2 cents.

sunrunner…as a person who has spent a lot of time in the UK, it doesn’t usually sound affectionate

I posted a comment on ShakespeareSister that I was suprised to read people saying that it’s not an insult over here – when in fact it is, and quite a bad one at that. It may be used publicly more frequently than than in the US, but that doesn’t mean it’s lost its offence – it still has the same misogynistic contempt behind it.

I mean there is no equivalency, “He is a good guy” vs “She is a good girl.” In the same way, chick and dude do not carry the same connotations, because a dude sounds cool and a chick sounds irrelevant.

And I will say that as a person who has spent a lot of time in the UK, I am always shocked when I hear the word cunt being flung around, it doesn’t usually sound affectionate–rather it sounds like masked hostility (and it is worth mentioning that the Brits are masterful at flinging the most vile insult in the guise of only a joke, boarding school types are esp adept at this kind of behavior). And I will say that an awful lot of feminists I know in the UK do not like the word as it is used, whether by men or women.

I think reclamation is dicey, at best. I live in Brooklyn and hear the n-word used all the time (never by white people) and to my ears it always sounds like a put down, esp when you hear a mother yelling to her young son, “n*gg*r, get over here” or some such. Once the word is reclaimed, it becomes a means by which an oppressed group somehow buys into the dominant stereotype and turns it back in on itself, which is what I have seen in the UK with cunt and with the n-word in Brooklyn.

That said, there are a few people who can effectively weild language like that to make a point, but in my experience the people who are actually capable of this generally choose not to.

News flash: FDL is written by Americans, not Brits. Ergo, they’re using the term in the American English usage. So it really matters not that your buddy in Glasgow uses it freely.

Since no one I know really uses it as a vagina euphymism

Who would use a slur as a euphemism in the first place?

or a gender-specific insult

I understand it’s as likely to be applied to a man as to a woman in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc., and I know I’m not as familiar with that usage as I am with the way it’s used in the United States. As nearly as I can tell, where a guy picking on another guy in the US would say “quit being such a pussy,” a guy in the UK might say “quit being such a cunt.” Even so, a few funny things about that:

1. Neither usage is intended to be complimentary to the person to whom it’s applied. At best, it’s an “only kidding” insult used among friends.
2. The original meaning of both words is what?
3. And which sex has those nasty filthy parts again?

I’m dubious about the ability of women to reclaim this word. Women have been trying to reclaim “bitch” for decades, and if fewer men have been using it to insult and demean women as a result, well, that’s a decline I haven’t noticed myself. If anything, I think more men feel comfortable saying it because “Well, she said it, so why can’t I?” Heaven forbid a bitch get to do something a man can’t. That’s never okay.

By “inherently” do you mean “divorced from all context”?

Well it depends on what you define the context as. Since no one I know really uses it as a vagina euphymism, or a gender-specific insult I never really associated it with that, regardless of its original meaning. It could be a geographical or generational thing, or maybe I’ve never thought about its effect on women since, if I ever us it, it tends to be in a gender-neutral way, much like twat, prick, etc. They’re mostly used in a more generalised way, unlike say ‘pussy’, ‘bitch’ and so on, which are clearly meant as feminine-oriented insults.

Epistemologically, as far as the designation aspect, the way we label things often corresponds to the way they behave. However, we make distinctions by design, by regularity, by our personal connections, and by function. For example, planes fly around all the time but we haven’t started classifying them as birds. You can do racist things repeatedly and still come home and kiss your kids at night. We have this tendency to turn people, words, and objects into Others — into living, breathing embodiments of horrible behaviors with horrible appearances — so that we can dismiss them easily without reflection. But when it comes to complicated and pervasive institutions like racism and sexism, it’s never that simple.

(There’s a point in there; see if you can find it. I’m a notorious rambler.)

By “inherently” do you mean “divorced from all context”?

*Snort*

By “inherently” do you mean “divorced from all context”?