The crowd cheers
Ricky Gervais again.
"I now pronounce you cunt & wife" pic.twitter.com/BVSaSFAkeH
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 30, 2017
I would like to apologise to anyone offended by me using the 'C' word. I will change my ways. You stupid over sensitive kunts.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) October 3, 2017
What a fucking prick…
Is that real? There are six year olds on my street who could shoot a zebra dead. There’s no talent or honor in any of this.
I recently challenged a family member for using that word as an insult, in my usual way*, and got the reply:
“Ok then, a penis: all hard and ready for business but when the going gets tough, deflates real quick”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
*”But why are you paying them a compliment? They have neither the warmth nor the depth.”
Not my invention, but my favourite way of pointing out that it shouldn’t be used as an epithet.
Is it worth pointing out that in the speech community that Gervaise belongs to ‘cunt’ is not a sexist term of abuse?
Gervais is…. not very good at taking criticism. A few years ago I might have made some obviously brilliant and constructive point about how he was a fucking idiot or something and received hundreds of tweets a day for the best part of a week from dozens of his followers while he smirkingly egged them on. The vast majority of those tweets seemed more concerned with tortures I should be subjected to than refuting the point that Ricky Gervais is quite obviously a fucking idiot.
My experience aside, Gervais is one of those people I especially hate being widely described as a capitol S skeptic or a caps A atheist. It’s not just that his views are awful and he refuses to learn. It’s not just that he siks his followers on anyone who disagrees. It’s not just that he is a rampaging misogynist and ablest. There are plenty of atheist/skeptics who do that.
It’s that he has done absolutely NOTHING to earn his reputation. He did a comedy show once where he said god wasn’t real and is hailed as the atheist messiah. He didn’t follow it up. He didn’t campaign in any obvious way for things like religious schools to be abolished or to address the institutionalised dogma that makes so many people’s lives such a misery.
That’s fair enough, there’s no reason why he should. And by the same token there’s no reason people should act as though he did and especially no reason why HE should act as though he did. Which he certainly does.
He is the British Scott Adams. The only difference is that he smirks more when Adams sneers more.
Pinkeen –
No, it is not. This community hears that EVERY DAMN TIME Ophelia posts any opposition to that. In addition, I would say from what I’ve seen, read, and heard from people in “the speech community that Gervaise belongs to” it isn’t certain that it is not in fact a sexist term of abuse. Many many people in that “speech community that Gervaise belongs to” see it as a term of sexist abuse.
Please go away if that is the best contribution you can make to the conversation. It is not original, not witty, not helpful, it serves only to derail a conversation, and exhaust the feminist community (which I suspect is the real reason people keep saying “cultural differences!”. The goal IS to exhaust the feminist community.
Well, I thought it had probably been brought up before, but it is still true; ‘cunt’ where Gervais comes from is just a rude word and not gendered at all.
@Pinkeen:
I belong to the ‘speech community’ that Gervais does. And you are completely wrong. Inklast explains why. I have also explained why here and elsewhere a number of times. Ophelia practically made a career out of explaining this point, for a while. I suggest you read what she wrote.
It’s very simple. “Cunt” means “bad thing”. Cunts are what women have and – for a certain type of man – define what women *are*.
Tell me again that this is not a sexist insult. Come back at me by all means about how “cock” and “prick” are gendered insults too so are just the same. Then explain why “cunt” just happens to be the worst insult of all. Come back and tell me that men use “cunt” to refer affectionately to friends, as though you haven’t bothered to think this through for the slightest second. Yes, macho men sometimes use offensive terms to reinforce macho hierarchy. Doesn’t it strike you as in the least suspicious that “cunt” is so popular in this practice? It’s not “little dick”. It’s not “mother fucker”. It’s “cunt”.
Tell me again that it is not a sexist insult in the UK.
I’ll certainly buy the claim that lots of people in “the speech community that Gervaise belongs to” say “cunt” has nothing to do with misogyny. I may accept the claim that some of them may possibly believe it. But the claim that “‘cunt’ where Gervais comes from is just a rude word and not gendered at all”? Haha, no.
Is there even such a thing as a word that is rude and that has been a word for genitalia for many centuries AND no longer has any reference to said genitalia at all but remains a rude word?
How would that work?
Wherein lies the “rude” if the word has become wholly detached from its longstanding meaning?
Are there any “rude” words that are purely arbitrary?
I have occasion to fret about such things often, because I am always racking my brains for new things to call Donald Trump, and there just aren’t that many, at least not ones that don’t sound wretchedly feeble and inadequate.
I have taken to the word “monster” though I’m beginning to think that might be feeble and inadequate. But at least it’s not gendered – there can be male monsters and female monsters.
Yeah, but those female monsters are the *worst*, right?
Yep, I’ve resorted to monster a few times. “President Monster” is one of the many “President ___” tags. But I need an epithet so often. They’re all worn to a thread.
Don’t be ridiculous, Ophelia, there are loads of insults that aren’t about gender.
Bastard. There’s one. Men and women can both be bas…. oh, wait a minute, it’s an insult about your mother, isn’t it?
OK, how about Fucktangle, which is an insult I invented? Men and women both fuck, right? Oh, I remember now, men fuck and women are fucked.
Yeah, not so easy.
@ Pinkeen
What community is that then? Working class English? That’s me, and I (and most women I know) hate it’s casual use. London working class English? Nope, I know women in that community who hate it too.
Oh! I know! You mean amongst men it’s not a rude word. How nice for them.
By the same logic, I suppose it’s OK for straight people to use the word “gay” as an insult – what? It’s not an insult in their community.
Repeat for every single other epithet you can think of.
That!
Working class British (Welsh) here backing up Steamshovelmama. The only people I’ve ever heard in my speech community use the c-word have, oddly enough, been sexist men.
It’s not sexist for the same reason that ‘dick’ isn’t sexist although, unlike ‘cunt’, ‘cock’ and dick’ are gendered, you can only use them to describe men (in normal use).
Why is ‘cunt’ the strongest? I think it is probably just because some word has to be and this one got arbitrarily picked on. Supporting evidence for that theory is available in other languages from communities no less sexist than the UK such as Spain, where it is a very mild swear word and not an epithet at all. And, of course, even in the UK other words that refer to female genitalia such as ‘fanny’ or ‘twat’ are also very or quite mild.
It’s possible that some British people on here only hear the word used by men, I am surprised but it is possible. But among the women I know, mostly but not only middle class professional, and especially among the arty types, the types I guess Gervais knows best, it is a very common swear word and used very freely.
Apparently I didn’t get my copy of the rule book about what things you “can” call which people. But you’re mangling the meanings of “sexist” and “gendered” even while unconsciously making my point for me.
Wait…what? One word *has* to be the worst word? Why? And why would you assume the reason it was “chosen” to be the worst word was arbitrary, when history suggests otherwise? Again, you seem to be mangling meanings. While there’s obviously some degree of arbitrariness over the particular word that was “chosen”, if you insist, to be the worst word, that doesn’t mean that any other choice would have been equally likely. Nobody span a big wheel of words to pick the worst one and the pointer just happened to land on “cunt”. It would never have been “penis” or “rice” or “jam”. There is history behind its use and its usage.
That ought to be reason enough for us to be careful of using it. You’re right that other words denoting female genitalia are not considered so offensive but I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. Calling someone a pussy, for example, is a horribly sexist thing to do for reasons I assume are obvious. We shouldn’t do that, either. Ask yourself whether calling someone either of the genitalia-related c words is the same, not just because of the decided-upon seriousness of one of the words but because of the implications of what is being said.
Again with the weird assumptions about what “gendered” means. I don’t even know how to address that point because it is so odd. What I will say is reminiscent of what Steamshovelmama said:
My grandma used to refer to various objects (cars, chairs, wallpaper (this was the 70s, just about everything was brown then)) as being “nigger brown” in colour. So did lots of other people. That didn’t make it acceptable and neither did it make it acceptable when my mother in law – some 30 years later – used the term liberally and we briefly fell out. Ignorance of why that term was so offensive was no excuse for either of them.
My point is that something like this must have happened and it could have been ‘penis’ or ‘jam’ or, as in Spain ‘goat’ that was designated the most fearsome insult. In other words, the fact that ‘cunt’ is the strongest word cannot tell us anything about how women are regarded and is not therefore sexist. I was arguing against your point that there is great significance in the fact that this is considered stronger than, say, ‘dick. It is not at all obvious that there is history behind it and evidence from other cultures as well as our own seems to hint that there isn’t.
The fact that you, personally, don’t know the history of something doesn’t mean the history doesn’t exist, however much you wish for it.
No, that is true, of course, but we have clues, even if some of them are necessarily circumstantial, and I think they point away from your interpretation and towards mine.
No, that’s just a basic logic fail. The fact that some bad words are not obviously an indicator of misogyny doesn’t in any way imply that *other* bad words are not. Even if one bad word were somehow chosen arbitrarily it in no way implies that all others were. That’s what you’re asking me to accept and I can’t, because it makes no sense at all.
But it’s all blitheringly beside the point anyway. Learning about why words are offensive and/or harmful is useful. Randomly and illogically deciding that the reason is just arbitrary because goat seems less so. I’m all in favour of offending people when there’s a good reason. For example, I encourage everyone to blaspheme as much as possible when it’s safe to do so. But I don’t see a point in being deliberately offensive solely in order to smirk at the people you’ve deliberately offended. Which might as well be the entire content of Ricky Gervais’ Wikipedia page.
But you beg the question, whether ‘cunt’ is especially offensive in the sense that you mean is precisely the thing we haven’t established. I think Gervais is right about this, at least for the speech community (including women) that he belongs too, it is rude but it is not operationally different from any other rude word even if it has some added intensity which, as I said, I think is purely conventional for the reasons given.
But the point is that Gervais isn’t affected by the consequences of what he’s saying and so smugly dismisses the concerns of those who are. Is it weird and at least somewhat arbitrary that certain words are hateful and in the context of societies can help to foster horrible attitudes? Fuck yes. It’s not the word’s fault, but words can be a sort of catalyst for horrible attitudes and awful behaviour.
Anyway, I’m boring even myself with the sound of my own typing so I’ll shut up now. I think I’ve completely failed to explain myself anyway.
I think these questions about how words function among different groups and how meanings are agreed and policed are really fascinating, but perhaps this isn’t the bast example to choose!
As promised, I will leave it to others – should they choose – to explain why OF COURSE IT IS.
No, I meant the best example to choose from the point of view of the heat and upset it generates.
Christ.
It generates heat and upset, and yet, bafflingly, that’s for no reason at all, because the word is wholly arbitrary and has nothing to do with misogyny or women despite the fact that it means “female genitalia.” What a surreal, puzzling, enigmatic situation.