Book Review of 'Cunt' - Sex~Kitten.net

Cons
The author manages to portray herself as radical and unreliable, which makes us all look bad.

Tess says "I recommend reading this in spite of its faults. It will provoke something in you."

I didn't know I was a feminist until I read this book. It totally changed my thinking, my reading preferences and my opinions on just about everything. I felt like it opened my eyes. Particularly I was gripped by the section on rape. Muscio describes a sort of vigilante justice for rapists that gave me chills. Our society condones rape because men don't want to admit that respectable men commit this crime and women don't want to admit that it happens to respectable women. Muscio's approach makes it clear that we do not condone it and that we will not tolerate it. Best of all, we don't have to rely on the justice system to send that message. If we put forth the effort to examine our prejudices and support rape victims instead of doubting them, fearing them and ignoring them, we can make our society a place where rapists feel very uncomfortable.

I read this book at a time in my life when I needed to feel empowered as a woman. It lead me to explore more (better) feminist literature and to take a long hard look at society and the place to which my gender has evolved. That said, this book is pretty awful.

The most interesting part of the book is, of course, the title and watching other people's reactions to it. The word has been kidnapped by abusive men and made to be the most filthy curse word. I read somewhere that one clear indicator of a man's abusive nature is whether or not he uses the word "cunt." I like the idea of taking this word back and using it with pride and honor. Then again, I always did prefer to use colorful language.

Everyone knows about the love affair that men have with their penises, but women who glorify or even talk about their private parts are considered vulgar and disgusting. I like the idea of taking this privilege back too, and talking freely about my nether regions whenever I have something to say about them.

And I appreciated learning about the politics surrounding tampons. Turns out, nobody cares very much if women are rubbing carcinogens against the senstive mucous membranes of their vaginas, as long as those tampons are clean and white and super absorbant. I don't feel nearly as outraged by it as the author does, but it's nice to know the big picture.

I was even intrigued about the idea of using visualization to induce an abortion. What an interesting idea! If abortion were to be outlawed again, would there be some kind of enforcement entity set up to visit women's homes at random and make sure they're not using their minds to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?

Unfortunately, almost everything else in the book is positively grating. After taking great pains to explain that she's a middle-class white girl, Muscio proceeds to "talk ethnic" (or whatever the heck she thinks it is) -- never conjugating the infinitive of "to be" (as in, "I be sad about that") and clippin' all the g's off them verbs. I have no idea what she thought she was proving by writing this way, but it makes her look utterly ridiculous.

Her spin on science and history goes way over the top. First, she bemoans the number of decades women were told by male doctors that PMS is "just in our heads" only to then have it validated by male doctors, thus sanctifiying it as a Genuine Problem we were now allowed to have. Ok, fair enough.

But then she goes on to claim PMS is entirely a social construct spawned of women hating their bodies and that menstruating women should go easy on themselves and not expect themselves to act normal! Huh? By now, my head is spinning.....

Next, she takes on abortion, describing the three abortions she has obtained in painful detail. ("Poor me! I had to have three abortions because I just can't abide by man's version of birth control!") Then she has the nerve to rag on medical abortion, medical professionals who perform abortions, pro-choice activism, and ends in a complete froth about western medicine in general.

I can't fathom the kind of spoiled selfishness that would have a woman follow three abortions with nothing but venom for the medical advances and activism that have allowed her to obtain these abortions, safely and legally, without bleeding to death in her kitchen after having her uterus punctured with a coat hanger! She seems to think that because obtaining an abortion wasn't actually *fun*, that she was being violated by the male-dominated medical establishment and anyone who has every put their life on the line to fight for abortion rights.

At the height of this tizzy, she blames the western, male-dominated medical establishment for IUD's, claiming that if they had been created by women, they would not be harmful. Is there any point here in mentioning that IUD's WERE created by women?

She has a few stellar moments of clarity. Her discussion about lovin' the female body as an act of social rebellion is interesting and her chapter on the lack of community among women, created by competition for male approval, is very nice and rarely addressed by less audacious writers. And most of the afterword was quite nice. She finally be gettin' 'round to droppin' that annoyin' style ahers by then. And it was written a few years later, after she'd been taken down a few notches by p1ssed-off pre-op transexuals and, presumably, had just grown up a little bit.

But sadly, even when Muscio has a point, it's told in the voice of a deeply wounded person (she describes once paying a feminist guru quite a bit of money just to hold her and affirm her) who is embittered and not terribly well educated.

Have you read this book? Have an opinion you'd like to share with Tess & the other Sex Kittens? Use the 'Discuss' link & tell us all about it!