Posted 03 July 2008 - 11:55 PM
You know I came into this thread, wandering, in my boredom, and what do I see other than a borderline flamewar and a discussion on the semantics of the word "pussy" when used as a pejorative.
I think I might stick around these parts for a while...
In any case, you've piqued my linguistic curiosity. Pussy would seem to be ill-suited to a pejorative. Pussies don't do anything unproductive, quite the opposite, their entire feature list from top to bottom are productive and necessary. They make men feel good, they serve as storage, shelter, and life-support facilities for podling humans (much better term than fetus, no?).
Also, they're known for their flexibility, durability, and pain tolerance. After all, those podlings DO come out the way they got in.
So why is pussy used as a pejorative? I don't know. Perhaps it is a sleight at the female gender, meant to impugn manhood rather than bravery, two things that are far too often mistaken for one another. Dick, now dick I can understand. What does a dick do? It penetrates, it pokes, it prods, if you have one big enough you can harm innocents with it. It is utilitarian in design and not aesthetically appealing in the slightest. Unlike the high-tech, bleeding-edge (har har) vagina, the penis is an old design nature's been using for millenia, and it even has a vestigial component. The human vagina is a veritable wonder of biology, whereas the penis looks like something you might slap on after the fact, as happens so often in Second Life.
Likewise, asshole is easy to understand. An asshole's sole biological function is to expel shit in all its flavors. You can understand why you'd want to call someone an asshole! Same with dick, but pussy, that's a male phenomena. Perhaps its pussy envy. We got stuck with the ford Pintos of reproductive organs while women have ferraris. Men can only orgasm once, women can orgasm indefinitely, up to the point of unconsciousness, given the right stimulus. Women can sustain multiple human lives in their parts for months! Men have to brute-force the reproductive process, dropping cluster-bomb loads of sperm, to try and hit the female's single target, and still missing a good chunk of the time.
Oh yeah, Metal Gear.
I liked it.
Otacon's a pussy.