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Not Your Average Prom Queen: What Did You Call Me?

16 July 2009, 12:00 pm 4 Comments

This post was submitted by Jean

RS1 “Don’t act like a pussy.”

Its a classic taunt of teenagers, still uttered from the lips of men (and sometimes women) to threaten. It’s like a triple dog dare, because once spilled from the lips there’s no turning back. Don’t equate me with a female sex organ, buddy.

“Your ex-girlfriend was a total cunt.”

Men and women alike quiver at the world’s worst insult—CUNT. To be called a cunt is to be splashed with all that is disgusting and dirty. Your grandma has probably never spoken the word. Even feminists who have tried to “reclaim” this word cannot control its use in all arenas. Some how it’s dirtier and more offensive than any other word. Is it because being called a synonym for a female sex organ is really that horrible?

“Look at him – crying like a little bitch!”

All women get called a “bitch” at some point, and some women call themselves this word. I think you can even say this word on TV. But, to call a man a bitch is to emasculate him. Like telling a boy he throws like a girl. Why is the greatest insult to a man being called a woman?

Huh?

In America (maybe the world) for a man to be called a woman, or a pejorative term used to describe a woman, is the worst kind of insult. It’s like being called a monkey, a Neanderthal or some form of lower species. Somehow these words offend everyone. These widely accepted connotations are everywhere. Terms associated with women are insults. The term “douchebag”, which is, in itself, not an inappropriate word aside from its use as an item associated with a woman’s body, is now a commonplace insult.

Regardless of the PCism that has swept up some of our more gruesome phrasing, there are still certain aspects to the language itself that are harder to avoid. Is the word “vagina” really a “sheath for a sword”? Yes. In 1692 it was, but didn’t become a term for a woman’s genitalia until the 20th century. Why are all words for women created in the framework of a man? Can’t a woman exist on her own without being a male counterpart?

A woman came from Adam’s rib
She (the word) also comes from He (the word)
Female (the word) also comes from Male (the word)

The female pronoun is used often by a male to show possession, a car, a motorcycle, a boat. In textbooks, the student is a “he.” In government, all men are created equal. It’s institutional and unavoidable.

When I did a quick Google search on “Vagina etymology” I got the following ads:

Google Ad Results for "Vagina Etymology"

1. Feminine Odor (if you are looking up “vagina” there must be something wrong with it!)

2. Britney Spears (because she has one? Has shown hers to cameras? I’m not sure)

3. Ford Mustang (does the phrase “pussy magnet” get worked in here somewhere?)

Will the English language (as it is used in America) and its users ever transition out of these offensive habits? Do we have to start respecting women more before we can expect our language to reflect that respect?

4 Comments »

George said:

You can indeed say bitch on television, but not the masculine version “son of a bitch.” I would much rather be a bitch or a cunt than a dick or just plain nuts. Also, since when does etymology figure into common usage? “Woman” only means “from man” if that is what you thinks it means. “Penis” is just Latin for “tail” so does than mean men are dogs? That is like calling someone “nice” is an insult because “nice” is Latin for “dumb.”

As for your little Eve coming from Adam’s rib cliche – maybe you should get out of the Biblical literalism game before it’s too late. We have plenty of amoral materialists and fundamentalists doing that already. (Besides, Eve, from the Hebrew “Heva” meaning the essences of “life” is way better than Adam, the “dirt” from which she is made.)

As for your bits with Google ads… what are you five? What ads would come up if you typed in “penis”? Those are just generic ads based on popular searches. What kind of ads would you like “vagina” to produce, exactly? By the way, it is very, very telling to see what you see in the ads.

Just seems like more old, counter-productive blather that scares straight men away from feminism.

16 July 2009 at 5:06 pm

Margaret said:

Perhaps it is the historian in me, but I think that etymology is extremely important. The way that words came into the language does not necessarily reflect upon their actual meaning. They can be logical from a common root (porcus became pork) or they can be totally random (did you know that the word normalcy came into English because President Taft used it instead of “normalness” in a speech and it caught on?). It is these random words that have the most interesting etymology for showing historical point of view. The genesis of normalcy shows the power that the American president has to be a role model to the American people. (Have you ever used “misunderestimate” ironically?) In the same way, we can look at tail–>penis or vagina–>sword sheath to see what the people who started using them were thinking.

Both of these words came into being at the very beginning of the modern period when the language of scholars was becoming vernacular English from Latin, which any educated person would have known intimately. I would guess that these words started as euphemisms since the people who would have understood them would have been men, and then they later became commonly-used clinical terms. Tail is a pretty neutral metaphor: tails and penises similarly dangle from the nether-regions and show the animal awareness of the people who began using the word that way [first used in 1578 by a historian]. The word vagina, which the OED has as first being used as early as 1682, is a virile, masculine metaphor. In using “sword sheath”, the image is 1) violent 2) appealing to a man, and 3) presupposes that there is necessarily a sword to sheath. It supposes complimentariness.

But what does this have to do with us as 21st century queer folk? Well. I don’t think that the original Latin definitions of words has a one-to-one correlation of how we think of our private bits. BUT pointing out these original meanings does give further context to the discussion of how gender roles come to us through culture and how we are going against those gender roles in living our lives. Not only do these two words illuminate the way that “masculinity” is normal (tail is neutral, while sword-shealth depends on a sword), but they also show that heterosexual use for the vagina was normal. Not that I care that my vagina really enjoys ignoring this paradigm, but it is one of those further ways that we can see heteronormativity (and I thought I was going to get through this comment without using that word!) as a cultural norm. Knowing why you use the words you use is important.

George: by the way, the way you dismiss Jean’s analysis of the ads bothers me because the fact that they are “generic ads based on popular searches” is exactly the point. What people search for and why is one way to look at what popular opinion of the word “vagina” is. Her point is that it’s important to look at words in their context and unravel that context to show what Google users [i.e., general people] think (don’t mean to speak for you, Jean! That’s what I took it as!), and she was giving further context.

Jean: yea! thanks for the piece! Really enjoyed it. :) Sorry to contradict you on the date thing–the OED gives this as the first use: “1682 GIBSON The anatomy of humane bodies 20 It has passages..for the neck of the Bladder, and in Women for the vagina of the Womb.”

19 July 2009 at 3:30 pm

Kathleen said:

What a relevant topic Prom Queen!
The etymology of a word is highly significant when thinking about the historical legacy and impact of a word. I hope to read more from you on the power of language.

19 July 2009 at 3:31 pm

J said:

Etymology is very important, but it’s also important not to misinterpret it. Vagina comes from the Latin word for sheath. Not “sheath for a sword”, just sheath. This makes sense: a vagina is shaped somewhat like a sheath. It’s incorrect to claim that this is some example of masculinity or heterosexuality as being normal. It’s just an object that roughly resembles the right shape. Please don’t read too much into this.

27 July 2009 at 3:24 am