Bad behaviour??? Us???
Ah yes: how the boys talk about women amongst themselves.
Dominic Cummings called the UK’s most senior female civil servant a “cunt” in a misogynistic WhatsApp message sent to Boris Johnson and Lee Cain in August 2020.
Of course he did. What’s the worst foulest evilest thing in the world? The part of women where all humans emerge into life.
He was referring to deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara, who had commissioned a report into poor behaviour within the Cabinet Office.
And he certainly made clear that there was no bad behavior in the Cabinet Office, didn’t he.
The message in full reads: “If I have to come back to Helen’s bullshit with PET [propriety and ethics] designed to waste huge amounts of my time so I can’t spend it on other stuff – I will personally handcuff her and escort her from the building. I don’t care how it is done but that woman must be out of our hair – we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that cunt.”
How dare she do her job. How dare she challenge the boys. How dare she have female genitalia.
The inquiry heard yesterday that MacNamara had commissioned a report into the culture at Number 10 in May 2020, which – according to the lead counsel to the inquiry Hugo Keith KC – had painted a picture of “misogyny” and a “macho” culture.
So Dominic Cummings hastened to demonstrate the falsehood of that picture by calling MacNamara a cunt. No macho misogyny there, no sirree.
Speaking after the day’s hearing, the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group said in a statement: “The nastiness, arrogance and misogyny at the heart of government during the pandemic is core to the awful decision making that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths and tore families like ours apart.
“When you see that these figures had such a shocking disregard for each other, you can only imagine the disregard they had for families like mine. In Boris Johnson’s own words his government was an ‘orgy of narcissism’, with Cummings at the heart. That narcissism had deadly consequences.
“It was led by ministers and advisers who thought they could rewrite scientific advice, who thought they knew better than the rest of the world, and ‘appallingly neglected’ the most vulnerable in our society, as Cummings acknowledged today.
“Whilst they drift on to be after dinner speakers, reality TV stars or on to new highly paid jobs, we’re left having to deal with the consequences of their failures for the rest of our lives.”
Oh just blame it on Helen MacNamara.
Kathleen Stock wrote a brilliant article about this:-
https://unherd.com/2023/11/dominic-cummings-is-no-reservoir-dog/
We have been repeatedly told that our American sensibilities are dialed up too high on the word “cunt.” We have been told that our UK and Irish cousins do not see the word as a sexist insult, but instead an ancient Scottish term of endearment for friends and/or people who suck and we either love them or hate them, whether they be male or female.
I don’t buy it. It may have once been harmless, but there was a time when driving without seatbelts was also the standard of the day. It’s used as a demeaning term for women by people who I know are from England or Australia, and they hide behind the “ancient term of camaraderie” definition to explain that the user is not misogynistic and that Americans are just too bloody sensitive.
Also, wasn’t Cummings given serious consideration for PM by the Tories after they were done with BoJo and then Truss? If it weren’t for the sad state of Trans Takeover in Labour, I would say the next election can’t come soon enough.
It’s certainly clear enough that Dominic Cummings wasn’t using it as a blokey term of endearment.
The comments on Kathleen’s article are hair-raising, and nearly all from men. Much emphasis on the old “‘cunt’ is not sexist because men get called it the most” trope.
I simply don’t get that ‘men are called it, too’ trope. That doesn’t mean it’s not a sexist slur, since men are often called terms associated with women as slurs. In fact, the fact that it is used so often against men seems to me to support the sexist argument. After all, what is considered more insulting for a man than to refer to him by a female-associated term?
I agree with Ikn @5. It seems particularly true for men who are not secure in their masculinity. I wonder if trans “women” see it as an affirmation, like being catcalled. Didn’t we see someone boasting about that not long ago?
How about the restaurant guy. What if one of the servers called him a stupid bastard; would he correct them with a sexist insult more appropriate to his gender identity?
You are right, Mike – what you have been told is, er, bollocks. All of it.
Cunt is essentially a sexist insult. It is in the very meaning of the word. And if there ever was a time when that word was relatively harmless, that was long long ago. Even in the eighteenth-century it was literally unprintable. Here’s Captain Francis Grose in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd edn, 1788:
*I’ve transliterated the Greek characters. ** Guy Miège was a Swiss French lexicographer.
It has never been a distinctively Scots word: it has been current in England for centuries. It is first found in the early thirteenth century in a London street name: Gropecunt Lane. Whether it is true that nowadays some Scots use it as a term of endearment I do not know. I have never heard it used like that in England. Here it is a term of abuse and it is implicitly sexist, associated, as it essentially is, with disgust at women’s private parts. I have no doubt whatsoever that when Dominic Cummings called Helen MacNamara a cunt he was making fully intentional use of an insult that is both misogynist and deeply contemptuous.
I can assure our US and UK readers that here in the Great Land of Downunder, cunt IS used as a term of endearment amongst some sub sets of men.
That sub set of men being the drunken uncles at parties, the misogynist and homophobic, sexually insecure males. Not only do they call each other “cunt”, but they also use other terms of endearment, such as “poof” to assure themselves that while their best friend may be gay, they most assuredly are straight. They refer to their wives/girlfriends as “The Missus” in fear that if they use her name she will either appear and drag them home, or at the least, be acknowledged as a separate person. And they all end the night, standing around the lemon tree, tinnie in one hand, cock in the other, because nothing says “I’m no poof” like flashing your willy at all your mates.
Having spent time in North Lanarkshire, I’ve heard “cunt” used as a sort of endearment. It’s clear though that that’s not how Dominic Cummings intended it. And Cummings is not and never has been a working class Scot.
[…] a comment by Rev David Brindley on Bad Behaviour??? […]
Rev, that all sounds very familiar. It really is immature and insecure behaviour. I’ll admit to having been involved in that sort of group behaviour as a teen at school. Not since, though I’ve certainly witnessed it. Certainly none of the men who are my friends and peer group through work and various activities engage in that sort of thing. It would not go down well. When you’re secure in yourself you can be pleased to see a friend and not have to hide that under abuse. Similarly, when you dislike or disagree with someone there are adult ways of dealing with that.
My understanding is that it’s use (and similar use of other insults) as a term of endearment relies precisely on it being a horrible insult. What it signals to the target and bystanders is that we are such great mates that we can insult each other grievously and it be understood as congenial banter or repartee rather than fighting words.