Friday Open Forum: Pussy Wars

When I was a very small kid, my parents sat me down and had a talk about my genitalia and its synonyms. Penis was the preferred term for what I had between my legs, I was gravely informed. Some people were going to call it a dick, which was vulgar—not that a little vulgarity ever stopped my parents, mind you. What they absolutely frowned upon, however, was the thought of me using infantile phrases like wee wee or pee pee to describe it. In the end, they told me, it didn’t really matter what I called it in conversation. (So long as it wasn’t pee pee.) They were all just words. Penis was merely the correct term.

I was maybe four at the time. This is the kind of dinner conversation with which I grew up.

Now, my parents were a little more flexible on the words they used to describe bodily functions. My father was strictly of the number one and number two school, while my mother was a firm believer in airy euphemisms like tinkle or whizz to describe peeing, or an earthy Anglo-Saxon shit for the other stuff. I think one of the reasons they stuck to those phrases, infantile though some of them might have been, was because one of my mom’s friends was a crunchy granola whole earth type who’d taught her little tykes to use the clinically-correct terms . . . which I found absolutely hilarious. It only took a few times of me mocking them by saying, in the accent of some little British cherub of a previous century, “Mummy! I have to urinate!” or (and this was the one I thought was especially hilarious) “Father! I must defecate!” before we all settled on pee and poop as the socially-acceptable phrases to use around the house.

I’ve never known an issue that causes such a wide divide, though, as what gay men call their holes. Their buttholes, that is. There are a few terms upon which we can all agree. Butt. Ass. Hole. Butthole. Asshole. But then we start to deviate. I’ve known a couple of guys who get a little put out when it’s called a shitter or a poop chute. They don’t like to be reminded that they defecate, apparently.
Even I am likely to get a little bit smirky when someone gets too clinical during sex, and uses a phrase like rectum. It makes me want to taunt him, in Masterpiece Theatre tones, with “Mummy! This chap wants me to insert my penis into his rectum! Mightn’t I please play with his anus?” (But I don’t.)

You know what two words create the biggest divide in the gay population, though? I bet you do. Cunt and pussy.

There’s no middle ground with these words, it seems. The men who object to them do so with a vigor that’s clamorous; the men who love them identify with them with a passion.

I think it’s quite curious how a man can be one of the biggest and most passionate pigs around—he can be dressed in stinking, sopping leather, covered with sweat and urine and semen, leaking the loads of a dozen men from both holes, smelling like a horse during harvest, uttering obscenities that would make Satan himself blush like a virgin. But growl something like, Yeah, boy, give me that mancunt, and he’ll turn into the prissiest, primmest, most disagreeable little old lady ever to wipe the tip of her white lace glove across the top of a hanging photograph to make sure it’s dusted. “I do not have a—a—a C-WORD!” he will sniff and intone, pretending he’s not sitting in a puddle of bodily fluids.

These guys post their lexicon limitations in their online profiles, admonishing you in advance never, ever to use one of those forbidden words in their presences. They scold. I’ve known them to stop the proceedings dead in their tracks to give a lecture about how they refuse to be feminized . . . after a half dozen men have pounded dick into them for a couple of hours. I used to know one guy who refused to see or speak to anyone who had the temerity to use the words pussy or cunt in his presence, and would block someone online and cut them dead in person if he dared.

On the other hand, the guys who are into it, are really, really into it. If they haven’t already made a profile online with a name like WarmSloppyCuntNYC or URPussyboi, they mention in their profiles how they need their cunts stretched and their pussies opened by monster dicks. Saying the words to them inflames their libidos; you can feel their holes become less rigid and more yielding. They want not necessarily to be feminized, but to be used. They want men to open them, to invade them, to put their holes to a purpose just like that uniquely female organ.

Me? I tend to be somewhere in the middle. If a guy’s really into being called a pussy or cunt, sure. I’ll call him that. I’ll call him that a lot. If a man dislikes it—I’m not likely to bring it into dirty talk anyway, without some obvious hints dropped. I’m unlikely to refer to my own hole as my man-pussy. On the other hand, I’ve got no issue with describing the afternoon I lost my virginity as being cunted.

Forty-five years after I learned about my penis, the point’s pretty much the same to me—they’re all just words.

How about you guys? Where do you stand in the lexicon battles that are the pussy wars? Speak up in today’s open forum and let everyone know!