Inga Muscio's Cunt (an example of How Not To Write)

If English is not your native language, you should know that "cunt" is the stronger swearword in the land and it means “a woman’s sexual organs” or “a person the speaker hates”. English, contrary to European Spanish, has some words so strong that very few people uses them, so no Spanish blasphemy can get close. Therefore, giving that word as a book's title, and including a brief explanation of why you prefer to use the word cunt instead of vagina, has a shock value that I cannot translate or understand.

I started reading Inga Muscio’s Cunt: A Declaration of Independence out of curiosity; I thought it would be a story of swearwords, of how perfectly ordinary words like huswyf (Old English for woman) degenerated into misogynistic ones like “hussy” (modern English to insult a woman). I forced myself to read it through because something so badly written, so full of stupid generalisations, of dangerous advice, and the occasional good joke, has a perverse appeal. Whatever you do, don’t read Cunt. It is a confused mix of opinions on issues such as contraception, abortion, prostitution, menstrual products, sex, rape and the like, that gives feminism a bad name.

1 comentario

[kate - 27 de abril de 2005 - 21:04]

i must say, you're the first person i've talked to who has read Cunt and disliked it. it's probably one of my favorite books just because she writes so honestly (then again, i knew what it was about before getting into it)

sorry you didn't enjoy it :-