I remember being with a group of feminist friends talking about the names we use for our vulvas. (Yes, such conversations really do happen among feminists, we’re that cliché). A radical feminist in the group, most of us were, explained that knowing the history and meaning of the various terms she’d chosen to reclaim ‘cunt’. She had some persuasive arguments for reclaiming it. Do you use it with your doctors, I asked. Yes she did. Hmm.. but you don’t have kids, I wonder how this would play out with kids, I said.
With difficulty.
Here’s a father, a pro-feminist man, trying to reclaim ‘cunt’ for his daughter. Matthue Roth at Raising Kvell with The C-Word. Both the post and the discussion that follows are well worth a read.
I really never thought this would happen. I had a vision that I was going to be able to raise my kids differently than anyone ever had, that they’d grow up free of racial prejudice and television and only wearing pink and all the other bad stuff that’s wandered into the head of any other kid, ever.
Sadly, that is not always the situation. Case study #1: Language.
In college I read Inga Muscio‘s amazing book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. (I was a feminist! I was the only guy in Womyn’s Issues Now! I could do anything!) Essentially, the point of that book was that the word “cunt” used to be an honorific term for the female ruler of a country, whereas the word “vagina” is an Old English Latin word meaning “sheath for a sword.” And, in the earliest days of changing nappies and learning how female people wipe, I was quick to teach my gurgling baby proto-feminist girl to say “cunt!” instead of “vagina” — or instead of whatever other term you’d use.
No matter what anyone else said, or how they looked at me when I said it. In fact, because of how they looked at me when I said it.
Soon, my older daughter joined a playgroup.
It fascinates me, as feminist parents, which values we sacrifice along the way in our parenting practices and which we hold on to no matter the resistance. Outside the mainstream, none of this is easy is it?
I haven’t come to a decision about this. I have a teenager brother and I cringe hearing the frequency of the word ‘cunt’ in use as a derogatory term. I never really got the idea of reclaiming the word cunt, and it seems as though there is a lot of etymological debate involved in doing so. I wonder if the idea of reclaiming, or converting a derogatory word to an honorific is clearer when it is done by more distinct communities in the way that the LGBT community might use the word ‘queer’ or African Americans use the N-word. That is not to imply obviously that society is clearly separated along those lines, but i think the positioning of women as being enmeshed in whatever particular social group or sub-culture they are in means that using the word is more like complicity in degradation, rather than the clear conversion of terms that occurs when a group or sub-culture has some spaces within a culture that are more conspicuously occupied by that group.
Does that make sense? I have had no caffeine yet today so I am probably not coherent.
I have not figured out a good solution to this yet. I am currently of a mind to say “vulva” because for most situations that is more accurate than vagina, but at the moment that means the 2yo is saying “roller” – pretty hilarious!
We use an Aboriginal word “mootcha” (being that my daughter is Aboriginal). I have had to explain this to her day carers and doctor though. Which is fine.
I’m a little bothered by this, and I think it’s because of what I see as a misuse of the term ‘reclamation’. Reclamation is something that some people in oppressed groups take on voluntarily, in the full knowledge of the word’s history and the type of power it wields.
A man teaching his tiny daughter to use “cunt” – and using the word to refer to her – might be analogised with an able-bodied parents encouraging their four year old wheelchair-using child to call hirself a “cripple”, or perhaps even worse, calling hir that themselves. It’s not reclamation if you’re not aware of the history and context and consequences (as a young child cannot be), and it’s not reclamation if the word isn’t yours to begin with (in the case of a cis man and “cunt”).
Hmm I had a somewhat similar reaction.. although I then wondered if the writer meant that as a parent he was the one reclaiming the word ‘cunt’ and as part of that act he was making it the standard word in his family for a vulva, so no, his daughter wasn’t reclaiming the word but he was.. and yes, good question about whether he can reclaim it or not. He doesn’t mention the child’s mother, it might have read better if he’d mentioned her reclaiming ‘cunt’ in the piece, too.
There is lots that can be said about politicising our children before they’re aware of it. Is it fair, is it right? I walk a fine line with this myself and my feminism and parenting.
Oh, I just realised, lauredhel, you meant my misuse of the word ‘reclamation’ and not the author’s. Sorry. Yes, I see. Fair point.
I’m not exactly sure whether he thought he was reclaiming (or “reclaiming”) it or not – that’s really unclear to me. He writes:
And, well, that squicks me more than a little. He was changing nappies in public while making remarks about his infant daughter’s vulva, using the word “cunt”? I don’t get it. It sounds more than a little bizarre and possibly-inappropriate, which is how I would interpret “looks”; not as the passersby being antifeminist.
It doesn’t squick me out, I just read it as the way I talked to my children, when they were babies, introducing terms to them, getting used to talking to kids about their bodies. I don’t teach my kids to call a vulva a cunt, I use vulva and am happy with that word and comfortable to teach them the history of the words cunt and vagina without ‘reclaiming’ any words for them.
I didn’t necessarily connect the whole ‘teaching child’ moment this father describes with a public place.
I was going to use “Muschi” — a kind of German pet name for your sweetest girlfriend, your cat, or a sweet way of saying pussy. My mom raised me to call my vagina, my Muschi.
But that word ended up becoming a pet name for the Hubby (haha).
So we settled on vulva — and I’m happy with it too.
@woodturtle – haha.
I feel all very non progressive on this topic to be honest, because I read a lot of Jane Austen and other old books as a kid so I kind of love the word fanny.
(Slinking away in shame now…)
streamweaver I kinda love fanny too, and have no great reading of Austen history to account for it. The kids know the correct names but we do use the vernacular. Is it worse than calling your anus your bum? Not sure, but feeling v unprogressive too.
Or abdomen “tummy”.
I, personally, don’t see the need to use correct terms *all* the time, but I think kids should at the very least know what the correct term is, and not be ashamed of using it. A lot of adults, let alone children, don’t know the correct words… so teaching them to kids at all is quite progressive, in my opinion.
I think if/when I have kids I will try to use the word “vulva”, mainly to try to counteract the stigma.
In my opinion the word is too deeply embedded in hostility and denigration and as the most offensive possible term of abuse for a female for it to be reclaimed. To me it is a horrid word, because of its common parlance, and I think the oceans would dry up before its abusive connotations disappeared.
When my daughters were little, I used ‘peri’, short for perineum, as a neutral word, like ‘hand’ or ‘head’ but I am sure few others would have understood it, or used it. Vulva is probably a better word to use.
[...] milk @ blue milk | Reclaiming ‘cunt’ with kids. “It fascinates me, as feminist parents, which values we sacrifice along the way in our [...]
Thinking about this for a while has made me decide I am deeply uncomfortable about a person ‘reclaiming’ this word on behalf of a child. For a start it is a word that will have just about every adult (outside her family) and many children condemning her for using that word. It would get her suspended from kindergarten and I suspect that many of her friends parents would tell her friends not to play with her. The social ostracism could be massive, and given that she wouldn’t know what she was doing wrong, cruel on her parents part.
I also do wonder if this is her father’s desire to use this word coming through. Plus I also don’t like the idea of a man reclaiming a word that doesn’t belong to his own body.
Do you really know a kindergarten that would punish a tiny child for using words it might consider to be inappropriate?
That is the craziest thing I’ve read in the last hour.
Kindergarten = School, and yes absolutely.
That would Never happen where I live!
(Tasmania)
To punish a little kid for saying a word- that’s crazy. And so sad.
On serious consideration , I have to say I agree with the women who express reservations re an adult man’s “reclaiming’ of this word. It is ( was) a perfectly good word, and to reclaim it might well be feminist businss ( I have some problems with men who proclaim themselves feminist however)
But not for man to do when changing a tiny girls nappy . Or in public on her behalf when doing anything.
Foofa. She’s pink and happy.
Claire, you win.