Comment by chris_wot
7 months ago
I’m an Australian. Being called a cunt is still a really offensive thing to say to someone. You might jokingly call a friend a cunt in jest, but you say that to a stranger and you might have your teeth knocked out.
Don’t always believe the stereotypes.
I'm not falling for any stereotypes. I'm responding to a post where someone said they'd been called that word once in their life. This surprised me, as a non-American very used to the use of that word.
As an Australian, how many times have you been called the word? In how many types of context?
It can be extremely offensive, used a certain way, yes. And it can be absolutely breezy, used another way. And context usually makes it absolutely clear, as in, there's almost never any ambiguity. Right?
Unless prefixed with good. He was a good ....
dumb, sick, stupid, other adjectives - generally not negative although could be in the right context - both in the Australian and North West England (where Matt was from) context. Just watch out for being called a fucking cunt. In almost all cases that one is pretty unambiguous. I do remember at one point having a conversation with Matt about how handling East Coast and West Coast North Americans was quite a different proposition from a cultural perspective, also related to this thread.
Matt would have liked this discussion. And given that his and my mutual friend has some actual legitimate serious expertise on obscenity in the English language even more so.