Product Description

The author reclaims the word, which has been a taboo word for many years, as a powerful and positive term than can unite all women. In it, she explores feminist issues such as birth control, sexuality, jealousy between women, and prostitution, with a fresh attitude for a new generation of women.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1010855 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 277 pages

Customer Reviews

Why can't you get this in the shops???!
I first read 'Cunt' nearly four years ago and it still feels as fresh and as important to my life now, despite the changes of marriage etc.

As a married woman, I obviously like men, so this book does NOT show you how to eliminate men from the world. It shows you how to connect with other women (we don't all share cultures, hair colour, tastes or sexual preference but we do all have cunts), how to love yourself (metaphorically and manually), how to live creatively, how to support feminine-run (or cuntlovin') businesses and artists.

Every single page is an inspiration. Inga writes from a place of deep love for her subject. She wont shy away from saying what she feels and her personal stories are funny, inspiring and touching. Her prose flows conversationally and she will make you laugh outloud.

For me personally, I found this book a help as a survivor of sexual abuse. This book helped me look at 'that' part of me with admiration and love.

But that's beside the point, every single woman and every single person who lives near a cunt (ie everyone) SHOULD read this book. It reminds you how infuriating and amazing it is to be a woman in our society.

You don't have to be a lesbian to be a cuntlover. If you support women, their roles, be they mothers or businesswomen, artists or prostitutes, then you are in a postition to revolutionise the future for our daughters. Find your strength by reading this book. Stop saying "I've got balls" and say "I've got cunt". Be proud of your body, your mind and what you can do in this world.

Also, the new edition has a new and extensive resources section, so you can get in touch with more like-minded women.

We need more cuntlove in England. Get this book and spread the word!

Flawed, but Phenomenal
It would seem that to date, reviews of "cunt" fall into two camps: those who unreservedly love the book (and likely were strongly predisposed to doing so before they'd ever seen the dust jacket), and those who hate it with an all-too-unsurprising virulence (expressed in generalities suggesting these critics may not have cracked the spine at all, or done anything more than peruse the description on the book's rear cover). A less strongly pre-agenda'd, although by no means 'objective', reading might prove more informative:

On the one hand, there is much in "cunt" that is problematic. The book is far too prone to telescoping gender into the genitals, literalizing the cunt as an abstractly idealized and ontologically primary font of identity. This points to a larger confusion, namely that the book is frequently unclear on the differences between the cunt as anatomical materiel and as metaphor. Additionally, and despite a clearly demonstrated lack of misandrony ("cunt" is in no way, shape or form a male-hating screed), Muscio frequently reduces the world to a dichotomy of dick/male=arrogated power vs. cunt/female=site of oppression and resistance. "cunt"'s approach thus precludes the book from addressing how patriarchy deeply and systematically exerts control over people with dicks as well, even (and especially) those who haven't thought to spend a single second recognizing how patriarchal relations twist both their conceptions and lived realities. Thus, "cunt" has little to say about how males and females are reciprocally culpable in the continuing, self-repressive reproduction of patriarchy itself and, in this silence, largely fails to grapple with how any effective and durable response necessitates that we all participate, regardless of whether the sperm-derby stuck us with a double-x or an xy.

These critiques aside, however, the book willfully veers between the hilarious (in a laugh-with, not laugh-at, way), the deeply touching, the instructive, and the joyously celebratory, all the while remaining well attuned to significant differences within the category of 'female' itself. Muscio enthusiastically, relentlessly, and with unfailingly outrageous good humor points out the ludicrous double-standards yoking females from without and within, double-standards that've become so commonplace as to leave most folk immobilized beneath the assumption that it's "just the way things are." And, beyond this act of recognition, Muscio offers a treasure trove of prescriptions, many of them outright fun, for what to do about it. Thus, "cunt" is a powerful arsenal against the relegation of more than half the planet's population, generation after generation, into second-class-citizenship, and for this "cunt" is a must-read.

read it, go out and buy lots of copies for your friends
while i do agree with the other los angeles reviewer who noted that the book is a little too centered around a simplistic dichotomy of dick=opressive power/cunt=beauty and all things positive, there is much in this book that is worth reading, worth mulling over, worth embracing. and, in a sense, thank god(dess) there are a few areas i couldn't wholeheartedly agree with (ie- why not lump all male artists into the category of phallic worshipping cuntfearing agressive oppressors?-like alice walker, i ain't about to give up john lennon..or james baldwin, or faulkner..)-because any book one finds oneself in complete fawning agreement with is suspicious as dogmatic and narrowly sectarian. let us argue over some sections, revere others, and value this book for what it is: an easy to read (though, for some, hard to swallow) discussion of so many typically ignored/negatively portrayed aspects of what it means to be a woman in a body. for that, i say go out and buy more copies, make sure your local bookstores carry this book: show support for ms. muscio and her efforts....read again, laugh here, dissent there, feel inspired there, relate there....