Cunt illustration - from the politically incorrect alphabet

The last taboo word. Though someone did use it on the telly the other night (Lea Walker on UK Big Brother 7).

When I was at junior school our vocabulary of swear words was mostly limited - we were only slightly more advanced than Richmal Compton's William with his "Damn and Blast". To give you a flavour, 'Hell' was mouthed rather than spoken. Usually we would catch the bus home, but sometimes my mother would come in the car for us. On one such occasion a new teacher had joined the school, and in my piping treble I innocently announced to my mother and a car load of slightly older children "his name is Mr Caunt, but we call him Mr Cunt".

Thus I learnt the power of the word. I was quite familiar with the location* (from shared baths and games of 'Doctors and Nurses'), I just hadn't heard it called that before (a couple of years later we were gleefully spouting the concatenation "Shit bugger arseholes, piss cock farts", but 'cunt' was still excluded from our repertoire).

I met a woman at a party some years ago (Sarah, a friend of Sarah) who had made it her mission to reclaim the word from obloquy by using it as an endearment, "Hello cunt, I'm Sarah" she introduced herself, before explaining. Not much success yet that I've noticed, but who'd have guessed that 'queer' would have been turned around?

In the meantime we are left with other terms and euphemisms, from the poetic (Sarah Cox on BBC Radio 1 recently referred to her 'flower') to the faux coy ('front bottom' is a favourite of minor comedians) to the depressingly vulgar ('gash'). The most common name for the vagina in the UK is probably 'fanny', which can cause trans-Atlantic confusion - an American told my former mother-in-law that she had a cute fanny, to which she replied that she had, but in England it meant something that he most definitely had not (and then they call their kids Randy and say a feisty young girl is "full of spunk"; where do you begin?)

But the most widely known word for a defining part of a woman's identity is the most offensive swear word we know. How is that going to make you feel?

*Back in the 60s UK pornography mimiced high art and the model's pubic regions were airbrushed smooth, just like Barbie. In the 70s pubic hair became visible, but has been retreating ever since (shaved or waxed this time) as dainty males have become repulsed by female body hair. I suspect this aversion reveals a post-feminist fear of girls growing up and becoming independent women - a tuft of underarm hair suggests a woman's sexual maturity and self possession, and so is regarded with horror (and not just by men, women are complicit too). Anyway, tutored as I was in the female form by a) my willing young classmates and b) scavenged copies of porno-lite, I deduced that as a girl turned into a woman her fanny crept round beneath her legs to be hidden back towards her bum. Cute eh?

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Cunt