See You Next Tuesday: Swearing & gender
Last night I was at a friend’s birthday party. Despite the
average age of attendees being about 30 years the crowd was divided with girls
on one side and boys on the other. (Someone noted that this was a very
Australian thing to do. Sadly I think this may be an accurate observation.)
Many of the attendees were either engaged or recently married
and as such the conversation among the girls was mostly about weddings (most
likely because when a bunch of people who barely know each other are grouped
together they will talk about the thing that most of them have in common not
because women are ‘obsessed’ with talking about such things). Now normally I
can talk for Australia about dresses, venues and what not but last night I was
not feeling it. This was mostly due to jet lag but also because I was irritated
at the gender division in seating and conversation. So I decided to wander over
to the boys’ table.
After reassuring one of the men that my delicate lady brain
could handle their in-depth ‘man talk’ (which turned out to include religion and
politics) we were happily chatting away. And then something strange happened. I
noticed that most of the guys would apologise to me (and only me) after they
swore; this was particularly evident whenever they said ‘cunt’.
I personally love swearing and think the double standard of
it not being ‘lady-like’ to do so is ridiculous. Either we all swear or we all
don’t and I vote for the former. There is something particularly elegant about
someone who can drop an F-bomb unexpectedly and appropriately. Tara Moss (see
her latest book where she does it so well here) and my thesis supervisor do
this particularly well.
But where I take real issue with this whole matter is the
use (or lack thereof) of the term, ‘cunt’. Do we need any clearer evidence that
we live in a patriarchal society when the most offensive thing you can say to a
person is a word for female genitalia? Most people wouldn’t even consider ‘dickhead’,
‘cockhead’, ‘dickwad’, etc (I had so many more, especially about scrotums, but
I think only those who grew up in the small country town I come from would get
them) to even be swear words. Some would even consider them to be a part of
Australian culture and as such endearing to use.
A friend and I attempted to reappropriate ‘cunt’ by using it
as a term of endearment. After receiving a few looks—ranging from surprised to
plain disgust—when doing this in public we resorted to only using it in text
messages (Dear Cuntie, are you up for tea and scones tomorrow? [Young & Louie,
2013]) but we’re hopeful we’ll get to a stage where we can use it in public and
receive the same scorn you would for any other swear word (or perhaps less?).
If you would like to contribute to our campaign to reappropriate
cunt we’d greatly appreciate it. It doesn’t require a donation or fundraising event (although I would love to see that); just a text to your bestie telling them what a special cunt they are will do the trick.
Kate xx