe place.
Your speech wasn’t censored, I just read it. So…
Boring troll is boring.
I suggest you all look it up in the dictionary, let it clarify it for you all .. as you seem to be very unclear what you are actually talking about ..
They aren’t even pretending to hide their hate of women/feminists anymore…. Kinda sad. I thought they’d you know, at least try and pretend they are just misunderstood a little longer. But instead, straight up hate.
Sigh.
Tooting – in the US, t**t is considered a gendered slur (along with c**t). Just find another word.
Oh, God. A dictionary troll.
They always remind me this time at a debate tournament where the topic was racial profiling* for national security and we were anti. The pro team tried to define racial profiling as “putting extra scrutiny on conservative muslims with ties to groups that support terrorism” based on a dictionary definition of “race”. Our team was like “Lol no, that’s not what racial profiling means. Also, white people can be terrorists too, so better to use strategies designed to catch active terrorists of all backgrounds than waste effort on huge populations.”
I joked later that our argument could have been summed up in two words: Timothy McVeigh.
* I did a form of debate called public debate. It is only in Oregon, as far as I know, and involves getting a new topic every round and having 15 minutes to prepare your arguments. Alone. With no internet or other help. There is a college version, but it involves fifteen minutes to prepare with your coach, who tells you which canned arguments to run. It stole everything I enjoyed in debate and replaced it with everything I hated, so I only went to one college tournament.
oh yeah and I suggest, you all read the poem by John Cooper-Clarke .. called “Twat”
You might even learn something..
Asshat
“He who wears his ass for a hat.”
Yes, of course, the word twat just sprang, fully formed, into the language, as all words do. There’s a committee in a small room in a basement in London that just dreams up new words.
The word does indeed have an ‘original meaning’. If you check the OED, as opposed to whatever online dictionary you feel like turning to, you will see that the word comes into the language most likely from an Old Norse word meaning a slit or a cut and makes clear reference to the female anatomy. From there it becomes used to refer to the whole woman or girl, reducing her to her sexual anatomy. And from there to a general insult which gets its power from the initial use to refer to the mechanics of the female anatomy.
All of which was interesting, but really not relevant. What is relevant is that we don’t use gendered slurs here. Feel free to use them if you like, but you offer eloquent evidence that you are an asshole by doing so.
I suggest you look up “ellipsis.”
@sirtooting: The primary meaning is slang for vagina. You are insulting a person by comparing them to a vagina. It is like calling someone shit-head. The insult comes from the comparison to a (supposedly) undesirable, despicable, or dirty thing. English, do you speak it?
katz…
Also, those “posters” up at the top…it’s like they’re satire. Have they wised up and started making fun of themselves? Mad Magazine or The Onion couldn’t have done a better job. Heh.
The second meaning is related to the first, and this can be seen in the usage of the word. So no, you don’t have a case.
And FFS we’re not censoring you – we’re calling you out for using a misogynist slur.
@Ally: People cry “censorship” at the stupidest fucking things nowadays. Free speech doesn’t mean people can’t call you on your shit. Nor does it mean that people can never criticize things you like. Get over it. -_-
The word twat has various functions. It is a vulgar synonym for the human vulva,[1] but is more widely used as a derogatory epithet, especially in British English. The word .. MAY.. originate from Old Norse þveit meaning cut, slit, or forest clearing. but they ain’t certain .. so origin unknown .. no definitive.
It is commonly thought that a “twat” is a noun to describe a pregnant goldfish.[3] However, this is disputed by some and may be an urban myth. .. No i believe that is totally wrong .. because that word for a pregnant fish is the word .. Prat
Although sometimes used as a reference to the female genitalia, the word twat is more OFTEN used in various other ways:
As a derogatory insult, a pejorative meaning a fool, a stronger alternative to the word twit – ‘He can be a complete twat’ (often used in the UK)[4]
To hit something (or someone) hard or violently – ‘Let’s get out there and twat it!'[5]
The Atlantic – The Great Divide
Two nations divided by a common language.
Oscar Wilde.
With swearing, context is everything. Words that are in common use in the UK are indecipherable to American ears, and vice versa. It takes more than just a simple ‘bloody’ (a corruption of ‘By your Lady’, a religious exclamation from the Middle Ages’) to swear like a Brit. Most British swear-words have a history longer than that of the United States itself, evolving out of even older European languages such as Norse, High German and Latin (hence British phrases like ‘a stream of Anglo-Saxon’ or, most commonly, ‘pardon my French’). For instance, the word ‘ass’ in American-English, meaning buttocks or anus, evolved from the British word ‘arse’1. Before WW1, people in southern English would pronounce the word ‘ass’, meaning donkey, with a long ‘a’, making it indistinguishable from ‘arse’ in spoken English. Considered only moderately vulgar in the UK, it can be put to a number of different, often contradictory uses…
The phrase ‘can’t be arsed’ signifies apathy or a lack of enthusiasm, yet to ‘get your arse in gear’ means to become organised or to ‘hurry up.
‘Arse over tit’/’tip’, ‘arse over apex’, ‘arse up’ or ‘arse about’ are all phrases which describe a spectacular prattfall or clumsy action. The word ‘prattfall’, incidentally, also means ‘arse over tit’; ‘pratt’ being an old word for ‘arse’ that has come to lose its meaning over the years. The word ‘pratt’ is still, however, used to this day to mean a fool.
A ‘Smart arse’ (signifying someone who is too clever for their own good) can be used either affectionately or to cause offence, while ‘Silly arse’ merely means a fool. To ‘arse about’ can also mean to play the fool. A ‘short-arse’, however, is someone with short legs.
A less-offensive term for ‘posterior’ in the UK is ‘bum’, which in America might be referred to as ‘butt’. It made its first appearance in around the 14th Century, and was put to good use by Shakespeare: In Measure for Measure, Escalus asks Pompey what his second name is. ‘Bum, Sir’ replies Pompey. To which Escalus replies ‘Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great.’ (They don’t tell ’em like that any more – thank goodness). However, in America the word as a noun has come to means tramp or hobo, while as a verb to mean ‘scrounge’ or borrow’.
Body Talk – Male
Variations on ‘arse-up’ include ‘balls-up’, which tends to be used to describe when things go badly, as in ‘that meeting was a total balls-up’. A ‘ballsy’ person would be feisty or determined, while describing someone as ‘not having the balls’ to do something would mean they’re cowardly, a clear masculine-reassurance insult. In America – specifically American gangster movies starring Joe Pesci – the phrase ‘busting my balls’ equates to annoying or nagging someone. This highlights another difference between American and British usage; in Britain the phrase is used to mean ‘trying very hard at something’ in much the same way as a Brit might say ‘busting a gut’.
A stronger British term for testicles, which rhymes with ‘frollocks’, is probably worth a guide entry of its own. To talk this word would mean to talk rubbish or to be misinformed, while to say something is ‘the dog’s…’ (often gentrified as ‘the mutt’s nuts’) would suggest it is the best there is. Legend has it that in the 1950s, construction kits like Meccano would be sold in boxes of various sizes. The list of contents which came with the standard size box would be headed ‘Box, Standard’ (which elided into ‘bog standard’ when spoken) and the larger box was the ‘Box, Deluxe’ which was spoonerised to create the phrase ‘The Dog’s B******s’. This is such a satisfying explanation for two common forms of British English usage that one really wants it to be true.
The word’s probable derivation is so non-vulgar as to be quite amusing. Specifically, a bollock is a pulley-block at the head of a topmast, otherwise known as a bullock block. This was used to great effect to prevent the Sex Pistols’ album Never Mind the Bollocks from being censored. A refreshing example of the legal system grabbing hold of the wrong reason and using it to do the right thing.
A ‘B******ing’ on the other hand, is a severe dressing down or ticking off. The reason for this is mercifully unclear.
Brits will say ‘b******-naked’ while Americans will say ‘butt-naked’. Why Brits verify nudity from the front and Americans verify it from the rear is anyone’s guess.
Although the phrase ‘cock-up’ might appear to have come about in a similar way to ‘balls-up’, its origins are actually in beer making. If the batch went bad, they turned the cock (ie tap, or faucet) up to drain the barrel. However, the word ‘cock’, a Middle and Old English word, is one of the many vulgarities for the penis. In London, though, Cockneys appear to have both terms in mind when they say ‘Wotcher cock’, which comes from the term ‘cock sparrow’ (pronounced ‘sparrah’). It is a general term for a man, although ‘cock sparrow’ was usually saved for small boys. It has been used for about 300 years.
A more childish term for penis is ‘willy’ or ‘willie’. This British English word had audiences sniggering in the aisles of cinemas throughout the UK when the first trailers were shown for the film Free Willy. On the other hand it is tempting to wonder whether or not the celebrated actor and rapper Will Smith had taken advice on the way in which British audiences might interpret the title of his 1997 album Big Willie Style (though it’s unlikely he would actually have objected to the misunderstanding). Willie is essentially an innocent playground word, and there was delighted laughter across the land when commentator Brian Johnson referred to two players during a cricket match, pointing out that ‘The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey’.
Body Talk – Female
The word ‘fanny’ in America is, like, ‘bum’, mildly vulgar, meaning ‘buttocks’. In the UK, however, it is rarely used in polite conversation as it would be interpreted as meaning ‘vagina’. If someone is being vague or indecisive, they can be said to be ‘fannying about’. In the 1970s, there was a pioneering all-female American rock band called Fanny. They were originally called Wild Honey (which is almost as suggestive) and they adopted their new name on the recommendation of ex-Beatle George Harrison, without being aware of the British usage. In 1970, Fanny covered Cream’s Badge, and this song earned it air-play for their self-titled debut LP. The girl’s name, ‘Fanny’, does of course result in chuckles on either side of the Atlantic. Anthony Trollope’s mother, Frances, wrote a highly critical book called The Domestic Manners of the Americans. The Americans were rather non-plussed since they simply could not believe that the ‘Fanny Trollope’ was not a pseudonym. There is also the phrase ‘sweet Fanny Adams’ which is sometimes abbreviated to ‘sweet FA’. Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old child who was murdered and dismembered in Alton, Hampshire, in 1867. Her grave is still there. At around the same time, the British Navy started preserving chopped mutton in tins, and the sailors – always an uncouth lot – described this as ‘sweet Fanny Adams’ which eventually came to mean ‘nothing of any good at all’. An unhappy epitaph to a nasty story.
One of the most offensive terms for female genitalia, the c-word, is the ultimate four-letter word in British English, the final media taboo. The first use of the word in a UK TV drama was in Mosley, a drama about the rise and fall of the British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley. This was first shown on Channel 4 in the late 1990s. The word is also the title of a novel by Stewart Home, published in 1999, about the breakdown of a writer as he rather badly loses the plot, both literally and creatively.
The word has Germanic cognates including old Norse (kunta), middle-Dutch (Kunte) and possibly High German (Kotze meaning prostitute), which all point to a pre-historic germanic ancestor kunton. A Latin word, Kuntus, meaning wedge, might also have been an influence. The word would appear to have entered the English language during the early Middle Ages; in 1230AD, both Oxford and London boasted districts called ‘Gropecunte Lane’, in reference to the prostitutes that worked there. The Oxford lane was later renamed the slightly less-contentious Magpie Lane, while London’s version retained a sense of euphemism when it was changed to ‘Threadneedle Street’. Records do not show whether it was a decision of intentional irony that eventually placed the Bank of England there.
The word has good Shakespearian usage, though even he was a little subtle. Hamlet asks whether he can lie in Ophelia’s lap, ‘I mean, my head upon your lap?’ and then says ‘Do you think I meant country matters?’ and follows up with ‘It is a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs’. Ophelia answers non-committally to most of this. A slightly more bawdy use of the word appears in Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head, one of a series of British comedy films of the 1960s, in which actress Joan Sims refers to her husband, ‘The Count’, deliberately pronouncing the word ‘Count’ with just enough room to be (mis)interpreted while still getting past the British film censors.
There is a story in Oxford that one of the religious societies in England’s oldest university was the Cambridge University New Testament Society, though that has the whiff of urban legend about it. And more recently, there is a rumour that the former Newcastle Polytechnic had got to the stage of printing their letterheads with the name City University, Newcastle upon Tyne before noticing what they were doing.2
Other Universities can also be hotbeds of a certain inspired madness. Late in 2000, feminists in Penn State in the USA held a ‘C***fest’ with the stated objective of reclaiming the word, which, according to Inga Muscio in her book C***: A Declaration of Independence, stems from words that were ‘either titles of respect for women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of goddesses’ names’. (Though how that squares with what the dictionaries say is not entirely clear). Not surprisingly, the local community did not see the event in quite the same way.
The abusive term ‘Berk’ also derives from this word, being cockney rhyming slang, short for ‘Berkshire Hunt’.
So don’t get using the word fanny, otherwise i will be offended
You’re telling me to “get over it?” CENSORSHIP
=P
“oh yeah and I suggest, you all read the poem by John Cooper-Clarke .. called “Twat”
You might even learn something..”
Mansplain, my favorite thing. **eyeroll**
No, no! Clearly, if I have a right to free speech (and the first amendment to the US constitution guarantees the safety and inviolability of frozen peaches all over the world donchaknow!!) then I also have a right to make everyone listen to me and no one is allowed to get mad, or criticize, or be mean to me because censorship!!
What’s that you say? You thought my joke was really boring and un-funny? Censorship!
..
..
..
sirtooting, you have been asked politely to knock it off, just be a decent human and do it. It’s not that big of an ask.
Is it time to call in the Dark Lord, folks?
@Shiraz: Don’t ya know? criticism = censorship. *headdesk*