Thinking about bloodletting chapter 21 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/51270289/chapters/149031733 ) and the word cunt. So I was at a birthday party the other day and one of the guys very loudly went “are you going to hit him in the cunt”. His girlfriend then grabbed him and told him to apologize to the whole party. And it hit me how interesting of a word it is especially in the context of the fic. For context: im older gen z and from the Midwest of the US, I’m also the beta reader for bloodletting and me and the author have had very long conversations about chapter 21 specifically. with cunt like it’s a very loaded word in some generations/areas, but it’s lost a lot of power in other places. Like for me and a lot of my friends it feels like it’s a gut punch kinda word, and it feels like an attack in and of itself. But like in the context of the fic I think it’s really interesting cause like it feels like internalized misogyny. Like I hate you and myself and us so much I’m gonna hit you with the worst word I can think of to dehumanize you. Which is interesting because myself and some other AFAB people I have talked to who have been assaulted have realized there’s this deep internalized misogyny we’ve developed as a way to rationalize the assault, that we’ve had to work through. There have also been studies (https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12318&context=etd#:~:text=Women%20who%20are%20high%20in,depression%2C%20and%20self%2Dblame.) about internalized misogyny affecting women’s views on sexual violence, but I think it should definitely be looked at more. So yeah, it’s just interesting how systemic violence against women can turn them against each other and be weaponized. But yeah, lots of thoughts that I don’t fully know how to describe or explain
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