Get over the "C word" already

BETH PERKIN ON THE UN-SHOCKING ORIGINS OF THE MOST SHOCKING WORD

The very fact that I- a young woman with a vagina- am prohibited by the journalistic-powers-that-be to write the full, unadulterated “C word” in an article is completely confounding. Afterall, it’s just another word for female genitalia. What’s so bad about that?

Why this word? What exactly is it about this specific one syllable noun that carries so much power: that can tumbleweed a conversation; cause even the most potty-mouthed of people to tut with disapproval? Aren’t there C words that are a thousand times worse anyway? Take… ‘Cameron’, for example.

All joking aside, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the word is a serious social taboo. Legendary feminist Germaine Greer commented that the C word is “one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock”. This opinion was further confirmed when it took the number one spot on the BBC’s ranking of the most offensive words of all time.

THE ONLY REASON IT IS HATEFUL IS BECAUSE A LONG HISTORY OF FEMALE SEXUAL OPPRESSION HAS MADE IT THAT WAY

But with such a bad rep, it’s rather shocking that the most shocking word of all time wasn’t always used as an insult. In order to understand how it has come to be such a taboo we have to journey all the way back to Ancient Egypt, when the C word wasn’t used to offend but as a neutrally connotative word for “woman”. Years later and the Oxford Dictionary pin-points its first English usage in 1230, where it was harmless enough to be used as a street name for London’s red-light district- the aptly named ‘Gropecuntlane’.

Before long, the Middle English variant of the word was being playfully thrown around by none other than literary legend Chaucer in his much- lauded Canterbury Tales. Even Shakespeare, though never actually using the word, jumped on the bandwagon with his penchant for cheeky puns: “There be her very C’s, her U’s, and her T’s: and thus she makes great P’s.”

It was only in the 1930s when the word finally took a turn from the saucy to the down-right scandalous, becoming an American insult for women and being banished to the linguistic hinterlands. Long gone were the days that writers would cheekily band the word around. In the 1960s DH Lawrence faced an obsecenity lawsuit after using the C word as a synonym for vagina in his hugely controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Since then the word has been continually dragged through the mud – its rather mundane origins long forgotten.

THE FEAR OF WOMEN AS OVERTLY SEXUAL INSTEAD OF TIMID AND VIRGINAL, AS THEY WERE ONCE FORCED TO BE, HAS TWISTED THE WORD INTO SOMETHING UGLY, CRIMINAL EVEN

But if today it only means a woman’s genitalia, why has the C Word become such a lexical delinquent? Greer makes the case that it all comes down to a patriarchal fear of female desire: “For hundreds of years, men identified female sexual energy as a dangerous force. And unlike other words for female genitals, this one sounds powerful. It demands to be taken seriously.”

Critics of the ongoing attempt to re-appropriate the taboo word argue that it is hateful towards women so why would they want to use it. But the only reason it is hateful is because a long history of female sexual oppression has made it that way. The fear of women as overtly sexual instead of timid and virginal, as they were once forced to be, has twisted the word into something ugly, criminal even.

By continuing to allow the C word to carry so much negative power, we are facilitating the continuing condemnation of female sexuality. The more women that use the word, reclaiming it, and its history, as their own, the closer we will get to putting an end to this outrageous double standard.

The C word does not coldly denote a body part, nor is it used to describe something cutesy and girlish. It is a word that empowers because it is erotic instead of scientific. It is not unapologetic or timid, but purposeful and mature in its connotations of assured sexual power. And if that makes people uncomfortable, who gives a damn?