Why the C Word is Losing its Bite

There is still one word I can never bring myself to say in front of my mother.

Even here, I'll have to punt. That's because it is the rudest, crudest, most taboo term in the English language, the superstar of four-letter words. It is a radioactive epithet, guaranteed to get you a trip to HR and maybe even a slap in the face. It was at the heart of the controversy over Lady Chatterley's Lover, and it helped get Tropic of Cancer banned. The plot of Atonement, Ian McEwan's lovely and devastating novel, pivots on the term. (In the movie, the word is never spoken, but the camera zooms in as the protagonist pounds it out on a typewriter.) When a book alleged that John McCain had once called his wife Cindy one, the outrage was bipartisan.

But is the C word losing its bite? It seems that way to me. A few weeks ago, it appeared for the first time on the front page of The Guardian, the 188-year-old British daily. The paper was reporting on the latest misdeed of Jeremy Clarkson, host of the BBC show Top Gear, who called Prime Minister Gordon Brown one, although the comment wasn't broadcast. The Guardian deemed the story newsworthy because of Clarkson's popularity, and because he'd earlier gotten into trouble for calling Brown "a one-eyed Scottish idiot." (Hard to say which charge is worse, though the one-eyed bit did make me laugh.) Guardian readers, it seems, are hard to shock. The paper got only around 17 complaints from readers, and its readers' editor, Siobhain Butterworth, noted in a column that most quibbled with the fact that the paper spelled out the word in full, rather than using the hangman's game most publications (including NEWSWEEK) play when running naughty words.

To be fair, Brits seem far more comfortable dropping the C bomb than we do. The Guardian has already printed it 61 times this year, according to Butterworth, though not on the front page and nearly always in a quote. But even on this side of the pond, the C word doesn't pack the same punch it used to. If a politician uttered a racial epithet, rather than an offensive synonym for vagina, it would be an instant career-ender.

I have to admit, I use the C word on occasion, as do the sassiest of my female friends. Part of the appeal is its ability to shock, of course, in a way that few words still do. As with all curse words, however, frequency makes the heart grow harder. If you hear it enough, you get used it. That's certainly been the fate of the formerly shocking F word. I remember vividly as a child the first time I heard my father say it (I was blasting Alvin and the Chipmunks at 5:30 a.m., so no apology necessary), but I couldn't tell you the last time I heard it, because it has become such a familiar part of the ambient hum all around us.

Yet as the proud owner of the anatomical bit derided by the word in question, I have begun to wonder why we ever got so worked up about it in the first place. Why has it retained the power to outrage when other coarse language has found its way onto the playground? The C word has been in use since at least 1230, according to the Oxford English Dictionary online, when it referred to a street name, Gropecuntelane (bet I can guess what went on there). It has gradually been finding its way into mainstream American culture since the 1970s. Think of Travis Bickle's rant in Taxi Driver, Hannibal Lector's delightful salutation to Agent Starling, or the last words Adriana heard before being shot to death on The Sopranos. And don't forget Citizens United Not Timid, best known by its acronym, a Hillary-bashing group that got media attention during the last campaign.