<![CDATA[Jezebel: we are all bad feminists]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: we are all bad feminists]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/weareallbadfeminists http://jezebel.com/tag/weareallbadfeminists <![CDATA[Why Is The Word "Cunt" Still Such A Big Deal?]]>
I admit it: I have a filthy mouth. I drop F-bombs like they're nothing, and I make use of the word "cunt" pretty often, on a daily basis even. I think because I live in a fishbowl surrounded by other cussers, I sometimes forget that my foul language might actually, you know, offend people. This is particularly true with regards to the word "cunt." Some people think it's one of the dirtiest words in the English language—unspeakable, even. Maybe I'm a little looser with it because I lived in London for a bit, and over there, "cunt" is on the same level of offense ("offence"?) as, say, "asshole." Or maybe not even that extreme.

There — and in the rest of the British Commonwealth — , the word is used so much that maybe I became desensitized. (It's also interesting to note that the Brits use the word to describe men in addition to women.) But it wasn't until I began covering The Fashionista Diaries and called PR bitch Mandie Erickson out on her cunt-y behavior and rechristened her "Cunt Face" that I began to notice that people are still very much offended by the word. Someone in the comments even said that it was inappropriate for us, as feminists, to use the word when describing a woman.

The history of the word and a bid for its reclamation was explored back in the late '90s in Inga Muscio's book Cunt. (Which I read in college, but don't remember much from it. I was always stoned back then.) I thought as feminists we were beyond this. I mean, when I call someone a cunt, I'm not doing it to offend them, or to try to make an extra impact, because the word is just as common in my vocabulary as "fuck" or "like." Doesn't assigning extra significance to a word make it more powerful? Like, if we use it a lot, don't we take away some of the "badness" of it? Just the other day, I called a jar of roasted red peppers I couldn't get open a "cunt". The way I see it, using the term doesn't make me a bad feminist, it makes me a good one. How's that for some twisted logic?

Cunt [Amazon]
Earlier: Mandie "Cunt Face" Erickson: To Know Her Is To Loathe Her

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=300003&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Who's Afraid Of The Badly-Dressed Princess?]]> Rabblerouser/Celebrity Big Brother contestant Germaine Greer is lashing out at the late Princess Diana for no apparent reason (well, except for all that gratuitous dog and pony show-ing about the 10-year anniversary of her death) calling the royal icon "slow", "devious" and "disturbingly neurotic." Disturbingly neurotic? Seriously? Is the infamous Ms. Greer (she of such pseudo-feminist tomes such as The Female Eunuch) really going to use one of those "bad" words that feminists (not to mention the most recent edition of the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual) hate to hear directed other women? Why yes she is, and in fact, she's got another barb to throw Diana's way: She was a bad dresser!

As for Diana's fashion icon status, Greer dismisses her 'nondescript' sartorial choices as comparable to that of female TV newsreaders. 'Diana was never a fashion icon; she dressed to the same demotic standard of elegance as TV anchorwomen do, plus the inevitable hat.'
At least Germaine didn't compare her to a "weathergirl." Then the we'd really be pissed. Diana Was 'Devious, Slow And Disturbingly Neurotic' Mocks Germaine Greer [Daily Mail]]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=283338&view=rss&microfeed=true