It’s angry, powerful and shocking, but any reaction to its use is steeped in gender politics.
Earlier this year, education minister Erica Stanford allegedly called Labour’s Jan Tinetti a “stupid bitch” in parliament. She apologised, but for a few days after, chat among many women I know focused on why “stupid bitch” has such a nasty sting to it and whether that sting is sharper when it’s a woman saying it about another woman.
The explosive “p” in “stupid” and the short “i” in bitch make the three-syllable phrase harsh and propulsive like it’s been spat out of your mouth in disgust.
With all its misogynistic connotations, and despite multiple bids to reclaim the word, there is something specifically violent about a woman saying it about another woman. It’s also highly likely that women are judged more harshly for speaking in ways that sound brutish and are dealing with a double standard when they speak that way about other women. Hearing a man call another man a stupid bastard just isn’t as devastating, and it’s only partially related to the phrase’s softer phonology.
The context of “stupid bitch” happening in parliament, with its list of unparliamentary language and adherence to decorum, both antiquated and essential glue, made it even worse. On any given night in Auckland, you can probably hear women yelling “stupid fucking bitch” at people and not bat an eyelid.
It was also suggested that the sum of its parts, the specifically female pejorative and the disparagement of someone’s judgment and capabilities, made it even worse than calling someone a cunt.
In an unexpected turn of events, we now have the opportunity to consider this linguistic conundrum. Andrea Vance, national affairs editor for The Post and Sunday Star-Times, penned an excoriating column on Sunday about the government’s pay equity changes, rushed through under urgency last week.
“Turns out you can have it all. So long as you’re prepared to be a c… to the women who birth your kids, school your offspring and wipe the arse of your elderly parents while you stand on their shoulders to earn your six-figure, taxpayer-funded pay packet,” Vance wrote.
The c… is not clot, crab or crow. It’s very clearly cunt. It’s still considered taboo enough for it not to be written out in full. That taboo also means almost everyone knows exactly what is being said when c… appears. Vance levelled the “c-word” at six government ministers, Nicola Willis, Judith Collins, Louise Upston, Nicola Grigg, Brooke van Velden and Stanford.
Generally speaking, the use of the word by media is reserved for instances where it’s a direct quote and therefore reported fact, which is why it has appeared in the headline of this column. American comedian George Carlin famously listed seven obscene words during his 1972 monologue “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”. The seven words were motherfucker, tits, shit, piss, fuck, cunt and cocksucker. These are all words we hear on television regularly now, but seldom in the context of the news media. Unless you are averse to swearing, you probably use and hear them constantly in everyday life.
Specious online “research” over the years has frequently listed New Zealand as a very sweary country. However, a veil between that reality and the perception of its use in published public discourse still exists. The Broadcasting Standards Authority testing of audience tolerance for certain words saw cunt ranked as the second most unacceptable word in 2021. Number one was the n-word.
“Cunt” is also buckled and bent over, weighed heavy with the multiple connotations it now carries. It’s been turned into convivial slang. It’s pretty common to hear someone described as a “good cunt” or “GC”. Over the years, feminists have tried to reclaim it. The various arguments for doing so have been in lockstep with an abundance of discourse around sexual and gender politics. One of the strongest is the contrast between our shock and horror at the use of the word when contrasted with hearing words for male genitalia, like dick, prick and cock.
American feminist artist Eve Ensler framed the word positively in her play, The Vagina Monologues, in 1996. Green party leader Marama Davidson launched a bid to reclaim the word in 2016, saying it had been used as part of a death threat against her and had been maligned as a form of abuse for too long. After controversy erupted over comedian Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a cunt in 2018, feminists argued online that it wasn’t so much offensive as incorrect. “I like Samantha Bee a lot, but she is flat wrong to call Ivanka a cunt. Cunts are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest,” wrote Sally Field.
Within the context of Vance’s column, cunt is clearly being used as a pejorative. Some might argue that in the context of a woman writing about actions taken by women in power to shift the goalposts on women with less power, it was a potent deployment of a word that maintains its shock value despite common usage and its complicated coat of many connotations.
It’s also fair that those on the receiving end would find it offensive. Willis has responded, writing in The Post today that “Having the C-word directed at me by a journalist in a mainstream publication wasn’t on my bingo-list for Mother’s Day 2025. Nor was being accused of ‘girl-math’. But there you have it, that’s what was thrown at me and my female colleagues in a recent newspaper column as hopelessly devoid of facts as it was heavy on sexist slurs.”
I would rather be called a stupid bitch than a cunt. I also wouldn’t call someone else a cunt in such a public way. But stupid bitch wouldn’t work as well in Vance’s column. It’s cruel but lacks bite in this gendered context. If you get to drop one shocking word bomb during your career, Vance has chosen correctly.
