I've been a member here a few months and never posted before, but I felt like I had to chime in about this. The word cunt is incredibly offensive to women and trying to justify its use as somehow not as bad as racial slurs is, frankly, sexist. The fact that moderators in this thread have said the word is somehow more acceptable and not hate speech is shocking.
The word cunt is hate speech. Calling a woman a cunt is saying that she is less of a person because she is female. It's a word that is tied to the oppression of women just as much as slurs against racial minorities or LGBT people. It is misogynistic and is used against women in cases of harassment, abuse and sexual violence. When you use that word, even if you’re not referring to a person, those are the situations many women hearing it will think of.
The use of insults like dick, cock or prick towards men are not even close to the same thing. When you call a man a dick, you are calling that one guy an asshole. When you call a woman a cunt, you are saying that she is worthless because all women are worthless. The only thing you can say to a (white) man that is as vicious as cunt is, guess what, to question his heterosexuality – the very language which was just decided as hate speech on this forum.
Just because people have gotten away with saying that word in the past does not make it OK to say it now. It is not and has never been acceptable to say the word cunt. I wonder if those saying it isn't as hurtful a word as a racial slur would feel comfortable making that argument to a female friend. Women use this site as well as men and I can’t imagine many of them will be thrilled to see use of the c-word getting tacit approval from moderators.
I'm sure the moderators who said those things are not sexist people. However, those were very sexist things to say and I hope they take the time to think about their positions and, hopefully, change them for the better. If staff members were truly involved in deciding that the word cunt is in any way acceptable on a forum where racial and homophobic slurs are not, then I hope they re-examine their position as well.
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