Art is vagina liz darling from Project HOPE Art
I read an article today that censored the word PUSSY.
It was written by Regena Thomashauer who just weeks ago published a book titled ‘PUSSY: A Reclamation.’ What timing!
If only we could use the word and…
feel it come out of our mouths.
** PUSSY **
It’s been censored a lot these days as mainstream news has no choice but to cover whathisface’s depravity.
Regena says that PUSSY is arguably the most powerful pejorative word in the english language. I would suggest that it is actually ** CUNT **
but you will notice what the two have in common.
Our society refuses, chokes on, is offended by our intimate female parts. We won’t even name them!! And this is a problem. Regena writes of this eloquently and I will quote her here yes, (from PUSSY):
“We can learn just as much about a culture from what it’s missing as from what it embraces.
One of the greatest pieces of unconscious conditioning we have in our Western culture is that we do not teach our children the name of the source of our feminine power. Ask my students at the School of Womanly Arts what they were taught to call their genitals as a child, and you’ll get a parade of colloquialisms: Wickie, Cuckoo, Privates, Down There, Pooter, Pee Wee, the Fine China, Name and Address, Venus, Noonie, Miss Kitty, Purse….the list goes on. Those who were taught a more direct word were often taught to call it “vagina,” a clinical term that is also physiologically incorrect.
But what’s worse, the majority of women were taught to call it nothing at all.
When we have no common language to describe that which is most essentially feminine about us, we have no way to locate and own our power as women. As my dad used to read to us on Friday nights, “In the beginning was the Word.” When there is no word, there is no beginning. How would you talk about an interconnected global computer network providing information and communication facilities via standard technological protocols if you did not have the word *internet*? Yet our culture gives us no way to talk about the place where our power – and, in fact, all of life – comes from.
It’s this very feminine power that is missing from all the success stories we hear. It’s what leaves Sheryl Sandberg, one of the most productive women in America, revealing in a New Yorker profile that she’s felt like a fraud all of her life. It’s what has fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg admit on CBS This Morning that she wakes up every day feeling like a loser. It’s what has Gayle King, who was interviewing von Furstenberg, reply that she wakes up every morning feeling fat.
It’s what has Shonda Rhimes observe in her book, ‘Year of Yes,’ that she and every other woman she knows push away compliments and are unable to receive appreciation and
approval.
It’s what has so many female grad students settling for assistant teaching, while their male counterparts head their own classrooms.
It’s what has men initiate salary negotiations four times more often than women do. It’s why when women *do* negotiate, they ask for 30 percent less than men.”
~ ~
It’s provocative but it makes sense. We can’t (which really just means we won’t) name PUSSY or CUNT
AND
we’re indoctrinated to feel so very wrong and inferior about Her and
her smells
her hair
her blood
her lips
her juices
her existence.
So, as far as I’m concerned: Fuck that.
I’m over it. This matters.
And I *dare* you to get over it too.
Share This.
Name Her.
Read PUSSY
Read CUNT (a great book as well)
Read VAGINA (another great book as well)
Own Your CUNT.
Love Her.
Honour Her.
For fun, I offer this terrific clip from Samantha Bee (with a content warning as she discusses assault and pussy grabbing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gk72KC4jWc
And more, MUCH MORE
coming….
Art is vagina liz darling from Project HOPE Art
