The conversation goes something like this:
Friend… Oh he’s just a fucking CUNT…
Me…I hate that you use the word Cunt in that way. Cunt is a good thing…Cunt is a friendly word for my vagina..its a soft…sexy…served me well sort of word….I don’t like that you use it in a derogatory abusive way.
Friend…oh it doesn’t mean anything..its just a word…like using Dick ..
Me…No its not like using Dick… when Cunt is used as a casual swear word its not alone. It has a tidal wave of other misogynistic words behind it…yes a word is a word is a word but when there are so many so often over so many years they burn into your very being and add up to make you feel WRONG
So thats how the table writing started …all the hateful hurtful words I have ever been called as woman.
I burned the first words into the wood but then other women came to the table and wrote their words too. Ugly old bag…toxic twat…stupid cunting whore…hysterical bitch..bunny boiler…witch…dirty slut..minging hoe.
There seems no end of words and no end of women to write them.
We sit around the table and write and tell stories about the words and compare notes and realise that it wasn’t us that were ‘wrong/bad/ugly/stupid/fat/wrong again … its just the drip drip drip of perpetual sexist crap language that we have to hear every day of our lives. You can laugh at the infantile stupidity of the separate words and phrases – school room nonsense…bright poisonous beads on a Xmas tree…. but then when you see them all together its overwhelming and depressing and its 2013 and a post feminist society is still a long way off.
But then you remind each other there are tricky ways to resist – turn it on its head, glorify it, embroider, embellish and laugh in defiance.
Glorify with menace! Resist in Perpetuity!
