What's also weird, is that like "shit" and "fuck," "cunt" is an older, English word that simply means what it says--it's not in origin a "curse word." "Vagina" and "cunt" are simply synonyms, one Latin and the other English. Why we can't use English words is beyond me!

Why bleep the word "cunt," and use "the c-word," in a commentary on how silly it is to freak out about someone using the word?

Seems silly.

Next thing you know, people will get suspended for saying "pimped out."

The fact that all those people freaked out about Jane Fonda saying "cunt" (while referring to a piece called "Cunt" in the brilliant Vagina Monologues) shows how narrow minded the culture is.

You could say 'dick' and 'penis' on the air long before you could say 'vagina.' That is the whole point of the monologue. And is cunt really worse than saying pussy? At least cunt refers to a woman who (pardon the expression) has balls.

I personally love my cunt. And I know many men who have loved my cunt too.

Say it loud and proud ladies.

Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt.

Are we to believe that Jane Fonda has no clue as to the etiquette of television or is it more likely that she felt the need to spend a couple of days in the spotlight?

The funny thing, in Britain, the word would never have been edited out. It's used quite a bit in street talk to denote the same thing as "dude", "slob", "jerk" or "turkey"--strangely, applying to men, not women.

Someone should do a story on the epidemic of "fake shock" that has infected the world.

Everyone needs to stop pretending that they're so enraged by a simple word.

It didn't register at all on my personal Offense-ometer.

Crazy country. As if people didn't have enough REAL problems nowadays. Sheesh.

"Rebecca Traister responds to Fonda's use of the controversial word."

But she didn't really respond, just told me basically what I had already heard, and told me what that idiot Bill O'Reilly responded - as if I cared. Ms. Traister, what is your opinion?

Please don't suck me into reading an article by promising something you don't deliver - that's standard procedure at Slate, which is why I read Slate about a 1/50th as often as I read Salon.

That word belongs to misogynists, dammit! They worked hard for that word and you have no right to take it from them.

what happens when all he letters in the alphabet each gets it's own word? will we no longer be able to speak to each other?

ggggg

By the time The Today show is on, kids should be eating their Cheerios and on their way to school. Bill O'Reilly is a C word in the most profane way it can be used. He is every profane use of every letter in the alphabet. Children should not be allowed to watch his show. He is the D word, for sure. Or if I may be nasty; a tool.

Does anybody else see the irony of this person encouraging us to use the word cunt "loud and proud", yet posting anonymously?

I'm shocked that you used the word "bullshit." Shocked.

My apologies to all for posting this here, but the letters thread on "Take our wives, please ..." closed as I was writing this. It may or may not be excellently well penned, but I *have* taken great pains to con it.

Brightstar asked me how "average men" can screw up a society:

Well, most "leaders" start off as "average men": it's usually a combination of luck and strategy that get them to the top.

As for how "average men" can screw up a society, you know the most obvious answers already, and other posters like AKA Smith can speak far more eloquently on the topic than I can. I'm also sure that whatever I say, you'll pounce and say "Aha! You man-hater! Blah blah blah me me me ..."

But, I'll say this: "average men" can damage a society (a family, a neighborhood, a community, a state) in as many ways as women can. (I'll not say much about the horrors that men can inflict on other men: hazing, violent "games", sexual harassment, and outright torture one can find at all-male boarding schools, fraternities, sports teams and military units, because I frankly don't know too much about it. But I think the stereotypical alpha-male pecking order helps create people like you brightstar: if you really dug deep in your psyche, you were probably harmed more by other men than by all the women on the planet).

One easy way (witness the Balkans and Rwanda and Darfur) is through serial rape: "average men" systematically raping women to "sully" them, making them unmarriageable, and to make the children suspect ("Are they mine? Or his?") It's a real quick, real dirty, real horrendous, and real *easy* way to destabilize a society for several generations.

Another way is for "average men" to abandon their women and children (witness many places in America). Don't mention Glenn Sacks - the number of men who want to be fathers but have women who won't let them is fractional compared to guys who simply don't want to be fathers (and I formed this opinion - in part - by noticing how many salon readers wanted men to "opt out" of supporting kids from unintended pregnancies). The quickest way to screw up boys is for their father to take off.

A third way is for "average men" to molest children. (Yes, women are capable of this too, but ... again, it's a much smaller slice of the pie chart). And, predatory child molesters are often in positions of trust and authority (priests, yes, but also teachers, coaches, doctors, mentors, etc). When their crimes are revealed the entire community is traumatized.

A fourth way is, as you mentioned (and which I fear you will do some day) through violence (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois U., -style). The entire campus is victimized, and the greater community that connects to it. Or the entire community (think of the Amish village that had to build another school after their daughters were murdered in their classroom).

A fifth way is largely out of style, thank goodness, but was the norm for far too long. This is when "average men" simply don't value women as equals mentally, sexually, emotionally, psychologically. Women trapped by male-directed societal expectations suffer greatly. Look at the Sultans and their harems, the Salem Witch Trials (a community of "average men," farmers and tradesmen and Godly folk, hanged 19 women, for their property, and jailed dozens more, for fun. They also, ahem, "pimped out" their daughters as "possessed" to help make their case), the Victorians and their hysteria, the 1950s housewives and their "mother's helpers," the women in India who were better off dead than widowed. Read Virginia Woolfe's "A Room of One's Own".

For Pete's sake, look at Afghanistan under the Taliban! That was a revolution led by "average men" who felt, among other things, that society was too decadent and morally lax. How fast did that place crumble into a medieval nightmare? They were in power less than a decade, but I bet it's a century before that country recovers (from the Taliban alone, never mind the decades of war which preceeded it). There's your utopia, brightstar, and welcome to it.

Don't even bother counter-arguing with "But women do this evil and that evil ..." That's not my point, and I am not a believer in Man in the Middle (formerly Obnoxious Anonymous and Immanuel Kunt)'s Magical Vagina Peace Rays. I'm not promoting a Matriarchal society, where everything will be beautiful and peaceful. No doubt, women can and do do terrible things.

This isn't about that. This is, like all my other posts, about the wrongness of your argument, which, to paraphrase, was something like "Men can cause trouble in a small way, but women do the real damage to societies..." and as followed by something about waving vaginas.

Brightstar, you are wrong.