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A recent diary entry touched on an issue that I have been arguing about in bars lately. The subject in question is the use of terms for genitalia as insults. There are so many such insults that we might as well create a new grammatical term to describe them: The genital offensive.
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In America, the term for the vagina that is most commonly used as an insult is the word pussy. It is almost always applied to men, and it implies weakness or cowardice. The feminists have gone completely apeshit over this, resulting in an Orwellian obliteration of the formerly mild term in certain circles.
There are many terms for the penis deployed as insults, and they are remarkably consistent in meaning. The word schmuck is relatively benign, probably because many people are entirely oblivious to Yiddish. As we move on to stronger but still mild words such as pecker and dick and then to harsher terms like prick and cock, the meaning is preserved; the words describe someone who is overbearing, inconsiderate, short-tempered, and possibly violent, and the insult is invariably applied to men. The feminists have nothing to say about this. In fact, the feminists have unwittingly taken the central tenet of the most common case of the penile genital offensive, and raised it the level of gospel truth: to wit, the equation of the penis with violence. This association is absurd on its face, and yet it persists. The truth of the matter, as almost everyone knows, is that the penis is essentially useless as a weapon. The soft skin of the penis is quite prone to abrasion, especially when erect. When flaccid, the penis is useless for delivering blows of any consequence to one's enemies. When erect, the application of very little force can cause tremendous pain to the penis, and greater force can cause irreparable damage. And yet, thanks in part to the feminists, we continue to see widespread use of the penile genital offensive to indicate aggression in men. Perhaps some day an overly earnest do-gooder will begin collecting "penis monologues" and staging them for audiences of undergraduates, and the gentle, loving penis will finally emerge from the fog of shame surrounding it, and leave its legacy of hurtful misunderstanding behind. Stranger things have happened. There are a couple of other vaginal genital offensives worthy of note. The most interesting, of course, is the word cunt. In the US, this word is applied exclusively to women, and it indicates stubbornness, foul temper, and petty viciousness. It is commonly used by both men and women, unlike its cousin twat, which is used almost exclusively by men, perhaps because it is understood to carry an additional connotation of worthlessness. In the UK, the word cunt is used somewhat differently. It is commonly used by men to describe other men, and its meaning is very close to that of pussy as described above, perhaps with an added implication that the man being insulted is deceptive. The only other penile genital offensives of note are mild terms meaning "idiot" or "obsessive," such as boner or the Yiddish putz. These insults are so mild that they are never meant to be truly insulting, conveying as they do more levity than antipathy. For those who choose to regard the genital offensive as problematic when used to imply aggression or stubbornness, I believe there is a workable alternative: fist. The implication of violence is clear, and the advanced sexual practice known as fisting should lend sufficient vulgarity to the term. It can be used as a noun, standing in directly for the penile genital offensive, e.g., "I hear what you're trying to say, but you don't have to be such a fist about it," or "did you hear what he said to her? What a fucking fist." More creative usage is possible, of course: "would you kindly pull your fist out of my ass and listen for a minute?" "Before you put that fist back in, do you mind if I introduce you to my favorite lubricant, semiotics?" (or whatever topic might be appropriate). A bit of creativity is required to replace the vaginal genital offensive, but it can be done: to imply weakness, one might say "what's he waiting for? The other fist?" Some might correctly complain that a well-lubricated fist is often a gentle and tender means of expressing love, but so long as fists are used more frequently in fights than in fucking, the suggested use of the word fist will at least reflect reality, unlike the current usage of the genital offensive. After all, genitalia are used to express love far more often than anything else, and are in fact relatively useless for anything other than pleasure and procreation.
Vulgarity has changed before, and it can change again. I would submit for your examination a relatively recent innovation: it was pointed out, some few decades ago, that suck, sucks, and sucker have their origins in an act that is, in fact, quite pleasant, and that the familiar slang was perhaps a bit incongruous. Though the old words have hardly fallen out of use, the incongruity did result in new synonyms: today we have the widely used bite, bites, and, of course, biter. |