name	Germaine Greer
birth date	January 29, 1939
birth place	Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
occupation	Academic writer
nationality	Australian
education	University of Melbourne (B.A.)University of Sydney (MA)University of Cambridge (PhD)
period	1970–present
language	English
subject	Art history, English literature, feminism
notableworks	''The Female Eunuch''
spouse	Paul du Feu (m. 1968–1973)
influences	Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir
portaldisp	}}

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century.

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her book ''The Female Eunuch'' became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her into a household name and bringing her both adulation and opposition. She is also the author of many other books including, ''Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility'' (1984); ''The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause'' (1991) and ''Shakespeare's Wife'' (2007). She is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick.

Greer has defined her goal as 'women's liberation' as distinct from 'equality with men', She asserts that women's liberation meant embracing gender differences in a positive fashion, a struggle for the freedom for women to define their own values, order their own priorities and determine their own fates. In contrast, Greer sees equality as mere assimilation and "settling" to live the lives of "unfree men".

==Early life and career== Germaine Greer was born in Melbourne in 1939, growing up in the bayside suburb of Mentone. Her father was a newspaper advertising rep' who served in the wartime RAAF. After attending a private convent school, Star of the Sea College, in Gardenvale, she won a teaching scholarship in 1956 and enrolled at the University of Melbourne. After graduating with a degree in English and French language and literature, she moved to Sydney, where she became involved with the Sydney Push social milieu and the anarchist Sydney Libertarians at its centre. Christine Wallace, in her unauthorised biography, describes Greer at this time:

For Germaine, [the Push] provided a philosophy to underpin the attitude and lifestyle she had already acquired in Melbourne. She walked into the Royal George Hotel, into the throng talking themselves hoarse in a room stinking of stale beer and thick with cigarette smoke, and set out to follow the Push way of life – 'an intolerably difficult discipline which I forced myself to learn'. The Push struck her as completely different from the Melbourne intelligentsia she had engaged with in the Drift, 'who always talked about art and truth and beauty and argument ''ad hominem''; instead, these people talked about truth and only truth, insisting that most of what we were exposed to during the day was ideology, which was a synonym for lies – or bullshit, as they called it.' Her Damascus turned out to be the Royal George, and the Hume Highway was the road linking it. 'I was already an anarchist,' she says. 'I just didn't know why I was an anarchist. They put me in touch with the basic texts and I found out what the internal logic was about how I felt and thought. ''

By 1972 Greer would identify as an anarchist communist, close to Marxism.

In her first teaching post, Greer lectured at the University of Sydney, where she also earned a first class MA in romantic poetry in 1963 with a thesis titled ''The Development of Byron's Satiric Mode''. A year later, the thesis won her a Commonwealth Scholarship, which she used to fund her doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England, where she became a member of the all-women's Newnham College.

Professor Lisa Jardine, who was at Newnham at the same time, recalled the first time she met Greer, at a formal dinner in college: "The principal called us to order for the speeches. As a hush descended, one person continued to speak, too engrossed in her conversation to notice, her strong Australian accent reverberating around the room. At the graduates' table, Germaine was explaining that there could be no liberation for women, no matter how highly educated, as long as we were required to cram our breasts into bras constructed like mini-Vesuviuses, two stitched white cantilevered cones which bore no resemblance to the female anatomy. The willingly suffered discomfort of the Sixties bra, she opined vigorously, was a hideous symbol of male oppression ... [We were] astonished at the very idea that a woman could speak so loudly and out of turn and that words such as "bra" and "breasts' – or maybe she said "tits" – could be uttered amid the pseudo-masculine solemnity of a college dinner.

Greer joined the student amateur acting company, the Cambridge Footlights, which launched her into the London arts and media scene. Using the pen name Rose Blight, she also wrote a gardening column for the satirical magazine ''Private Eye'', and as Dr. G, became a regular contributor to the underground London magazine ''Oz'', owned by the Australian writer Richard Neville. The 29 July 1970 edition was guest-edited by Greer, and featured an article of hers on the hand-knitted Cock Sock, "a snug corner for a chilly prick." She also posed nude for ''Oz'' on the understanding that the male editors would do likewise: they did not. Greer was also editor of the Amsterdam underground magazine ''Suck'', which published a full-page photograph of Greer: "''stripped to the buff, looking at the lens through my thighs.''" Greer has said that "Cunt" is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock."

In 1968 she received her Ph.D. on the topic of Elizabethan drama with a thesis titled ''The Ethic of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare's early comedies'', and accepted a lectureship in English at the University of Warwick in Coventry. The same year, in London, she married British carpenter and remodeler Paul du Feu, but the marriage lasted only three weeks, during which, as she later admitted, Greer was unfaithful several times. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973.

Middle career

Following the success of ''The Female Eunuch,'' Greer resigned her post at Warwick University in 1972 after travelling the world to promote her book. She co-presented a Granada Television comedy show called ''Nice Time'' with Kenny Everett and Jonathan Routh, bought a house in Italy, wrote a column for ''The Sunday Times'', then spent the next few years travelling through Africa and Asia, which included a visit to Bangladesh to investigate the situation of women who had been raped during the conflict with Pakistan. On the New Zealand leg of her tour in 1972, Greer was arrested for using the words "bullshit" and "fuck" during her speech, which attracted major rallies in her support.

In the mid-1970s, Greer appeared on conservative William F. Buckley's ''Firing Line''. In his memoir, Buckley recalled that Greer had "trounced him" during the debate. He wrote, "Nothing I said, and memory reproaches me for having performed miserably, made any impression or any dent in the argument. She carried the house overwhelmingly." In 1979 Greer was appointed to a post in the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, as the director for the Center of the Study of Women's Literature. She was also the founding editor of ''Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature'', an academic journal, during 1981–82.

Later career

In 1989, Greer was appointed as a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. Greer unsuccessfully opposed the election to a fellowship of her transsexual colleague Rachael Padman. Greer argued that Padman had been born male, and therefore should not be admitted to Newnham, a women's college. Greer resigned in 1996 after the case attracted negative publicity. An article concerning the incident was published on 25 June 1997 by Clare Longrigg of ''The Guardian''. Entitled "A Sister with No Fellow Feeling"; it disappeared from websites after print publication, on the instruction of the newspaper's lawyers.

Greer appeared alongside Daniel O'Donnell, the popular Irish crooner, on an RTE chat show in 2006. While O'Donnell spoke about love, cooking and his mother's pancakes, Greer mocked him by making faces to camera behind his back. The normally unflappable O'Donnell confronted her and some bitter words were exchanged.

Over the years Greer has continued to self-identify as an anarchist or Marxist. In her books she has dealt very little with political labels of this type, but has reaffirmed her position in interviews. She stated on ABC Television in 2008 that "I ought to confess I suppose that I'm a Marxist. I think that reality comes first and ideology comes second," and elaborated later in the program to a question on whether feminism was the only successful revolution of the 20th century saying:

"The difficulty for me is that I believe in permanent revolution. I believe that once you change the power structure and you get an oligarchy that is trying to keep itself in power, you have all the illiberal features of the previous regime. What has to keep on happening is a constant process of criticism, renewal, protest and so forth."

Speaking on an interview for 3CR (an Australian community radio station), also in 2008, she described herself as "an old anarchist" and reaffirmed that opposition to "hierarchy and capitalism" were at the centre of her politics.

Works

''The Female Eunuch''

Greer argued in her book, ''The Female Eunuch'', that women do not realise how much men hate them, and how much they are taught to hate themselves. Christine Wallace writes that, when ''The Female Eunuch'' was first published, one woman had to keep it wrapped in brown paper because her husband wouldn't let her read it; arguments and fights broke out over dinner tables and copies of it were thrown across rooms at unsuspecting husbands (Wallace 1997). It arrived in the shops in London in October 1970. By March 1971, it had nearly sold out its second printing and had been translated into eight languages.

"The title is an indication of the problem," Greer told the ''New York Times'' in 1971, "Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality. They've become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for example, who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives – to be fattened or made docile – women have been cut off from their capacity for action. It's a process that sacrifices vigour for delicacy and succulence, and one that's got to be changed."

Two of the book's themes already pointed the way to ''Sex and Destiny'' 14 years later, namely that the nuclear family is a bad environment for women and for the raising of children; and that the manufacture of women's sexuality by Western society was demeaning and confining. Girls are feminised from childhood by being taught rules that subjugate them, she argued. Later, when women embrace the stereotypical version of adult femininity, they develop a sense of shame about their own bodies, and lose their natural and political autonomy. The result is powerlessness, isolation, a diminished sexuality, and a lack of joy:

The ignorance and isolation of most women mean that they are incapable of making conversation: most of their communication with their spouses is a continuation of the power struggle. The result is that when wives come along to dinner parties they pervert civilised conversation about real issues into personal quarrels. The number of hostesses who wish they did not have to invite wives is legion.

Greer argued that women should get to know and come to accept their own bodies, taste their own menstrual blood, and give up celibacy and monogamy. But they should not burn their bras. "Bras are a ludicrous invention," she wrote, "but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression."

While being interviewed about the book in 1971, she told the ''New York Times'' that she had been a "supergroupie." "Supergroupies don't have to hang around hotel corridors," she said. "When you are one, as I have been, you get invited backstage. I think groupies are important because they demystify sex; they accept it as physical, and they aren't possessive about their conquests."

Publications in the 1970s and 1980s

Greer's second book, ''The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work'' (1979) covers its subject until the end of the nineteenth century. It also speculates on the existence of women artists whose careers are not recorded by posterity. Greer translated Aristophanes's ''Lysistrata'' in 1972.

''Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility'', published in 1984, continued Greer's critique of Western attitudes toward sexuality, fertility, family, and the imposition of those attitudes on the rest of the world. Greer's target again is the nuclear family, government intervention in sexual behaviour, and the commercialisation of sexuality and women's bodies. Germaine Greer argued that the Western promotion of birth control in the Third World was in large part driven not by concern for human welfare but by the traditional fear and envy of the rich towards the fertility of the poor. She argued that the birth control movement had been tainted by such attitudes from its beginning, citing Marie Stopes and others. She cautioned against condemning life styles and family values in the developing world.

In 1986, Greer published ''Shakespeare'', a work of literary criticism, and ''The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings'', a collection of newspaper and magazine articles written between 1968 and 1985. In 1989 came ''Daddy, We Hardly Knew You'', a diary and travelogue about her father, whom she described as distant, weak and unaffectionate, which led to claims – which she characterized as inevitable in an interview with ''The Guardian'' – that in her writing she was projecting her relationship with him onto all other men.

Publications since 1990

In 1991, ''The Change: Women, Ageing, and the Menopause'', which the ''New York Times'' called a "brilliant, gutsy, exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book" became another influential book in the women's movement. In it, Greer wrote of the various myths concerning menopause, advising against the use of hormone replacement therapy. "Frightening females is fun," she wrote in ''The Age''. "Women were frightened into using hormone replacement therapy by dire predictions of crumbling bones, heart disease, loss of libido, depression, despair, disease and death if they let nature take its course." She argues that scaring women is "big business and hugely profitable." It is fear, she wrote, that "makes women comply with schemes and policies that work against their interest". ''Slip-Shod Sibyls: Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet'' followed in 1995.

In 1999, ''the whole woman'', which was intended as a sequel to ''The Female Eunuch'' was released. In this book she discussed what she saw as the lack of fundamental progress in the feminist movement, and criticized some sections of the women's movement for illusions on that score: "Even if it had been real, equality would have been a poor substitute for liberation; fake equality is leading women into double jeopardy. The rhetoric of equality is being used in the name of political correctness to mask the hammering that women are taking. When ''The Female Eunuch'' was written our daughters were not cutting or starving themselves. On every side speechless women endure endless hardship, grief and pain, in a world system that creates billions of losers for every handful of winners. It's time to get angry again."Chapter titles reveal the themes, including: "Food," "Breast," "Pantomime Dames (about transsexual women)," "Shopping," "Estrogen," "Testosterone," "Wives," "Loathing," "Girlpower" and "Mutilation" (including a discussion of female genital mutilation in the Third World and the West). Her comments about female genital mutilation proved especially controversial in some quarters, for example a United Kingdom House of Commons Committee described her viewpoint as "simplistic and offensive."

In fact, Greer was opposed to the practice and said that feminists fighting to eliminate female genital mutilation in their own countries "must be supported", but had explored some of the complexities of the issue, and the double standards of the West, and warned against using the issue to "reinforce our notions of cultural superiority". She had pointed out that the term "female genital mutilation" was itself simplistic being used to describe practices varying from "nicking the prepuce of the clitoris to provoke ritual bleeding", to the extreme mutilation of infibulation. She questioned the perhaps simplistic view that female genital mutilation was necessarily imposed by men on women rather than by women on women, or even freely chosen, adducing some anecdotal evidence to the contrary and discussed the issue in relation to some of the forms of genital and other bodily mutilations carried out in the West on men and women. She notes for example that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends female genital mutilation of baby girls with "over long" clitorides and that five such procedures are in fact carried out every day in the United States, without being included in "female genital mutilation" statistics In particular she compared female genital mutilation to the practice of male genital mutilation"Any suggestion that male genital mutilation should be outlawed would be understood to be a frontal attack on the cultural identity of Jews and Muslims. The same issues are raised by female genital mutilation. As a practical note for activists:" As UN workers in East Uganda found, women would not abandon female circumcision until some similarly significant procedure could take its place." Other controversial points in this book include Germaine Greer's opposition to accepting male-born transsexuals as women:"Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males."

In 2003, ''The Beautiful Boy'' was published, an art history book about the beauty of teenage boys, which is illustrated with 200 photographs of what ''The Guardian'' called "succulent teenage male beauty". Greer described the book as an attempt to address modern women's apparent indifference to the teenage boy as a sexual object and to "advance women's reclamation of their capacity for, and right to, visual pleasure" (Greer 2003). The photograph on the cover was of Björn Andrésen in his character of Tadzio in the film Death in Venice (1971). The actor has been quoted by journalists as complaining about the picture's use.

''Whitefella Jump Up : The shortest way to nationhood'' was published in 2003 as Issue 11 of the "Quarterly Essay" series Germaine Greer argues that Australians should reimagine Australia as an Aboriginal nation; and discusses some of the consequences of this, and why she regards it as feasible and desirable. "Jump up" in Aboriginal Kriol can, she writes, mean "to be resurrected or reborn"; and the title refers to occasions when Aborigines apparently accepted whites as reincarnated relatives. Germaine Greer suggests that whites were mistaken in understanding this literally, and that the Aborigines were in fact offering the whites concerned terms on which they could be accepted into the Aboriginal kinship system. The gist of the essay is that it may not be too late for Australia as a nation to root itself in Aboriginal history and culture in an analogous way.

In 2007, Greer contributed an essay to the book ''Stella Vine: Paintings'' which accompanied the major solo exhibition of British painter Stella Vine at Modern Art Oxford museum in England. In May 2007, Greer and Vine took part in a public talk ''Gender & Culture'' as part of the Women's International Arts Festival. On 18 September 2007, Greer gave a talk about Vine's art with gallery director Andrew Nairne. Also in 2007, Greer published a biography of Anne Hathaway entitled ''Shakespeare's Wife,'' one of the few books to deal with this subject.

In 2008, she wrote the essay ''On Rage'' about the widespread rage of indigenous men, published in the series "Little Books on Big Themes" by Melbourne University Publishing, launched by Bob Carr on 15 August 2008. The essay was attacked as "racist" by Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton. The gist of Langton's argument was that Greer was making excuses for the bad behaviour of Aboriginal men.

Other media

In 1992 Greer wrote an article in ''The Guardian'' claiming that "men hate women" but that "women cannot hate men". Her comments came in for a great deal of criticism in following day's paper. Greer responded to Christine Wallace's biography, ''Germaine Greer: The Untamed Shrew'' (1997), by claiming that biographies of living persons are morbid and worthless, as they can only be incomplete. She said: "I don't write about any living women... because I think that's invidious; there is no point in limiting her by the achievements of the past because she's in a completely different situation, and I figure she can break the moulds and start again."

In 1998, Greer wrote the episode ''Make Love not War'' for the 1998 television documentary series ''Cold War''. She sat for a nude photograph by the Australian photographer Polly Borland in 1999. The photo was part of an exhibition at the UK's National Portrait Gallery in 2000. It later appeared in a book titled ''Polly Borland: Australians''. Greer has made frequent appearances on the BBC's satirical television panel show ''Have I Got News For You'', including one in the programme's very first series in 1990.

Greer was one of nine contestants in the 2005 series of ''Celebrity Big Brother''. She had previously said that the show was "as civilised as looking through the keyhole in your teenager's bedroom door". She walked out of the show after five days inside the Big Brother house, citing the psychological cruelty and bullying of the show's producers, the dirt of the house, and the publicity-seeking behaviour of her fellow contestants. However since then she has appeared on spin-off shows ''Big Brother's Little Brother'' and ''Big Brother's Big Mouth''. In 2006, Greer appeared twice in an episode of Ricky Gervais' ''Extras'' playing herself. The play ''The Female of the Species'' (2006) by Joanna Murray-Smith is loosely based on events in Greer's life, the assault and false imprisonment in 2000, and uses Greer as "inspiration for a comic attack on strident feminism"; the main character's name in that play is Margot Mason. Greer regarded the play as an attack and stated that it was "threadbare".

In September 2006, Greer's column in ''The Guardian'' about the death of Australian Steve Irwin attracted much criticism and some support. Greer said that "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin". In an interview with the Nine Network's ''A Current Affair'' about her comments, Greer said "I really found the whole Steve Irwin phenomenon embarrassing and I'm not the only person who did" and that she hoped that "exploitative nature documentaries" would now end. Also in 2006, she presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the life of American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa. She confirmed that she had been a friend of Zappa's since the early 1970s and that his orchestral work "G-Spot Tornado" would be played at her funeral.

In the 2008 Beeban Kidron film ''Hippie Hippie Shake'', based on Richard Neville's memoir, Greer is depicted by Emma Booth. Greer has expressed her displeasure at being featured in the film.

Aboriginal Australians

Germaine Greer has published three pamphlets on Aboriginal issues. According to her own account, she understood little about Aboriginal issues during her early years in Australia, but in England she saw from the perspective of distance that "what was operating in Australia was apartheid: the separation and alienation South Africa tried desperately and savagely to impose on their black majority, we had achieved, apparently effortlessly, with our black minority." On returning to Australia in late 1971 she made a concerted effort "to see as much as I could of what had been hidden from me" travelling for that purpose through the Northern Territory with activist Bobbi Sykes She wrote in 2003: 'Though I can claim no drop of Aboriginal blood, twenty years ago Kulin women from Fitzroy adopted me. There are whitefellas who insist that blackfellas don't practise adoption; all I can say is that when I asked about the possibility of assuming Aboriginality, the Kulin women said at once "We'll adopt you." "How do you do that?" I asked, hoping I wouldn't be required to camp in some bleak spot for a month or two, and be painted or smoked and cut about. "That's it," they said. "Its done. We've adopted you." Since then I have sat on the ground with black women and been assigned a skin and been taught how to hunt and how to cook shellfish and witchetty grubs, with no worse punishment for getting it wrong than being laughed at.

It has been reported in the press that in early 2000, Greer claimed at a press gathering in London that she never set foot in Australia before receiving the permission of the "traditional owners of the land" at Sydney Airport. New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council spokesman Paul Molloy was reported as claiming that she had never asked permission, despite visiting Sydney several times in recent years, and in any case there was no single group of elders that could give such permission to enter Australia. In assessing the credibility or significance of these press reports it should be noted that Molloy's quoted point was made by Germaine Greer herself in her 2003 pamphlet ''Whitefella Jump Up'': "Aboriginal law cannot now be reapplied. In any case no single body of Aboriginal law would ever have applied to the Australian population as a whole."

References

Further reading

External links

''On Rage'': Video of Germaine Greer delivering keynote address at Melbourne Writers Festival on SlowTV

Philm Freax: Germaine Greer, "A Groupie in Women's Lib" Interview for ''Rolling Stone'' by Robert Greenfield.

Category:Academics of the University of Warwick Category:Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge Category:Anarcha-feminists Category:Anarchist academics Category:Anarchist communists Category:Australian academics Category:Australian anarchists Category:Australian socialists Category:Democratic socialists Category:Australian atheists Category:Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:Australian feminists Category:Australian women writers Category:Big Brother UK contestants Category:Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge Category:Feminist studies scholars Category:Academics from Melbourne Category:Writers from Melbourne Category:University of Melbourne alumni Category:20th-century women writers Category:1939 births Category:Living people Category:Feminist writers

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''Cunt'' () is a vulgarism, primarily referring to the female genitalia, specifically the vulva, and including the cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 ''Oxford English Dictionary'', ''c'' 1230, refers to the London street known as Gropecunt Lane. Scholar Germaine Greer has said that "it is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock."

''Cunt'' is also used informally as a derogatory epithet in referring to a person of either sex, but this usage is relatively recent, dating back only as far as the late nineteenth century. Reflecting different national usages, the ''Compact Oxford English Dictionary'' defines ''cunt'' as "an unpleasant or stupid person", whereas Merriam-Webster has a usage of the term as "usually disparaging & obscene: woman", noting that it is used in the US as "an offensive way to refer to a woman"; the ''Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English'' defines it as "a despicable man", however when used with a positive qualifier (good, funny, clever, etc.) in countries such as Britain, New Zealand and Australia, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person referred to.

The word appears to have been in common usage from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century. After a period of disuse, usage became more frequent in the twentieth century, in parallel with the rise of popular literature and pervasive media. The term also has various other derived uses and, like ''fuck'' and its derivatives, has been used ''mutatis mutandis'' as noun, pronoun, adjective, participle and other parts of speech.

Etymology

Although it has been said that "etymologists are unlikely to come to an agreement about the origins of 'cunt' any time soon," the word is most often thought to have derived from a Germanic word (Proto-Germanic ''*kuntō'', stem ''*kuntōn-''), which appeared as ''kunta'' in Old Norse. Scholars are uncertain of the origin of the Proto-Germanic form itself. In Middle English, it appeared with many spellings, such as ''coynte'', ''cunte'' and ''queynte'', which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation of the word. There are cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish, Faroese and Nynorsk ''kunta''; West Frisian and Middle Low German ''kunte''; Middle Dutch ''conte''; Dutch ''kut''; Middle Low German ''kutte''; Middle High German ''kotze'' (prostitute); German ''kott'', and perhaps Old English ''cot''. The etymology of the Proto-Germanic term is disputed. It may have arisen by Grimm's law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root ''*gen/gon'' 'create, become' seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root ''*gʷneH₂/guneH₂'' 'woman' (Greek ''gunê'', seen in gynaecology). Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin ''cunnus'' (vulva), and its derivatives French ''con'', Spanish ''coño'', and Portuguese ''cona'', or in Persian ''kun'',''Persian:کون'', have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to ''cunnus'' are ''cuneus'' 'wedge' and its derivative ''cunēre'' 'to fasten with a wedge', (figurative) "to squeeze in", leading to English words such as ''cuneiform'' (wedge-shaped).

The word in its modern meaning is attested in Middle English. ''Proverbs of Hendyng'', a manuscript from some time before 1325, includes the advice:

Offensiveness

Generally

The word "cunt" is generally regarded in English-speaking countries as unsuitable in normal public discourse. It has been described as "the most heavily tabooed word of all English words." John Ayto, editor of the ''Oxford Dictionary of Slang'', has disputed this, writing: }} Use of the word is also documented as the argot of some sections of society and in recent years attempts have been made to mitigate its connotations by promoting positive uses.

Feminist perspectives

Some radical feminists of the 1970s sought to eliminate disparaging terms for women, including "bitch" and "cunt". In the context of pornography, Catharine MacKinnon argued that use of the word acts to reinforce a dehumanisation of women by reducing them to mere body parts; and in 1979 Andrea Dworkin described the word as reducing women to "the one essential – 'cunt: our essence ... our offence'".

Despite criticisms, there is a movement among feminists that seeks to reclaim cunt not only as acceptable, but as an honorific, in much the same way that ''queer'' has been reappropriated by LGBT people. Proponents include Inga Muscio in her book, ''Cunt: A Declaration of Independence'' and Eve Ensler in "Reclaiming Cunt" from ''The Vagina Monologues''.

The word was reclaimed by Angela Carter, who used it in the title story of ''The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories''; a female character described female genitalia in a pornography book: "her cunt a split fig below the great globes of her buttocks".

Germaine Greer, who had previously published a magazine article entitled "Lady, Love Your Cunt", discussed the origins, usage and power of the word in the BBC series ''Balderdash and Piffle''. She suggested at the end of the piece that there was something precious about the word, in that it was now one of the few remaining words in English that still retained its power to shock. it did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1961, when it was included in ''Webster's Third New International Dictionary'' with the comment "usu. considered obscene". Its first appearance in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a London street name of "Gropecunte Lane". It was, however, also used before 1230, having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxons, originally not an obscenity but rather a factual name for the vulva or vagina. "Gropecunt Lane" was originally a street of prostitution, a red light district. It was normal in the Middle Ages for streets to be named after the goods available for sale therein, hence the prevalence in cities having a medieval history of names such as "Silver Street", "Fish Street", and "Swinegate" (pork butchers). In some locations, the former name has been bowdlerised, as in the City of York, to the more acceptable "Grape Lane".

The word appears several times in Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'' (c. 1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be considered obscene at this point, since it is used openly. A notable use is from the "Miller's Tale": "Pryvely he caught her by the queynte." The Wife of Bath also uses this term, "For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve ... What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?" In modernised versions of these passages the word "queynte" is usually translated simply as "cunt". However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from the Latin for "known"). "Quaint" was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as "cunt". It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer's work the word ''queynte'' seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern "quaint" (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have become obscene. Although Shakespeare does not use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still plays with it, using wordplay to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of ''Hamlet'', as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Ophelia, of course, replies, "No, my lord." Hamlet, feigning shock, says, "Do you think I meant ''country matters''?" Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of ''country'', Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "That's a fair thought, to lie between maids' legs." Also see ''Twelfth Night'' (Act II, Scene V): "There be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps." A related scene occurs in ''Henry V'': when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "''gros, et impudique''" English words "foot" and "gown", which her English teacher has mispronounced as "''coun''". It is usually argued that Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "''foutre''" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "''con''" (French "cunt", also used to mean "idiot"). Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem ''The Good-Morrow'', referring to sucking on "country pleasures".

The 1675 Restoration comedy ''The Country Wife'' also features such word play, even in its title.

By the 17th century a softer form of the word, "cunny", came into use. A well known use of this derivation can be found in the 25 October 1668 entry of the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was discovered having an affair with Deborah Willet: he wrote that his wife "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...."

''Cunny'' was probably derived from a pun on ''coney'', meaning "rabbit", rather as ''pussy'' is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger: "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") Because of this slang use as a synonym for a taboo term, the word coney, when it was used in its original sense to refer to rabbits, came to be pronounced as (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original (rhymes with "honey"). Eventually the taboo association led to the word "coney" becoming depreciated entirely and replaced by the word rabbit.

Robert Burns used the word in his ''Merry Muses of Caledonia'', a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s. In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom".

Usage: modern

In modern literature

James Joyce was one of the first of the major 20th-century novelists to put the word "cunt" into print. In the context of one of the central characters in ''Ulysses'', Leopold Bloom, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea and to Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in ''Ulysses'', with four other wordplays ('cunty') on it, D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in ''Lady Chatterley's Lover'', in a more direct sense. Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley: The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution for obscenity in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books.

Henry Miller's novel ''Tropic of Cancer'' uses the word extensively, ensuring its banning in Britain between 1934 and 1961 and being the subject of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in ''Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein'', .

Samuel Beckett was an associate of Joyce, and in his ''Malone Dies'' (1956), he writes: "His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that trump card of young wives."

In Ian McEwan's 2001 novel ''Atonement'', set in 1935, the word is used in a love letter mistakenly sent instead of a revised version, and although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.

Usage by meaning

Referring to women

In referring to a woman, ''cunt'' is an abusive term usually considered the most offensive word in that context and even more forceful than ''bitch''. In the film ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he doesn't like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?" It can also be used to imply that the sexual act is the primary function of a woman; for example, see below in relation to ''Saturday Night Fever''.

In 2004, during a deposition regarding a football rape case, University of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman was asked if she thought "cunt" was a "filthy and vile" word. She replied that it was a "swear word" but she had "actually heard it used as a term of endearment". A spokesperson later clarified that Hoffman meant the word had polite meanings in its original use centuries ago. In the rape case, a CU football player had allegedly called female player Katie Hnida a "fucking lovely cunt".

Similarly, during the UK Oz trial for obscenity in 1971, prosecuting counsel asked writer George Melly "Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a cunt?" Melly replied "No, because I don't think she is."

Referring to men

Frederic Manning's 1929 book ''The Middle Parts of Fortune'', set in World War I, is a vernacular account of the lives of ordinary soldiers and describes regular use of the word by British Tommies. The word is invariably used to describe men: Whilst normally derogatory in English-speaking countries, the word has an informal use, even being used as a term of endearment. Like the word ''fuck'', use between youths is not uncommon, as exemplified by its use in the film ''Trainspotting'', where it is an integral part of the common language of the principal characters.

Other uses

The word is sometimes used as a general expletive to show frustration, annoyance or anger, for example "I've had a cunt of a day!" and "This is a cunt to finish".

Australians have a habit of pairing the word with another to give a more specific meaning such as "cunt-rash" (literally, a visible disorder of the female genitalia; normally a general insult). The phrase "sick cunt" or "mad cunt" is sometimes used as a compliment by such sub-groups as surfers or the metal/hardcore music scene, although the term originated within immigrant groups who combined their use of the term "sick" with what they saw as a typically Aussie expletive.

As a slang term with a positive qualifier (funny, clever, etc.) in countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, it conveys a positive sense of the object or person referred to.

A modern derivative adjective, ''cuntish'' (alternatively, ''cuntacious''), meaning frustrating, awkward, or (when describing behavior) selfish, is increasingly used in England and has begun to appear in other countries, including Scotland and Ireland.

"Cunting" is routinely used as an intensifying modifier, much like "fucking". It can also be used as a slang term for criticism, as in "Did you see the cunting he got for saying that?"

The word "cunty" is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi's ''My Beautiful Laundrette'' is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant as "eating hot buttered toast with cunty fingers," suggestive of hypocrisy and a hidden sordidness or immorality behind the country's quaint façade. This term is attributed to British novelist Henry Green.

"Cunted" can mean to be extremely under the influence of drink and/or drugs.

In this sense the word is used to describe crude excess. An example of 'cunt' used as a simile to express an intense condition of bawdy, belligerent, antagonistic, or drunken behaviour, would be to describe another (or oneself) as behaving 'like a cunt'. This characterisation can be further qualified; 'like a total cunt', implying that the state of being like a cunt can have greater extremes: 'like a total shit fuck bastard cunt', for example. Such syntax though is rare.

An example in modern film script evoking 'cunt' as a simile of crude excess, and used with frank effect, is the 2000 British Film, ''Sexy Beast'', Directed by Jonathan Glazer. In the film Don Logan, played by Ben Kingsley, arrives at the home of ex-con Garry 'Gal' Dove (Ray Winstone) by taxi, and as he steps from the car delivers his opening line; "Gotta change my shirt, it's sticking to me. I'm sweatin' like a cunt".

In gay slang the term is used to describe something or someone being extremely original, impressive, or fantastic in regard to style (fashion or music) or demeanor. Both "cunt" and "cunty" are used interchangeably, often in adjective form. Originating in Ball culture, the term was popularized by the song "Cunty (The Feeling)" by drag performer Kevin Aviance. 1

Usage in modern popular culture

Theatre

Theatre censorship was effectively abolished in the UK in 1968; prior to that all theatrical productions had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. This relaxation made possible UK productions such as the musical ''Hair'' and ''Oh! Calcutta!''. But "cunt" was not uttered on a British stage for some years.

Television

Broadcast media, by definition, reach wide audiences and thus are regulated externally for content. To minimise not only public criticism but also regulatory sanctions, policies have been developed by media providers as to how "cunt" and similar words should be treated. In a survey of 2000 commissioned by the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority, "cunt" was regarded as the most offensive word which could be heard, above "motherfucker" and "fuck". Nevertheless, there have been occasions when, particularly in a live broadcast, the word has been aired outside editorial control: ''The Frost Programme'', broadcast live on 7 November 1970, was the first time the word was known to have been used on British television, by Felix Dennis, in an affectionate reference rather than offensively. This incident has since been reshown many times. Bernard Manning first said on television the line "They say you are what you eat. I'm a cunt." ''This Morning'' broadcast the word in 2000, used by the model Caprice Bourret while being interviewed live about her role in ''The Vagina Monologues'' However "cunt" has crossed over from accidental to purposeful use: The first scripted use of the word in the United Kingdom was in the ITV drama ''No Mama No'', broadcast in 1979. In the final episode of the BBC series ''Coupling'', aired in 2004, an allusion is made when Steve is expelled from the delivery ward: "Nurse: She said you can't. Steve: Yeah, trust me, the word wasn't can't!" ''Jerry Springer – The Opera'' was shown by the BBC in January 2005. The performance included the phrase "cunting, cunting, cunting, cunting cunt" (a description of the Devil). However, more controversy was generated by the Christ saying that he "Might be 'a bit gay'" than by the use of "cunt". In July 2007 BBC Three dedicated a full hour to the word in a detailed documentary (''The 'C' Word'') about the origins, use and evolution of the word from the early 1900s to the present day. Presented by British comedian Will Smith, viewers were taken to a street in Oxford once called 'Gropecunt Lane' and presented with examples of the acceptability of "cunt" as a word. In the United States the broadcast use of "cunt" is still rare; nevertheless, the word has slowly infiltrated into broadcasting: The HBO TV shows ''Oz'', ''Sex and the City'', ''The Sopranos'', ''Deadwood'', ''The Wire'' and ''True Blood'', as well as the Showtime series ''Weeds'', ''Californication'' & ''Brotherhood'' also make frequent use of the word; and two episodes of the sitcom ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' are devoted to the comical repercussions of its inadvertent use.

An episode of the NBC TV show ''30 Rock'', titled The C Word, centered around a subordinate calling protagonist Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) a "cunt" and her subsequent efforts to regain her staff's favor. While the word was never uttered on camera, it is strongly implied that this is the offensive term used.

Jane Fonda did utter the word on a live airing of the ''Today Show'', a network broadcast-tv news program, in 2008 when being interviewed about ''The Vagina Monologues''.

Radio

On 6 December 2010 on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, James Naughtie referred to the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt as Jeremy Cunt; he covered this up explaining it as being a cough but still ended up giggling over his words while announcing the rest of the items in the next hour. A little later Andrew Marr referred to the incident during Start the Week where it was said that "we won't repeat the mistake" whereupon Marr slipped up in the same way as Naughtie had. The use of the word was described by the BBC as being "...an offensive four-letter word..."

Film

The word has few, if any, recorded uses in mainstream cinema prior to the 1970s, the first possibly being in ''Carnal Knowledge'' (1971) in which Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) asks, "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?" Its subsequent use has been limited to films restricted to adult audiences, such as ''The Exorcist'' (1973) in which Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) addresses the butler, Karl (Rudolf Schündler): "Cunting Hun! Bloody damn butchering Nazi pig!" and ''Taxi Driver'' (1976) in which Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro) describes himself as "A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up."

''Saturday Night Fever'' (1977) was released in two versions, "R" (Restricted) and "PG" (Parental Guidance), the latter omitting or replacing dialogue such as Tony Manero (John Travolta)'s comment to Annette (Donna Pescow) "It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt." This differential persists, and in ''The Silence of the Lambs'' (1991), Agent Starling (Jodie Foster) meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) for the first time and passes the cell of "Multiple Miggs", who says to Starling: "I can smell your cunt." In versions of the film edited for television the word is dubbed with the word scent.

In Britain, the word "cunt" remains perhaps the only word that can alone result in an "18" rating from the British Board of Film Classification. Ken Loach's film ''Sweet Sixteen'' was given an "18" in 2002, ensuring that young people of the age depicted in the film were unable to view it legally, because of an estimated twenty uses of "cunt". The BBFC's guidelines at "15" state that "the strongest terms (for example, 'cunt') may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable." The 2010 Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was given a "15" rating despite containing seven uses of the word.

Comedy

In their Derek and Clive dialogues, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, particularly Cook, arguably made the word more accessible in the UK; in the 1976 sketch "This Bloke Came Up To Me", "cunt" is used over thirty times. The word is also used extensively by British comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown, which ensures that his stand-up act has never been fully shown on UK television.

Australian stand-up comedian, Rodney Rude frequently refers to his audiences as "cunts" and makes frequent use of the word in his acts, which got him arrested in Queensland and Western Australia for breaching obscenity laws of those states in the mid-80's. Australian comedic singer Kevin Bloody Wilson makes extensive use of the word, most notably in the songs ''Caring Understanding Nineties Type'' and ''You Can't Say "Cunt" in Canada''.

The word appears in American comic George Carlin's 1972 standup routine on the list of the seven dirty words that could not, at that time, be said on American broadcast television, a routine that led to a U. S. Supreme Court decision. While some of the original seven are now heard on US broadcast television from time to time, "cunt" remains generally taboo except for on premium paid subscription cable channels like HBO or Showtime.

Popular music

In 1979, during a concert at New York's Bottom Line, Carlene Carter introduced a song about mate-swapping called ''Swap-Meat Rag'' by stating, "If this song don't put the cunt back in country, I don't know what will." The comment was quoted widely in the press, and Carter spent much of the next decade trying to live the comment down. However use of the word in lyrics is not recorded before the Sid Vicious' 1978 version of ''My Way'', which marked the first known use of the word in a UK Top Ten hit, as a line was changed to "You cunt/I'm not a queer". The following year, "cunt" was used more explicitly in the song "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Marianne Faithfull's album ''Broken English'':

The Happy Mondays song, "Kuff Dam" (i.e. "Mad fuck" in reverse), from their 1987 debut album, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), includes the lyrics "You see that Jesus is a cunt / And never helped you with a thing that you do, or you don't." Biblical scholar James Crossley, writing in the academic journal, ''Biblical Interpretation'', analyses the Happy Mondays' reference to "Jesus is a cunt" as a description of the "useless assistance" of a now "inadequate Jesus". A phrase from the same lyric, "Jesus is a cunt" was included on the notorious Cradle of Filth t-shirt which depicted a masturbating nun on the front and the slogan "Jesus is a cunt" in large letters on the back. The t-shirt was banned in New Zealand, in 2008.

The word has been used by numerous non-mainstream bands, such as Australian band TISM, who released an extended play in 1993 ''"Australia the Lucky Cunt"'' (a reference to Australia's label the "lucky country"). They also released a single in 1998 entitled ''"I Might Be a Cunt, but I'm Not a Fucking Cunt"'', which was banned. The American grindcore band Anal Cunt, on being signed to a bigger label, shortened their name to AxCx.

Computer and video games

The 2004 video game ''Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'' was the first video game to use the word, only once (along with being the first in the series to use the words "nigga", "motherfucker", and "cocksucker"), used by the British character Kent Paul (voiced by Danny Dyer), who refers to Maccer as a "soppy cunt" in the mission "Don Peyote".

In the 2004 title ''The Getaway: Black Monday'' by SCEE was a videogame to use the word. It is used several times during the game.

In the 2008 title ''Grand Theft Auto IV'' by Rockstar North and distributed by Take Two Interactive, available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, the word, amongst many other expletives, was used by James Pegorino after finding out that his personal bodyguard, who had turned states, who exclaimed "The world is a cunt!" while aiming a shotgun at the player.

Linguistic variants and derivatives

Various euphemisms, minced forms and in-jokes are used to imply the word without actually saying it, thereby escaping obvious censure and censorship.

Spoonerisms and acronyms

Deriving from a dirty joke: "What's the difference between a circus and a strip club?"- "The circus has a bunch of cunning stunts...", the phrase ''cunning stunt'' has been used in popular music. Its first documented appearance was by the English band Caravan who released the album ''Cunning Stunts'' in July 1975; the title was later used by Metallica for a CD/Video compilation, and in 1992 the Cows released an album with the same title. In his 1980s BBC television programme, Kenny Everett played a vapid starlet, ''Cupid Stunt'', and in 2005 comedian Al Murray has hosted a British television comedy game show, ''Fact Hunt''.

There are numerous informal acronyms, including various apocryphal stories concerning academic establishments, such as the ''Cambridge University National Trust Society''.

There are many variants of the covering phrase "See you next Tuesday", including a play of that title by Ronald Harwood.

Puns

The name "Mike Hunt" is a frequent substitute; it has been used in a scene from the movie ''Porky's'', and for a character in the BBC radio comedy ''Radio Active'' in the 1980s. "Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt?" were the words written on a "pink neon sculpture" representing the letter C, in a 2004 exhibition of the alphabet at the British Library in collaboration with the International Society of Typographic Designers.

Apart from more directly obvious references, there have been allusions. Stephen Fry once famously defined ''countryside'' on ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'' as the act of "murdering Piers Morgan". In ''Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps'', Donna and Gaz are perusing erotic novels when they come across ''The Count of Monte Cristo''; Gaz helpfully informs Donna that 'it doesn't say Count'. Similarly, in an episode of ''Spaced'', Sophie tells Tim that she can't see him as there's been a misprint on the title of one of the magazines she works on – ''Total Cult''. In all these uses, the audience are left to make the connection.

Even Parliaments are not immune from punning uses; as recalled by former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam: }}and Mark Lamarr used a variation of this same gag on BBC TV's ''Never Mind the Buzzcocks''. "Stuart Adamson was a Big Country member... and we do remember".

Rhyming slang

Several celebrities have had their names used as euphemisms, including footballer Roger Hunt, actor Gareth Hunt, singer James Blunt, and 1970s motor-racing driver James Hunt, whose name was once used to introduce the British radio show ''I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue'' as "the show that is to panel games what James Hunt is to rhyming slang".

A canting form of some antiquity is ''berk'', short for "Berkeley Hunt" or "Berkshire Hunt", and in a Monty Python sketch, an idioglossiac man replaces the initial "c" of words with "b", producing "silly bunt". Scottish comedian Chic Murray claimed to have worked for a firm called "Lunt, Hunt & Cunningham".

Derived meanings

The word "cunt" forms part of some technical terms used in seafaring and other industries.

In nautical usage, a cunt splice is a type of rope splice used to join two lines in the rigging of ships. Its name has been bowdlerised since at least 1861, and in more recent times it is commonly referred to as a "cut splice". The ''Dictionary of Sea Terms'', found within Dana's 1841 maritime compendium ''The Seaman's Friend'', defines the word cuntline as "the space between the bilges of two casks, stowed side by side. Where one cask is set upon the cuntline between two others, they are stowed ''bilge and cuntline''." The "bilge" of a barrel or cask is the widest point, so when stored together the two casks would produce a curved V-shaped gap. The glossary of ''The Ashley Book of Knots'' by Clifford W. Ashley, first published in 1944, defines cuntlines as "the surface seams between the strands of a rope." Though referring to a different object than Dana's definition, it similarly describes the crease formed by two abutting cylinders. In US military usage personnel refer privately to a common uniform item, a flat, soft cover (hat) with a fold along the top resembling an invagination, as a cunt cap. The proper name for the item is garrison cap or overseas cap, depending on the organization in which it is worn. Cunt hair (sometimes as red cunt hair) has been used since the late 1950s to signify a very small distance. Cunt-eyed has been used to refer to a person suffering from a squint.

See also

Scunthorpe problem

Seven dirty words

Sexual slang

Profanity

Notes and references

Further reading

''Cunt: A Declaration of Independence'', a 1998 book by Inga Muscio

''Lady Love Your Cunt'', 1969 article by Germaine Greer (see ''References'' above)

''Vaginal Aesthetics'', re-creating the representation, the richness and sweetness, of "vagina/cunt", an article by Joanna Frueh Source: ''Hypatia'', Vol. 18, No. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn–Winter 2003), pp. 137–158

External links

The Etymology of Sexual Slang Terms

Cunt: A Cultural History

(pdf, 21 pages) About English placenames containing the word "cunt"

Category:Pejorative terms for people Category:Profanity Category:Sexual slang Category:Slang terms for women Category:Slang terms for men Category:Female reproductive system

af:Poes cs:Píča de:Fotze eo:Piĉo fr:Con gd:Pit it:Fica nl:Kut (term) no:Fitte nn:Fitte simple:Cunt fi:Vittu ru:Пизда sv:Fica th:หี vec:Mona zh:屄

name	Dom Joly
birth name	Dominic John Romulus Joly
birth date	November 15, 1967
birth place	Beirut, Lebanon
occupation	Comedian, Journalist, broadcaster, Author, Columnist
active	1999–present
medium	Television, Stand up
genre	Parody, Improvisational comedy, Character comedy
notable work	''Trigger Happy TV (2000–2001)
spouse	Stacey MacDougall }}

Dominic John Romulus "Dom" Joly (; born 15 November 1967) is a British television comedian and journalist. He came to note as the star of ''Trigger Happy TV'', a hidden camera show that was sold to over seventy countries worldwide. Since then, Joly has continued to make edgy off-beat television like ''World Shut Your Mouth'' for BBC1 and ''Dom Joly's Happy Hour'', a spoof travel show for Sky One.

Joly is also an author with several books to his name, and an award-winning travel writer for both the ''Sunday Times'' and the ''Mail On Sunday''. He writes several regular columns for various UK nationals and periodicals including a weekly sports column for ''The Independent'' and an eclectic weekly column for the ''Independent on Sunday''.

Joly is currently developing a movie called ''War Of The Flea'' in the USA, and published ''The Dark Tourist'' in 2010, about dark tourism. He has also completed filming a documentary on Tintin for Channel 4 (Back2Back Productions) which aired on 19 March 2010.

Joly was a contestant on the tenth series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!; he finished in fourth place.

Early life

Joly was born in Beirut, Lebanon to British parents and speaks French in addition to English.

Education

It was revealed on the game show ''Would I Lie To You?'' that, while in Lebanon, Joly attended the same school as Osama bin Laden; this was widely received as a joke (as the aim of the TV show is to trick people into guessing whether anecdotes are true or false). He said on Loose Women on 18 February 2011 that he and bin Laden were at the same school when he was 6 and bin Laden was 18. Subsequently Joly was educated at The Dragon preparatory school in Oxford, Haileybury public school, near Hertford, and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Career

Early career

Following university his work included: A year as an intern in the Prague embassy for the European Commission

A year as a consultant at LEK Consulting, where he formed part of the same intake as Boris Johnson

A year as Political Researcher for ''Around Westminster'' (BBC Political Programme)

A year as Political Researcher for the ''New Statesman'' and ''Roth's Parliamentary Profiles''

Television

After being recruited to work as a producer on ITN's ''House to House'', a political discussion programme on Channel 4, Joly went on to work for ''The Mark Thomas Comedy Product'' because of his political knowledge. He then created his own show for the Paramount Comedy Channel called ''War of the Flea''. Discovering that working in comedy was both easier and more fun than his previous employment, Joly began to develop ''Trigger Happy TV'' which had a similar structure to ''War of the Flea''.

''Trigger Happy TV''

;United Kingdom Joly's anarchic surreal sketches first started appearing as interstitials during advert breaks on the British Paramount Comedy Channel. In 1999, following a successful fifteen-minute pilot on the Comedy Lab, Channel 4 commissioned Joly to make a TV series. ''Trigger Happy TV'' was born; a hidden camera show that went on to be sold to over seventy countries worldwide. Joly made two series and two Christmas specials before announcing that he wanted to do other things. Joly was nominated for three British Comedy Awards for the show, won the Silver Rose of Montreux, the BBC2 Award for Best Comedy and the Loaded/Goodfella Comedy Newcomer of the Year.

The three DVDs for the shows were best-sellers, as were the soundtrack albums that Joly had personally selected and mixed himself.

;United States A spoof documentary about Joly followed, called ''Being Dom Joly'' which was produced and written by Joly himself. This aired prior to screenings of Trigger Happy TV in the USA and earned critical acclaim, with one reviewer Bob Croft, LA Times calling Joly "the funniest man in Britain".

A new series of ''Trigger Happy TV'' was made for a US audience in 2003 with an altered format in that it featured a band of different "comedians" who performed skits without Joly. Though Joly did cameo sporadically on the show, he was very unhappy with the programme and called it "''Trigger Happy'' by numbers - take joke, put it in slo-mo, add fluffy animals and random indie soundtrack - it was made by uncaring idiots". He had a producer credit on the show, but disassociated himself with the project.

2003 BBC contract

Following the success of ''Trigger Happy TV'' on Channel 4, Joly was secured by the BBC for a rumoured £5 million. However, his first show for the BBC, ''This is Dom Joly'', a spoof chatshow in which Joly played an appallingly egotistical media character who had the same name as him, thereby confusing a lot of the audience as to what was real and what wasn't, did not achieve the same success as ''Trigger Happy TV'', leading to the hidden camera format being revamped on BBC1 as ''World Shut Your Mouth''. Featuring all new material and an increased budget relative to ''Trigger Happy'', allowing for pranks to be performed in different countries. It was later released on DVD.

''Dom Joly's Excellent Adventure''

In 2005, Joly starred in a one-off documentary as part of a series on Sky One. ''Dom Joly's Excellent Adventure'' involved him travelling back to Beirut for the first time since he left in the late 1980s, and embarking on a road trip through the Syrian Desert to find a cave in which he had scrawled his name in as a child, that he re-discovered after much searching.

''Dom Joly's Happy Hour''

His next project for Sky One was a critically acclaimed spoof travel series supposedly investigating attitudes to alcohol around the world, entitled ''Dom Joly's Happy Hour'', in which Joly teamed up with his friend, Canadian digital artist Peter Wilkins. Together, they explored drinking habits around the world, travelling to the Southern United States, Russia, Australia, Europe and India. During the first documentary, the pair explored Miami drinking styles, met up with some hillbillies in the Appalachians tasting moonshine, and visited a gay cowboy bar in Atlanta before taking on the Christian right in Alabama's dry counties.

They went on to visit Russia, trying 80% alcohol (by volume) homemade vodka known as Samogon. He explained, "(y)ou have an hour where you feel you can take on the world, then you black out. But because it’s almost pure alcohol, no hangover - sadly because I can’t remember it, I don’t know if it’s worth doing". They then visited Australia, Mexico and Europe before ending the tour in India. It was described in ''The Guardian'' as "a brilliantly surreal take on the tired format that is the TV travel show."

The programme included a lot more than just attempting to discover foreign drinking habits, for instance, in Russia Dom received a haircut from a nude woman and both he and Wilkins performed their own version of a morris dance before a bemused dance academy. Another instance found them catching crocodiles in Australia.

"The premise of investigating alcohol is ridiculous," Joly admitted during an interview. "I wanted an excuse to travel the world, but they (Sky TV) wanted a focal point. So I said as a joke: 'Well, I quite like drinking.' And they went, 'Fantastic, that’s brilliant!'"

The DVD was released on 1 October 2007.

''The Complainers''

Dom Joly has appeared in''The Complainers'' for Channel Five in the UK. The show, in Joly's words- "intends to try and get a little revenge for the ordinary Brit on the morons, bureaucrats, health and safety officers, traffic wardens, timewasters that make all our lives a daily hell."

''Made In Britain''

In 2009, Joly fronted a show titled ''Made In Britain'', shown on the Blighty channel in the UK. In the show Joly goes on a road-trip around the UK looking at what is still made there after his house is emptied of everything not made in Britain.

Journalism

Joly writes for various publications. He was alleged to be the writer of a spoof column in ''The Independent'' called "Cooper Brown: He's out there." The column is published as the work of an American character called Cooper Brown and revolves around his putative adventures as "a garrulous American showbiz type".

His real-life eclectic weekly column for the ''Independent on Sunday'' covers subjects as varied as Middle East politics and fifty-foot chickens. Joly also writes a weekly column on the "Weird World of Sport" for The Independent Sports supplement on Mondays.

He is also a regular travel writer for ''The Sunday Times'' and has written about trips to Costa Rica, Dominica, Syria, Northern California, Vietnam, Canada, Miami, Scotland, Italy, Maldives, South Africa, Zanzibar, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Corsica Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Oman, Ukraine, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Quebec, Lebanon, Morocco, Nicaragua, Mexico, Jamaica, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia. At the end of 2006 readers of the paper were asked to vote on where Joly would go every week. He travelled the globe performing various adrenaline sports whilst making a weekly podcast from South Africa, Spain, The Arctic Circle, Paris and Fort William. He has also written for ''Esquire Magazine'', ''GQ'', The Mail on Sunday, ''The London Evening Standard'', FHM, The Observer and The Spectator.

In September 2008 Joly won an award at the 2008 Canada Media Awards for "Best Travel Piece" - the piece was written for the ''Mail on Sunday'' about a trip to Muskoka in Canada.

Joly wrote a spoof autobiography called ''Look At Me, Look At Me!'', published by Bloomsbury in 2004. Joly's second book, ''Letters To My Golf Club'', is a book of humorous letters and correspondences sent to golf clubs around the world published by Transworld Publishing on 8 October 2007.

Joly published a humor travel book called ''The Dark Tourist: Sightseeing in the World's Most Unlikely Holiday Destinations'' (2010) which is about dark tourism. In the book Joly travels to places like Chernobyl (which he visited on 4 May 2009), Lebanon, North Korea and Iran among others, places that witnessed great tragedy and death. It was commissioned by Simon and Schuster and published on September 2, 2010 in the UK.

Joly recently starred in the ITV2 reality programme ''Deadline'' with Janet Street Porter where he had to become a paparazzo. Amongst other highlights he was punched by Lily Allen, hit over the head with a guitar by Pete Doherty, called a "persistent little fat cunt flap" by Pierce Brosnan and snorted vodka with Ingrid Tarrant.

Joly was a "special correspondent" for the Independent at the Beijing Olympics. He says: "it's always been an ambition to be a foreign correspondent and this is as close as I'll ever get." While in Beijing he also appeared daily on the "Drive" programme on Five Live with Peter Allen.

Political career

In the 1997 UK general election Joly formed the Teddy Bear Alliance ("Mr Blair, where do you stand on fleas?") and changed his name to Edward 'Teddy' Bear (a reference to "Edward Bear", better known as Winnie-the-Pooh). He stood in Kensington and Chelsea against Alan Clark. Hiring out hundreds of teddy bear costumes, he staged mock protests at Westminster and came fifth out of nine candidates, receiving 218 votes (0.6%). The Alliance was not registered as a political party under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

Music

Joly was the singer in an Indie band called Hang David in the early Nineties. He was a Goth and said that he looked more like Robert Smith than Robert Smith. Joly personally selects all the soundtracks for his TV shows. All three soundtracks albums for Trigger Happy TV were huge commercial hits. He has also directed a couple of music videos. Ian Brown - Golden Gaze, in which Joly made the whole video in one take, making Brown run through the streets of London being chased by gorillas, frog-men and ninjas before he took refuge in the Prince Charles Cinema. WigWam, the duo consisting of Betty Boo and Alex James from Blur asked Joly to direct their first single. Joly decided to pay a weird homage to The Beatles concert on a roof and filmed the band performing in cat costumes on the roof of a building opposite the Groucho Club in Soho.

Radio

In June 2008, Joly became the co-star of the Cobra Pubcast, a podcast from British beer company Cobra Beer that he hosted with humorist Danny Wallace.

Joly also frequently sits in for Gabby Logan on her Sunday Five Live show. Joly was also a roving reporter for Five Live at both the Beijing Olympics and Wimbledon 2009.

Future projects

Joly is developing a hidden-camera movie with his old sidekick, Sam Cadman, tentatively called ''War of the Flea'' as well as having written a screenplay for a movie based on the adventures of Cooper Brown.

Joly has also talked about plans for a television show based on popular social networking site Facebook, visiting random people who have added him as a 'friend'. Joly would only accept friend requests if he has any type of connection with them.

In June 2009, it was reported that Joly had completed a script for "a ''Trigger Happy'' movie" set in the US.

In 2010, Joly entered the jungle in the middle of the tenth series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! UK. He finished in 4th place.

Personal life

Joly is married to Stacey Joly (née MacDougall), a Canadian graphic designer. The couple have a daughter, Parker (born 2000) and son Jackson (born 2004).

Having lived in Notting Hill before their children were born, Joly and his wife bought a property in the Cotswolds. They sold his flat to Salman Rushdie and the family now live near Cirencester.

While they were on holiday in Canada, the house was affected by sewage from the 2007 UK floods.

In March 2011 Dom Joly announced his first live show, Welcome to Wherever I am, at the Underbelly in London on April 30th.

References

http://www.thelondonpaper.com/cs/Satellite/london/tv/article/1157141910378?packedargs=suffix%3DSubSectionArticle Retrieved on 20 November 2006

http://www.skyone.co.uk/programme/pgeoverview.aspx?pid=92 Retrieved on 20 November 2006

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/showcards/T/triggerhappytv.html Retrieved on 20 November 2006

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055238/ Retrieved on 4 November 2007

Would I Lie To You? (TV series) Episode 1 16 June, 9:55 pm – 10:25 pm

External links

Dom Joly in The Independent

Dom Joly in the Sunday Times

Bluffer's Guide to Gadgets with Dom Joly on Comet.co.uk

List of Cooper Brown columns

Goth Recruitment by Dom Joly on Funnyordie.co.uk.

Dom Joly eyebrow magazine interview

Category:1967 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies Category:English columnists Category:English comedians Category:English journalists Category:English television personalities Category:English television presenters Category:English writers Category:I'm a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here! contestants Category:Old Dragons Category:Old Haileyburians Category:People from Beirut Category:Pranksters Category:The Independent people

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