Reboot: C is for Cunt - a podcast by Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey - A to Z of Sex

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C is for CuntHi everyone!  Welcome to the A to Z of Sex.  I’m Dr Lori Beth and I am your host.  We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time.  Just a reminder this podcast deals with adult content, so if you don’t have total privacy, you might want to put on your headphones.  Today the letter is C and C is for Cunt.  As Dr Kate Lister said in her chapter on the subject, ‘as far as offensive words go, you are entering a hardhat area’.  (The link in the notes takes you to the excerpt and I highly recommend all of her writing.)
If you are easily offended, this is probably not the podcast for you this week. 
Cunt is the word for vulva.  According to Dr Kate Lister, cunt is the oldest world for female genitalia in the English language and quite possibly in Europe.  She goes on to say that in 1500 Wynkyn de Worde defined ‘vulva’ as ‘in English, a cunt’.    At this time, cunt was a descriptive word.    Dr Kate Lister provides an hilarious history of the word and it’s usage to modern times in the chapter referenced above.   She highlights that by the 18th century, the word cunt is now used as a curse and seen as a lude and indecent word.    
Currently, cunt is the word that lots of women refuse to say.  They see it as offensive no matter how it is being used.  This varies from culture to culture.  For example in America, it is the insult that means your wife or girlfriend might end the relationship but in the drag community in the US, a queen might be called cunty to highlight a high level of femininity.  In the UK, New Zealand and Australia it is usually used to refer to a man.   When a man uses the term to refer to another man, in some parts of the world it is the worst insult you can use and in others it can be seen as a term of endearment.  In New Zealand, a man may refer to another man as ‘a good cunt’ meaning a good guy.    I find this hilarious given the true meaning of the term. 
 The word cunt appears in literature up through the 21st century.  It is used several times in the Canterbury Tales (1390) and is used openly so is not seen to be vulgar or obscene.  There is some suggestion that by Shakespeare’s day, cunt was seen as obscene.  Even so, he enjoyed sneaking the word cunt in where he could.
 Cunt can be used to describe someone who is a fool or an annoying person. 
The word featured in one of the most famous obscenity trials in the UK.This was in the trial for the publication Oz.
 Oz was an underground magazine that was at first released in Australia in 1963 and was primarily satirical.  It covered topics like homosexuality, White Australia Policy, Australian involvement in the Viet Nam War and of course, censorship.  There were two obscenity trials in Australia during the life of the magazine in Australia.  The founders were sentenced to three to six months in prison with hard labour.  They were released on bail pending appeal and the convictions were eventually overturned.
 Two of the founders (Sharp and Neville) headed for London in February 1966.  The third founder (Walsh) continued to publish a smaller edition of Oz until 1969.
 In 1966, the London Oz was founded by Neville, Sharp and another Australian Jim Anderson.  The magazine turned more psychedelic.   The magazine was targeted by the UK Obscene Publications Squad and their offices were raided a number of times.  The editors often invited groups of people to ‘edit an issue’.  One was edited by gay people, another by the female liberation movement.  Finally, they asked a group of secondary school students to edit issue number 28 which came out in May 1970.  One article was a very sexual Rupert Bear parody written by a 15 year old.  This marrying of school children and ‘obscene’ writing was what led to the obscenity trial in 1971.
 In the 1971 Oz obscenity trial the prosecutor asked one of the principals if he would call his 10 year old daughter a cunt and he...

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