Cunt (2 page)

Cunt
is a necessary book, one of the most important books in print today, not only for
bio and trans-women, as it obviously is, but for men-folk and dyke boys as well. And
it is important not only for those whose cunts or other body parts or lives have been
scarred by the deathly culture in which we find ourselves immersed. When you count
rape survivors, domestic violence survivors, those who love those survivors, wage
slaves, survivors of public or private education, all of us now living on a planet
which is being killed before our eyes, it certainly encompasses more or less all of
us.
Cunt
is also for those who, against all odds, may actually retain shreds of their original
sanity.

Cunt
is a celebration, not only of cunts but of all life. Cunts are life, as are pricks,
kneecaps, elbows, fingernails, the tails of tadpoles, redwood needles, and the sandy
red soil we taste between foreteeth and tongue.
Cunt
explores this life, rolls this life gently between fingertips, more gently across
the soft skin of lower belly and more gently still between still-softer thighs. The
book tells us—whole or scarred—how to live, as life tells us how to live, as our bodies
tell us how to live, as fingertips, elbows, pricks and cunts tell us how to live.
As the soil tells us how to live. They’re all the same. Only different.

I first read
Cunt
last year, long after it had changed the lives of many people. It took me a day.
I picked it up as the sun cleared the trees to the southeast, and didn’t put it down
till the book was done and the sun was well on its way back down the blue hill above.
It was a day that changed my life. I have read the book several times since, and each
time have learned more about the women in my life, more about my own life, more about
life in general. And I’ve learned about the culture, about the way men are trained
to terrorize women and children. And I’ve learned what women, and children, are doing
about that.

We may as well acknowledge that we’re all fucked.

I don’t mean this in the delightful sense of lovers coming together, meeting in the
middle of their hearts and minds and bodies, but in the sense that we’re in far more
trouble than words—even words as powerful as Inga Muscio’s—can say. Wild salmon are
disappearing, as are great apes, coral reefs, native earthworms, wild forests, wild
places of all stripes. Last week two more huge chunks of Antarctica fell into the
sea. Dioxin contaminates polar bear fat, and it contaminates mother’s milk. Three
corporations control more than eighty percent of the beef market, and seven corporations
control more than ninety percent of the grain market. Military scientists have placed
computer chips in the brains of rats, and can force the creatures to go left, right,
backward, forward by pushing buttons on keyboards. Imagine the fun the scientists
would have if they figure out how to do this with women’s hips.

We’re fucked. We all know the numbers. We know that twenty-five percent of all women
in this culture are raped within their lifetimes, and another nineteen percent have
to fend off rape attempts. Which means of course that unless one guy is excruciatingly
busy, an awful lot of men are rapists. We know that as many as twenty-two million
American women have been molested by relatives, with six million of those molested
by their fathers. We know also that 565,000 American children are killed or injured
every year by their parents or guardians.

We know, too, that there are more slaves in the world today than came across on the
Middle Passage. And we know that in the 1830s a slave in the American South cost between
$500 and $1000, the equivalent of $50,000 to $100,000 today. And now a slave costs
about $50, making them not even a capital but a simple expense, to be used up and
thrown away.

We’re fucked.

This is where
Cunt
comes in. If we’re so fucked, one might reasonably ask, why not just go ahead and
off ourselves?
Cunt
gives the answer (as do our cunts, pricks, elbows, kneecaps, and as do all the wild
and free creatures on the planet): life is good. Life is really, really good. Not
mediated life. Not televisions, cars, stereos, jobs, professional sports, colognes,
perfumes, skyscrapers, steel, asphalt, brick, mortar. But life. Waking up with the
sun on your face. Tasting your lover’s sweat. Smelling their scent. Stubbing your
toe, petting a dog, french-kissing a tree (but only if the tree agrees), helping your
mother plant her garden, feeling your body grow heavy at the end of a hard day, and
waiting to catch up to your dreams.

But to merely reside in the sensual as the world burns isn’t good enough. Nor is it
good enough merely to mourn the losses both inside and out. Both of these are necessary,
but not sufficient. And here
Cunt
helps again. If things are so bad, one can also ask (this time unreasonably, I think),
why not just withdraw into the sensual, why not just party (or cry)? Because, I think
Cunt
makes clear, this question reveals nothing neither more nor less than an inability
to love. If you’re in love, with your life, with your body, with your lover, with
the tree outside your door, with the world that gives rise to all of these, the fact
that we’re all deeply, deeply fucked doesn’t matter a damn to your actions: if you’re
in love, you act to protect your beloved.

In the end,
Cunt
is about love, as are cunts, pricks, elbows, as is the soft flesh of puppies’ ears,
as are the spines of thistles and the sharp edges of blades of grass.

If we are to survive, we must reclaim our planet from those corporations which—and
people who—are destroying it. But even before this, we must reclaim our own bodies
and our hearts from that same grasp.
Cunt
helps us do that, helps us find our way back to our cunts, pricks, elbows, kneecaps,
and perhaps most important of all, our hearts.

Derrick Jensen

May 2002

“Cunt” is very arguably the most powerful negative word in the American English language.
“Cunt” is the ultimate one-syllable covert verbal weapon any streetwise six-year-old
or passing motorist can use against a woman. “Cunt” refers almost exclusively to women,
and expresses the utmost rancor.

There’s a general feeling of accord on this.

Except for some friends who know all about this book, no one calls me a “cunt” to
communicate what a cool and sublime human being they think I am. Up until a certain
time in my life, I never employed “cunt” to express respect or admiration.

I qualify these statements because my relationship with “cunt” is no longer what it
once was.

One day I came home from third grade and asked my pops, “What’s a wetback?”

With resignation and a sigh, Dad elucidated a brief history of “wetback.” He concluded,
“Don’t you
ever
say it.”

A list of words I was similarly not to utter was forthcoming: nigger, beaner, kike,
wop, jap, injun, spic. The only formal cuss word included on his roster was “cunt.”

Coming as I did from a family where us kids were allowed to strew profanities like
rice at a wedding, I was mighty affected by all this. Why, in my father’s way of thinking,
could I call someone an asshole but not a wetback nigger cunt?

The foreshadowings of a mystery.

In my childhood home, the 1965 Random House Dictionary was as much a part of dinnertime
as laughter, arguments ’n wanton table manners. Throughout dinner, my siblings and
I were required to spell and define new vocabulary words. It was a custom I enjoyed
very much.

I was raised to appreciate the power of words.

Little did I know that when I grew up, out of the billion and one words in the 1965
Random House Dictionary and beyond, there would exist no word that I could use to
adequately describe myself.

This wouldn’t be much of a problem except that there are millions of me’s: articulate,
strong, talented, raging, brilliant, grooving, sexy, expressive, dancing, singing,
laughing women in America, of all shapes, hues, ethnicities, sizes, sexual orientations
and dispositions.

We are everywhere.

But what are we.

The only dimly representational, identifying term that advocates truly authentic recognition
for the actual realities of women in this world is “feminism.” This is a relatively
youthful word. Our actual realities, on the other hand, are rooted deep. We are born
with them in our hearts.

Inherited them from our mothers.

Grandmothers.

Under the influence of this dilemma, I’ve asked myself if there might be a word as
old, as universal and as deeply rooted as women’s actual realities in patriarchal
society. Hidden somewhere in the English language, could there be a word with power
steeped in our history, a word which truly conveyed the rage and hope of
all women?

And lo and behold, I return to the one formal cuss word on Pop’s roster:

In Part I of
Cunt
, “The Word,” I assert that the context in which “cunt” is presently perceived does
not serve women, and should therefore be thoroughly re-examined.

English is considered the “universal language” because it represents the victors of
history’s present telling. Seizing this language and manipulating it to serve your
community is a very powerful thing to do, and—based on a variety of specific elements,
such as ethnicity, musical tastes, credit limits and/or sexuality—it is done a lot
in America. Creating a general, woman-centered version of the English language, however,
is just insanely difficult.

Womankind is varied and vast.

But we all have cunts, and it does not matter if they are biological, surgical or
metaphorical. A cunt’s a cunt.

While one word maketh not a woman-centered language, “cunt” is certainly a mighty
potent and versatile contribution. Not to mention how
deliciously satisfying
it is to
totally snag
a reviled word and elevate it to a status which all women should rightfully experience
in this society.

When viewed as a positive force in the language of women—as well as a reference to
the power of the anatomical jewel which unites us all—the negative power of “cunt”
falls in upon itself, and we are suddenly equipped with a word that describes all
women, regardless of race, age, class, religion or the degree of lesbianism we enjoy.

Part II, “The Anatomical Jewel,” examines why having a cunt in this society might
just be worse than being called one. Our cunts bleed and have weird, unpredictable
orgasms. The birthing process is painful and messy. Lordisa knows what our cunts are
up to. Generally speaking, we don’t understand them, we don’t like them and we often
think they’re ugly.

A different, more sublime way of looking at this is that our cunts are the symbolic
and physical zenith of our existence.

When our cunts bleed,
we
are
bleeding people.
Clairvoyant dreams visit our sleepytime heads. Sometimes, the swaggering braggadocio
of human males causes our wombs to clench up in spasms of pain. When cunts have stupendous
orgasms, we may reel for days, and have a fetching smile for every person we meet
when we’re walkin’ down the street. When cunts get filled up with sperm, women sometimes
get pregnant and experience either the trauma of aborting, or the courageous and under-appreciated
tribulation of devoting
the rest of our lives
to another human being. When men fuck our cunts against our will, we often feel like
a diarrhea shit has been offed upon the very essence of our soul, and may live
the rest of our days
cleaning it off in whatever way we see fit.

An aisle in all American grocery stores is devoted to various commercial products,
dreamed up by corporations owned and operated by men, which are designed to “care
for” and deodorize cunts. An entire branch of Western medicine, male style, exists
because of the infernal, confounding magic of cunts. Doctors who treat cunts have
special names.

Famous cunts in history have caused empires to rise and fall.

Sex industries throughout the world enjoy exorbitant profit margins because of the
wonderful things cunts do and represent.

When women endure cultural customs such as clitoridectomies, chasity belts, Mississippi
Appendectomies (i.e., forced sterilization), infibulation, forced prostitution, slavery
and rape, cunts are where? Why, in the spotlight, of course.

Yes, though they often play supporting roles to cocks, cunts deserve star billing
in the marquee of every woman’s life.

Cunts are very important.

Unfortunately, cunts are important to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.

Cunts are not important to women because they are the very fount of our power, genius
and beauty. Rather, cunts are important to men because they generate profits and episodes
of ejaculation, and represent the precise point of vulnerability for keeping women
divided and thus, conquered.

History, the media, economic structures and justice systems have led women to the
understanding that delighting in a love affair with our cunts will get us no further
than Sitting Bull, had he opted to have a passionate love affair with the Seventh
Cavalry.

Which, of course, he did not.

Why should Sitting Bull love the Seventh Cavalry? The Seventh Cavalry consistently
represented the undoing of his people.

Why should women love our cunts? They, too, consistently represent the undoing of
our people.

The main contention here, of course, is that the Seventh Cavalry did not reside between
Sitting Bull’s legs.

“The Anatomical Jewel” makes up the bulk of
Cunt.
The fact that women learn to dislike an actual, undeniable, unavoidable physical
region of ourselves results in a crappy Sisyphean situation, warranting an intense
focus of attention.

Part III is called “Reconciliation.” One definition of reconciliation is the re-establishment
of a close relationship that has experienced estrangement somewhere along the line.

My cunt is
mine.

In order to re-establish a close relationship with my cunt, I must take responsibility
not only for what it is to me today, but for everything it has become due to the seemingly
endless throng of spin doctors, past and present. My cunt serves me in ways
cavernously
unrelated to generating profits, procuring episodes of ejaculation in males and representing
the precise point of vulnerability for keeping women divided and thus, conquered.
It is therefore my responsibility to insure this reality resides at the forefront
of humanity’s consciousness when history is rewritten once again.

We women have a lot of responsibilities.

Here are a few:

Seizing a vocabulary for ourselves.

Actively teaching ourselves to perceive cunts—ours and others’—in a manner generating
understanding and empathy.

Taking this knowledge out into the community.

Learning self-protection.

Seeking out and supporting cuntlovin’ artists, businesses, media and role models.

Using our power as consumers.

Keeping our money in a community of cuntlovin’ women.

We arrive at reconciliation by confronting learned, internalized misogyny and re-educating
ourselves on our terms. Three of the most important aspects of reconciliation involve
fighting with our minds, art and money to create a cultural consciousness that supports
and respects all women. The power and potential of these weapons—minds, art and money—are
exalted in Part III.