Disclaimer: This article contains graphic language and is, under no circumstances, for the easily offended. The “c-word” is used in excess. Sorry, Mom!

Post-Disclaimer: Both of my sweet parents, who are actively involved in the Baptist church (as am I), discouraged me from submitting this article, as the Bible is replete with guidance regarding how the tongue is to be used. Profanity is a sin. However, to skirt around the “c-word” or bleep it out would be the exemplify the core of the issue which I seek to address. I am a proud follower of Christ, and understand that to speak curse words is a sin (a sin with which I struggle daily), but the severity of the word can only be communicated by expressing it in its most elementary form.

I consider myself a proud member of the small – and consistently shrinking – minority that is offended by very little. Profanity fails to make me bat an eyelash and sexual content falls short of making me blush (unless Howard Stern is gabbing about jerking off in the mirror). Farting can make me gag, but not disgust me, and I pride myself on my ability to discern between my friends’ opposition political ideologies and what in them I so admire. Ergo, I was shocked to find my hands trembling with fury upon reading about Texas’ notorious Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Millers, disgusting tweet on November 1. In a tweet about a Pennsylvania poll, he wrote, “TRUMP 44 CUNT 43.” (The tweet was later deleted).

That’s right. It’s too unbelievable to have been invented. One of our political authorities dared to replace Hillary Clinton’s name with a vulgar sexual slur. Just when I would like to think that the storied feminists about whom we are taught in high school history have paved the way for other young women, like myself, to join men and Americans of other sexual identities in the pursuit of happiness, some prick holding an appointed governmental office has to go and say something dumb like that. Sadly, that is indicative of the disparaging professional landscape to which women have to look forwards.

I will say, however, that reducing women to their genitalia has long been a hegemonic means for maintaining male superiority. The vagina dentata, first evidenced in Greek mythology, is more than enough proof of men concocting obscure myths and terms based off of the female genitalia to denounce women.

The “c-word” (brace yourselves: I’d prefer to just say it) has not always bore such an offensive connotation. The word derives from the Germanic “kunta,” revitalized in a number of Germanic cognates. Various translations of the term include prostitute, genitalia, and woman. In Hannah Crofts’ “Why Are People So Offended by The Word ‘Cunt?’ A Psychologist Explains,” Dr. Richard Stephens, heralding from Keele University, delineates the word’s history. He explains, “[The word] first appeared in a written-down form c. 1230 in the London street name ‘Gropecuntlane.’” Not only was the term indicative of a location frequented by prostitutes and their clients, but it was considered socially acceptable language. It was then used in 15^th century medical texts as an anatomical nomenclature. Crofts explains, “…the word cunt encompasses the whole thing – it’s the only word that describes the whole shebang [vagina, vulva, and all].” Medically speaking, cunt, albeit slang, is a nicer and more anatomically correct word to use than “twat” or “pussy.” Moreover, “Semantically speaking, cunt is simply the female equivalent of dick, as both are signifiers for a sexual organ….” Case in point, the word has been used by authors ranging from Joyce to Shakespeare to Chaucer.

It was not until 1811 that cunt evolved to assume an offensive undercurrent. This was the year in which, in Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose defined the term as “a nasty name for a nasty thing.” (Frankly, Grose didn’t know the half of it. I’m sure his sole introduction to such was through the 19^th century equivalent of Penthouse. Lord knows he didn’t have to deal with his cunt bearing a child or regularly bleeding to no avail). In “Rhymes with Runt,” Forrest Wickham continues, “By the early 20^th century, cunt had begun to be used as an insult, and it was also around this time that language taboos shifted from religious profanity to vulgar sexual and scatological language.” Since, cunt has garnered the notoriety of a publically shunned taboo – unless you’re Sid Miller. Now, the term bears a misogynistic overtone.

Such provides an excellent segue into my first of two major points: offensive, anti-woman language. I now digress, returning to Miller’s disgusting public comment. In “Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller Blames Staffer For Tweet That Called Hillary Clinton The C-Word,” Lauren McGaughy and Jordan Rudner publish a statement given to the Dallas Morning News by Miller on the afternoon his staff posted the ill-fated tweet. They write, “‘I’ve been in meetings all day, I didn’t have time to post anything,’ [Miller] said. ‘The problem with Hillary Clinton is her policies, not her gender.’” If Miller’s main contention with the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate is her political ideology, though, I fail to understand why he chose to reduce Clinton to her gender. Miller did not simply call Clinton a cunt; by replacing her name, her main signifier, with her anatomical feature, he defined by her gender. He lacked the common decency to address Clinton by her name, instead addressing her by her cunt. (Personally, I don’t think Notorious H.R.C. would let him get anywhere near hers). What this should say to us, to the young women in America discouraged by such misogyny, is that it is up to use to prove that we are more than just our anatomy. We need to reclaim this exploitive.

What makes the aforementioned exploitative so offensive, however, is a tradition of verbal conditioning. This brings me to my second point: what gives profanity its power? Naturally, I shall use cunt as a case study on this. Wickman provides an initial suggestion, that the word is so blunt. He writes, “Linguists note that, unlike those other words for the female genitalia – whose origins are all Latinate, euphemistic, or diminutive – cunt is plain and Anglo-Saxon.” It lacks the cordial sugar-coating of other profane or slang terms. The phonetics of the word contribute to this sensation. In a guest post for Stan Carey, “What Gives ‘Cunt’ Its Offensive Power,” Kate Warwick describes the structure of the term: “Beginning with a strong voiceless velar plosive, it includes a short back vowel… then moves into an alveolar nasal and a final voiceless alveolar plosive, abruptly halting the vowel.” Because of cunt’s “explosive beginning, short vowel, and abrupt ending,” the term is more likely to be offensive than its near synonyms. If you think about it, most curse words are monosyllabic with short vowels – consider “cock” or “fuck.” Stephens contributes, as quoted in Crofts’ text, “This is the ‘plosiveness’ theory of swearing – the idea that it is something about the specific combination of vowels and consonants, such as making a hard sound, that contributes to the offensiveness of the word.” However, why does the equally phonetically short and anatomically referenced “cock” pack so much less of a punch than cunt?

Profanity’s power does not conclude with the term’s sound; more important is the taboo associated with its harsh sound. Warwick explains, in Carey’s article, “…it’s the combination of nastiness with brutishly short sounds that give cunt its power.” You cannot hear cunt and not experience an emotional reaction to it – I’m sure my mom (my most faithful subscriber) is ready to ground me for my profanity at this point. This reaction, however, is an involuntary response. I – again – quote Warwick, “…verbal condition, the result of phonology plus semantic content, determines our emotional response to swear.” The aforementioned “semantic content” is the result of a taboo on the word. This explains why monosyllabic words, including “shit,” “piss,” and fuck” are considered more offensive than words of the same meaning, such as “poop,” “pee,” and “screw,” to draw upon Wickman’s writing. But what, exactly, is the source of this taboo? Stephens contributes that the reason which some words are considered more offensive “…is simply the taboo-ness of the word (by which I mean a combination of its meaning and society’s acceptance of the word itself) that makes it offensive and not how it sounds.” Society must then be the source of the taboo that discriminates between profanity and socially accepted language. Words only possess as much power as we, the speaker of such terms, give them. Consider how society has reclaimed the words “bitch” and “slut.” These terms now boast the capacity to function as terms of endearment when used, in the right delivery, amongst friends. The more we shudder from swear words like cunt, the more power words like these will possess. By using cunt so bluntly throughout this text, I hope to strip the word of its power.

I now refer back to my point about reclaiming the c-word as I give my two cents about eliminated misogynistic prejudices. This requires that I first trace Miller’s history of offensive opinions on social media. (I feel like a hypocrite by deeming one man’s opinions offensive, as anyone’s opinion may be offensive with any – inevitable – opposition, but I hope to speak on behalf of all women). Miller’s November 1 tweet has not his first controversial post: last year, he shared a post urging the American government to bomb “the Muslim world,” and later compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes. Regarding his most recent “blunder” (this term seems to excuse his misogynistic underpinnings), Amanda Terkel, in “Top Trump Support in Texas Calls Hillary Clinton A ‘C**t’ on Twitter,” reports that Miller’s communications direct first tried to blame the tweet on an anonymous hacker. However, like Terkel writes, “People in a bind often say they were hacked as a rushed defense when they face criticism.” Followers of former Representative Anthony Weiner’s controversy should recall when his claims that he was hacked when photos leaked of a man sporting only underwear (he, obviously, was not hacked). McGaughy and Rudner report, “[Miller’s agency spokesman Mark] Loeffler speculated that a hacker might be trying to make Miller – ‘and by extension, Donald Trump’ – look bad.” Frankly, Trump does not need anyone else to make him look much worse, but Miller’s tweet was indicative of the unequal treatment of women for which the Republican Party has been decried. Following his futile effort to pin the tweet on a hacker, Miller then resorted to another defense: trying to tell the Dallas Morning News that the tweet was sent by staffers. As Terkel quotes, “He said a staffer had ‘inadvertently retweeted a tweet that they were not aware contained a derogatory term.’” Anyone with the slightest sliver of Twitter-saavy could have seen, though, that the post containing cunt was not a retweet, but a tweet originally posted by @millerfortexas. However, McGaughy and Rudner continue, “The staffer who published the tweet would not be fired, Loeffler said.”

This is what gets me worked up. By not firing the “staffer” that posted the tweet calling Clinton a cunt – reducing a presidential candidate to her anatomy – assigning a woman a “nasty name for a nasty thing” – Miller’s camp is essentially condoning its staffer’s disgusting, chauvinistic prejudice. Miller attempted to delete the tweet, but this is the 21^st century: nobody can wholly erase anything that goes online, as countless reporters’ screenshots of the post prove. What Miller (or his camp) should have done, was abstain for posting, or even thinking, the tweet in the first place.

However, I cannot change the past. I cannot personally knock down Miller’s door in Austin (although Texas Tech can serve UT Austin a can of whoop-ass this weekend) and effectively re-write every psychological disposition or personal experience that has provoked him, or his staffer, to bear a prejudice against women. What I can do is re-claim the infamous “c-word.” Cunt only has as much power as we give it. If other women, like myself, strip this profanity of its taboo and reinstate the term in society as medical terminology or a flippant greeting, we could effectively assert our dominance over this storied taboo and transcend misogyny. Miller has no power over Clinton, and profanity has no power over women.