Cunt: a declaration of independence

"I looked up «cunt» in Barbara G. Walker's twenty-five-year research opus, The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, and found it was indeed a title, back in the day. «Cunt» is related to words from India, China, Ireland, Rome and Egypt. Such words were either titles of respect for women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of the names of various goddesses:
In ancient writings, the word for «cunt» was synonymous with «woman», though not in the insulting modern sense. An Egyptologist was shocked to find the maxims of Ptah-Hotep «used for 'woman' a term that was more than blunt», though its indelicacy was not in the eye of the ancient beholder, only in that of the modern scholar. (Walker, 1983, 197)

The words «bitch» and «whore» have also shared a similar fate in our language. This seemed rather fishy to me. Three words which convey negative meanings about women, specifically, all happen to have once had totally positive associations about women, specifically."
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"The inforced silence of women allows men's fear of us and our sexual power to reign unchallenged. Thus the wisdom of brilliant people such as Audre Lorde is not venerated, and we are still sent to schools where idiotic puds like Aristotle are worshipped.
A-hem:

Just as sometimes happens that deformed offspring are produced by deformed parents, and sometimes not, so the offspring produced by a female are sometimes female, sometimes not, but male. The reason is that the female is as it were a deformed male; and the menstrual charge is semen, though... it lacks one constituent, and only one, the principle of Soul... Thus the physical part, the body, comes from the female, and the Soul from the male, since the Soul is the essence of a particular body... females are weaker and colder in their nature, and we should look upon female state as being as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature. (Aristotle, as quoted in Brown, 1986, 188)

To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't until 1968 when Valerie Solanas published her S.C.U.M Manifesto, that this particular form of intolerance was duplicated with any serious eloquence:

It is now technically possible to reproduce whithout the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the y (male) gene is an incomplete x (female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the service of his drives and needs, he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than is own physical sensations. He is half dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse than apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings - hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt - and moreover he is aware of what he is and isn't.

While Aristotle is lauded in our culture, Valerie Solanas is considered - when she's considered at all - to be a terribly unhinged individual who died homeless on the streets of San Francisco in 1988. Whereas, if you changed the pronoums throughout her manifesto, and backdated it a couple of decades, you'd probably have the ramblings of a brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning male scholar."
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"Asked to design a bilboard for the Public Art Fund (PAF) in New York (City), we welcomed the chance to do something that would appeal to a general audience. One Sunday morning we conducted a 'weenie count' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, comparing the number of nude males to nude females in the artworks on display. The results were very 'revealing'. (Guerrilla Girls, 1995, 61)

They designed a billboard depicting a reproduction of Ingres's reclining Odalisque, with a gorilla mask on her head and a dildo in the hand draped over her hip. Accompanying this image was the following statement: «Less than 5 percent of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85 percent of the nude are female.»"
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"I was offered another profound perspective on the actual reality of American women when I interviewed Soraya Miré, a Somali woman who made Fire Eyes, a deeply moving, powerful film about genital mutilation.

In countries like mine, the law is blatantly against women. What we do have, though, is love and community. You never think only of yourself, you always think of your neighbors and family, too.
The problem with a lot of Western women is they think they can help me, that they know what's best for me. Especially feminist women. They come into conversations waving the American flag, forever projecting the idea they are more intelligent than I am. I've learned that American women look at women like me to hide from their own pain. They can't face their pain, and mine is so obvious, they think they can help me without looking at themselves. But many women in this country are empty. They desperately try to find something to fill the empty space inside them - the loneliness deep inside. In my country, this kind of loneliness does not exist.
In America, women pay the money that is theirs and no one else's to go to a doctor who cuts them up so they can create or sustain an image men want. Men are the mirror. Western women cut themselves up voluntarily. In my country, a child is woken up at three in the morning, held down and cut with a razor blade. She has no choice. Western women pay to get their bodies mutilated.
When you base your whole self-image on a man - on another human being - how can you expect that person - whether it's a man or a woman - to respect you? How can you respect yourself when you do not have love and respect for yourself?"

"Cunt: a declaration of independence", Inga Muscio

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Este livro fez-me pensar: há muito que mudar na mentalidade feminina e masculina sobre o ser Mulher.
Sem radicalismos, mas com assertividade, vamos mudar mentalidades, vamos deixar de objectificar a mulher e o seu corpo da forma como o fazemos agora; vamos dignificar a mulher, o homem, o ser humano!

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