Who's the Feckless Cunt Now?

In the past day and a half you have probably heard the word “cunt” more often than you heard it for the rest of your life. You know that decidedly unfunny comedienne Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.”

One is surprised that no one dared reply that, as the old schoolyard taunt says: it takes one to know one. It would have put an end to an absurd amount of moral posturing and virtue preening.

According to Bee, Ivanka Trump’s crime was… not to have taken control of her father’s immigration policy, something the Bee believed that Ivanka could do by being sufficiently alluring and by incestuously deploying her feminine mystique. What has feminism come to?

Given that these words fell in the midst of the major brouhaha over Roseanne Barr’s racist slur, one can only imagine that if we were still living in a serious country, we would first, not sprinkle our everyday conversation with vulgar epithets or barnyard obscenities, and second, not torture ourselves trying to find new ways to police speech.

It is not only that Bee’s mindlessly provocative slur ought rightly to be denounced. We feel obliged to point out that it was a prime instance of feminist misogyny. Do feminists really hate women that much? Do they believe that an attractive woman can get anything she wants from a man by slipping into a slinky frock, while other women, the true feminists need to work for it?

I leave it to your imagination.

Anyway, among the mass of commentaries on the topic—which mass I have certainly not read—one stands out. It’s by another feminist firebrand, by name of Erin Gloria Ryan. EGR is profoundly upset that the controversy has somehow slandered her favorite word, the word she throws into every conversation, roughly as some people put ketchup on everything they eat. What? You don’t know anyone who drowns all his food in ketchup? Consider yourself fortunate.

So, here is EGR—which, for those less literate, is short for: egregious—on her favorite word:

I love the word “cunt.” It’s so direct, sharp, and mean, with an acrid finish like a lick of whisky that leaves the roof of one’s mouth feeling disinfected and the eyes watering. In my mind, I use “cunt” on everything—men, women, pets, modes of transportation, inanimate objects. The other day I called the toilet paper holder in my bathroom a “stupid little cunt” for failing to hold up the toilet paper. I wish it were more socially acceptable to use it in more contexts. Everything can be a cunt if you truly believe in it.  

At least, EGR has established, for all time, that the  “cunt” she uses on everything is not tasteless. Good to know that Samantha Bee was engaging in tasteful humor. Besides, as we all know only to well, and as the Latin has it: De gustibus non est disputandum. That is: there's no arguing with taste.