The Public Outcry Over Samantha Bee Makes Me Wonder: Is the C-Word Really *That* Terrible?
On Wednesday night, Samantha Bee stood on the soundstage of her show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, as she does almost every week. As usual, the comedian criticized current political events by pitching acerbic hard balls at a speed that would make Babe Ruth jealous. While showing an Instagram photo that Ivanka Trump posted of herself holding her child, Bee addressed the big pink hypocritical elephant in the room by connecting Ivanka’s sentimental picture to the recent news about immigrant children being separated from their parents at the border.
“Let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices you feckless cunt, he listens to you!” Bee yelled into the camera.
What followed wasn’t an examination into Ivanka’s potentially hypocritical photo or the Trump family’s remarkable tone-deafness, but rather a skewering of Bee’s use of the C-word by all media outlets, both left and right leaning. Senior Media Reporter, Oliver Darcy said “It was a really disgusting remark” on CNN’s Newsroom; BBC News used the headline, “Samantha Bee insults Ivanka Trump with obscene phrase;” and NBC News called Bee’s usage of the C-word a “vulgar slur.”
While Bee took to Twitter on Thursday to apologize for her comments, saying the use of the C-word “was inappropriate and inexcusable” and something the comedian regrets, the public continued to reproach Bee’s word choice. Even Chelsea Clinton came to Ivanka’s defense, tweeting, “It’s grossly inappropriate and just flat-out wrong to describe or talk about @IvankaTrump or any woman that way.” In addition to the media and public’s condemnations of Bee, CNN reports that two advertisers, Autotrader and State Farm, have suspended their commercials from running during Full Frontal.
It’s understandable that people would be shocked, but considering the decibel of the outrage it caused, it’s worth taking a second to ask: is saying the C-word really that bad?
Few words in the English language are as taboo as the C-word. You might argue that the only other word that renders the level of discomfort that “cunt” does is the N-word. Unlike the N-word, though, the C-word has no racial ties (even if Megyn Kelly is likening Bee’s use of the C-word to Roseanne Barr’s recent racist ramblings). Similarly to the N-word, though, the C-word does have a history of being used in the subjugation of a group of people, since it gained a pejorative meaning to reinforce cultural bias against women over time. “Cunt” didn’t always have a disparaging connotation, though. As the Oxford English Dictionary says, “[The word ‘cunt’] does not seem to have been considered inherently obscene or offensive in the medieval period, as suggested by its use in names and in medical treatises of the time, it is now normally considered the strongest swear word in English.”
As the OED reveals, “Cunt” originally appeared during the Middle Ages as an anatomical term for the female genitals, but the earliest recorded use of it occurred in the year 1230. Varied spellings of the word appeared in certain writings from the time, whether it be “cunte” or “count.” In an edition of the Medulla Grammatice from 1425, the word “Vulua” was defined as “A count or a wombe.” Translation: a vulva is a woman’s cunt. Even before the Latin-Middle English glossary defined “vulva” by using the word “cunt,” the word for a woman’s genitals frequently included sexual subtext. A proverb from 1325, as quoted by the OED, states, “Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig, And crave affetir wedding.” According to Vice, that phrase translates to, “Give your cunt wisely and make (your) demands after the wedding.” In the proverb’s case, a woman’s vagina is implied to be a resource which she may or may not allow men to access.
The backlash against Bee’s use of the word “cunt” almost says more about the ways in which society views women’s genitals than it does about the invisible lines that Bee may or may not have crossed. The New York Times, for example, couldn’t even use the word when reporting about Bee’s misstep! Instead, they alluded to Bee’s usage as a “crass insult” and a “vulgar epithet.”
It’s not like we’ve never heard this type of talk from a prominent figure before: In August 2015, Donald Trump refuted Megyn Kelly’s capability and objectivity after a presidential debate. Trump didn’t just question Kelly’s abilities as a journalist, he implied that Kelly lacked the biology to remain rational because of her sex. “You could see there was… blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base,” Trump told CNN. He later tweeted to clarify that by “wherever,” he meant Kelly’s nose, but the damage had been done and members of both the left and right responded in outrage over Trump’s reinforcing of the age-old belief that a woman’s anatomy made her irrational, or “hysterical.” Following that misstep, the infamous “Grab ’em by the pussy” tape was released in October 2016. And since then, feminists have reclaimed the term “Pussy” and its power by marching in “pussyhats” and boldly chanting that “pussy grabs back.”
The word “cunt” has also, at times, been reclaimed by certain feminists. Inga Muscio’s 1998 book, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, explains why the term “cunt” gained its taboo only because of a patriarchal system which shames and decries female sexual desire. An article published by Quartz about the word reveals that writer Katrin Redfern found that Muscio’s book had changed her opinion of the word, proving that context is everything.
If there’s one thing that the Samantha Bee blunder has proven, it’s that in the context of the United States in the year 2018, calling someone a word that has to do with a woman’s vagina will still lead to public outrage. Shaming anyone for using their sexuality freely by calling someone a “slut” or “cunt” doesn’t lead to progress for women’s rights, but it also doesn’t necessarily mean that a line has been crossed either. Yes, words have power, but it feels unfair to throw stones at Bee for a using one that some people find shocking. Especially when others in much higher positions of power regularly talk about women—not to mention immigrants and people of color—in ways that are equally, if not more, damaging.
Angelica Florio is a New York-based writer whose work has appeared in Playboy, Bustle, Splitsider, and more.