Day 4

I came across the power of “cunt” quite accidentally. After writing an article for a newspaper, I typed in “word count,” but left out the “o.” My editor laughingly pointed out the mistake. I looked at the two words together and decided “Word Cunt” seemed like a nice title for a woman writer. As a kind of intraoffice byline, I started typing “Word Cunt” instead of “word count” on all my articles.

The handful of people who saw hard copies of my work reacted strongly and asked why I chose to put these two words on my articles. After explaining my reasoning to editorial assistants, production magis, proofreaders and receptionists, I started wondering about the actual, decontextualized power of “cunt.” 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.
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According to every woman-centered historical reference I have read—from M. Esther Harding to bell hooks—the containment of woman’s sexuality was a huge priority to emerging patrifocal religious and economic systems. Cunts were anathema to forefather types. Literally and metaphorically, the word and anatomical jewel presided at the very nexus of many earlier religions which impeded phallic power worship. In Western civilization, forefather types practiced savior-centered religions, such as Catholicism. Springing forth from a very real, very fiscal fear of women and our power, eventually evolving into sexual retardation and womb envy, a philosophy and social system based on destruction was culled to thriving life. One of the more well-documented instances of this destruction-oriented consciousness is something called the Inquisition. It lasted for over five hundred years. That is how long it took the Inquisition to rend serious damage to the collective spirit of non-savior-centered religious worshippers.

The Inquisition justified the—usually sadistic—murder, enslavement or rape of every woman, child and man who practiced any form of spiritual belief which did not honor savior-centered phallic power worship. Since the beginning of time, most cultures honored forces which were tangible, such as the moon, earth, sun, water, birth, death and life. A spirituality which was undetectable to any of the human senses was considered incomprehensible. One imagines victims of the Inquisition were not hard to come by. Women who owned anything more than the clothes on their backs and a few pots to piss in were religiously targeted by the Inquisition because all of women’s resources and possessions became property of the famously cuntfearing Catholic Church. Out of this, the practice of sending “missionaries” into societies bereft of savior-centered spiritualities evolved.

Negative reactions to “cunt” resonate from a learned fear of ancient yet contemporary, inherent yet lost, reviled yet redemptive cuntpower.

~~Cunt- A Declaration of Independence -by- Inga Muscio