History of Swear Words 1x5

1. It is a thing of great wonder and mystery,

2. quivering with complexity, strength and resilience.

3. However, also, buried within, a delicate femininity.

4. And dare I even say, naughtiness.

5. Look one way and you see a gentle feline innocence.

6. Look another way and… oh, my.

7. Yes, it has the power to steer our souls and intoxicate our minds.

8. Men have died for it.

9. Women have moved in with each other way too soon for it.

10. And to fully capture its essence,

11. we must plunge unafraid deep within its enchanted garden.

12. Oh, my friends, we are so close now.

13. Feast your eyes upon the very house of life and death,

14. the temple of sensuality.

15. And a term for that kid too afraid to play dodgeball in gym class.

16. Behold!

17. It also could be a cat.

18. - I love the word "pussy." - Pussy.

19. - Pussy! - It's sexy.

20. Pussy. Do you want me to define it?

21. Pussy is the vulva or vagina,

22. but it's a much more fun word.

23. It's not too harsh.

24. It sounds, like, light and airy.

25. Cutesy…

26. Pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pusssssy.

27. "You're acting like a pussy."

28. You see the word "pussy" everywhere,

29. but there's some sense that it's still off-limits.

30. This man boasting

31. - about grabbing a woman's pussy. - Exactly.

32. Will you stop saying that word? My daughter is listening.

33. "Pussy" is like a… I think a more potent swear word.

34. Definitely an attention-getter.

35. Oh, and this one time, at band camp,

36. I stuck a flute in my pussy.

37. I say all the shit in the world, motherfucker, dick,

38. but pussy's always weird saying it, I don't know,

39. because I have so many sisters.

40. It is something that we, as women, are… um…

41. feeling more empowered to say in public.

42. "Pussy" is comfortable.

43. Pussy's comfortable.

44. It's the only acceptable word to refer to a woman's vagina

45. if you are wanting to have sex with that woman.

46. - Knee-deep in pussy. - Uh…

47. - Oh… - No…

48. Today, the word has several definitions.

49. Cat. Vulva. Sexual intercourse.

50. Derogatory slang for a weak man, and the homograph, "full of pus."

51. Pus-sy.

52. A cat was a cat and a kitty.

53. And it wasn't until I was way older that I heard someone call it a "pussy."

54. And I was like, "You have a very strange relationship with that animal."

55. While we know its modern sexual connotation,

56. the meaning of this word has had several iterations throughout history.

57. However, there's no one theory about how the word developed,

58. but there are similarities between them.

59. The earliest meaning of "pussy"

60. is as a slang term for a cat, and that's in the early 1500s.

61. Immediately afterwards,

62. It becomes a term of affection used for a specific woman,

63. like "darling" or "gal."

64. A woman that you have affection for might have cat-like features, right?

65. She's cuddly or she's sweet

66. or, um… she's— she's tender.

67. There were pamphlets and screeds from 1583.

68. It uses "pussy" as a pet name for a wife.

69. The phrase says, "Taking a saucy boy,

70. making him marry a woman so that he has his pretty pussy to huggeth."

71. Pretty soon after that, "pussy" comes to refer to female genitalia.

72. "Pussy" I think comes from cat, because it's, like, furry and feminine.

73. Because these meanings all come in at the same time,

74. there are competing theories as to where the word comes from.

75. Theory one is that the word was derived from the Germanic call sounds

76. - used to attract a cat. - Here, pussy, pussy, pussy…

77. Theory two is that the word stems

78. from the Scandinavian word in Old Norse,

79. uh, referring to a pocket pouch or purse.

80. Here, pursey, pursey, pursey…

81. The idea of a pouch or a bag.

82. Something that's a receptacle that's there to be filled.

83. Over time, the popularity of profane words fades.

84. Slang terms for "vagina" are no exception.

85. So what were some other names for "vagina" through history?

86. Old words for vagina, they're all hysterical.

87. Honeypot. Hoohaa.

88. Garden of Venus.

89. Cypriot bag.

90. Cooter.

91. Flower pot.

92. Quim-whiskers.

93. Cecily Bumtrinket.

94. This is sort of everything that you want in wordplay for genitalia.

95. First, it takes a common woman's name of the time, Cecily.

96. So we've personified the vagina.

97. And then it gives, as a surname, Bumtrinket.

98. So "bum" meaning, you know, the bottom part of your body,

99. and "trinket" being something that ornaments it.

100. I guess a vagina is a bumtrinket.

101. It's like… it's like a hood ornament to the arsehole.

102. Sadly, it's out of use now.

103. Writers have played with the word's double meaning

104. since it first appeared in print, in the 1500s.

105. The jump from woman to genitalia is entirely wordplay.

106. And it's wordplay on both the "woman" meaning and the "cat" meaning.

107. The earliest use where we know it means "genitalia"

108. has more to do with, um…

109. stroking your pussy, meaning your woman, but also, obviously, her genitalia.

110. I remember being at Spencer Gifts.

111. There was a book in the adult section, How to Wash Your Pussy.

112. And it had, like, a picture of a cat, you know.

113. And my sister, who's Jodyne, said…

114. "Um… 'pussy' means 'vagina.'"

115. And I was like, "No, it doesn't."

116. There's a time at the end of the 19th century

117. where there were adult stage acts, there were the Barrison Sisters.

118. The Danish-born Barrison Sisters were

119. a traveling dirty stage act during the 1890s.

120. They would sing about their pussies.

121. Most notably, a song where they'd sing,

122. By the end of the song, they'd pull up their skirts to reveal cute live kittens

123. - strapped to their groins.

124. Be clever with your pussy.

125. You know what I mean? Don't just put your pussy on a pedestal.

126. Hide your pussy in innuendo, and surprise me with a kitten.

127. That's what I want.

128. And that's what led to the formation of PETA.

129. So "pussy" has maintained the same meanings

130. for all 500 years of its existence.

131. It only adds one additional meaning.

132. It's in the late 1800s, early 1900s,

133. to refer to a weak or ineffectual man.

134. I hate you. Stop smiling!

135. You pussy.

136. It's very gendered.

137. If someone's calling, like, someone a pussy,

138. they're calling them, like, weak.

139. "You a pussy. You a pussy-ass bitch."

140. A man who is a pussy is likened to a vagina in that it is passive.

141. It is meant to be a receptacle. It is not meant to be active.

142. I hear a girl at the office got you pussy-whipped.

143. Don't be pussy-whipped.

144. Whip that pussy.

145. I really actually like calling guys "pussies,"

146. because it seems to really upset them.

147. And there's not that many words that you can call a guy

148. and have them get as mad as, like, the c-word would make a woman.

149. And "pussy" is just one of them.

150. The male use of "pussy" to mean a weak or ineffectual man

151. has kind of dropped off in use.

152. And the reason that you don't— It's not because it's negative to men.

153. It's because it is denigrating a woman's body part.

154. Now I'm at a real crossroads with the word "pussy,"

155. because I really did love calling people a pussy.

156. But, like, that connection is, like

157. negative

158. for my people.

159. You know, we should be calling people, like, "ball sacks."

160. Because "ball sacks" are like fucking Fabergé eggs.

161. We're calling people "pussies"

162. when ball sacks are like, "Oh, I'm cold. I have to get up close to the body."

163. Whenever you have anything that refers to genitalia,

164. it pretty quickly will generally refer to the person who has that genitalia

165. as a sexual partner.

166. It's purely sexual.

167. And it eventually became taboo.

168. There used to be a time where "pussy" was part of the underground.

169. It's this thing you didn't say out loud in front of mixed company.

170. Unless you lived in the city, heard it all the time, and thought, "So what?"

171. In the '30s and '40s, "pussy" was glimpsed in Henry Miller novels,

172. heard in old blues songs.

173. So you knew somebody who knew somebody who had it, they'd bring it to the house,

174. and play it in the basement when everybody was asleep.

175. Lots of titles of books and movies about pussy cat,

176. pussyfoot, pussying around pussy.

177. Dirty versions of comic books, books that were printed by small presses.

178. The 1937 novel I Can Get It For You Wholesale

179. really grabbed people's attention because

180. it was frank about sexuality, it used the word "pussy."

181. That really galvanized attraction for that book.

182. You just pick the book up, put it inside another book,

183. and look at that word as much as you wanted to,

184. and feel like you had done something wildly different.

185. According to recent statistics,

186. many of us actually get our sexual and anatomical education from porn.

187. Phew…

188. Wow, this is graphic.

189. From the '70s on, we see "pussy" being used pretty frequently in pornography.

190. However, it really goes into hyperdrive in the '90s.

191. It makes sense that porn popularized the word "pussy."

192. First of all, people are watching more porn than they ever admit to.

193. So it influences pop culture, I think, more than anyone would ever let on.

194. I learned about sex from porn.

195. They had it as a VCR tape, so my grandfather left

196. and I put in one of his tapes.

197. It was called…

198. Something of the Gods. Something of the…

199. I can't think of the word but I put it in.

200. I tried to rewind it to the place he had it. It just didn't work out.

201. More people talked about sex.

202. You had the sexual revolution, the women's movement, the gay rights movement.

203. And you had disco.

204. But I think it's the mainstreaming of pornography that happens in the early '70s

205. with films like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door

206. brought pornography into the popular culture.

207. It was called porno chic.

208. And everyone from Johnny Carson to Barbra Streisand

209. were going to see Deep Throat.

210. It's such a graphic word

211. and it's so informed by, I think, the male gaze through porn, that, like…

212. It's like, when men talk about, like, a woman's pussy,

213. it's usually in. like, a very disrespectful,

214. like, hyper-sexualized way that I think can be degrading to women.

215. This is embarrassing, but I remember as a kid…

216. there was, like, a porn magazine…

217. that— it was a Penthouse Forum,

218. that was in my older sister's bookshelf.

219. And I would sneak it out and just look at the word "pussy" to, like, masturbate,

220. 'cause it was so dirty to me.

221. It was, like, electric inside my body. Just to read the word "pussy."

222. Why do we use animal nicknames for vaginas?

223. A lot of our slang terms for genitalia, um, also have analogs to animals.

224. Kitty, coochie.

225. Clam, chowder, clam chowder.

226. Because sex is an animalistic act

227. and we've always kind of seen it as sort of the thing that animals do.

228. - Pussycat. - Cat trap.

229. My mom calls her pussy a lizard.

230. Our society tends to normalize "dick."

231. Kids draw them on desks, and you might say I've drawn one.

232. But across much of mass media,

233. female anatomy is usually hidden away, invisible.

234. Women are just made to feel bad about the way they look

235. and who they are so often.

236. Especially this thing in between our legs

237. that we're never supposed to talk about, never supposed to look at,

238. and only supposed to share with, like, Jesus and one man we choose to marry.

239. I am 52 years old.

240. My pussy is not containin' itself.

241. My pussy is like lava. You understand me?

242. We've become obsessed with our pussies

243. because for so long, we couldn't even acknowledge that we had them.

244. And so now it's like, "Yeah, it's all I wanna talk about."

245. I think words can be reclaimed.

246. And I think "pussy" is one of those words where we're watching it happen.

247. Okay, back up a second.

248. Before we can talk about the reclamation of "pussy,"

249. we need to go backward and talk about Rudy Ray Moore.

250. He was a phenomenal comedian.

251. He put out comedy albums in the '70s,

252. uh… often under his character, Dolemite,

253. speaking about explicit sex in really funny ways.

254. It was a big influence on the vulgar type of rap that we saw later in party rap.

255. Case in point is 2 Live Crew.

256. They came out with a song called "We Want Some Pussy" in 1986.

257. Any woman who hears a group of horny-ass men goin'…

258. …like 50, 60 at a time,

259. they are going to run.

260. I'm talkin' Flo-Jo, Jackie Joyner-Kersee speed.

261. Whether by design or by accident,

262. the raunchy rap group 2 Live Crew just can't seem to stay out of the headlines.

263. And after last night's South Florida performance,

264. some members of the group couldn't stay out of jail.

265. 2 Live Crew was making very sexually explicit music.

266. People are driving around playing it, they're playing it from the club.

267. Of course, people walking by are like, "That's pollution."

268. And so law enforcement would show up at their concerts,

269. would confiscate their albums at record stores.

270. And actually led to a really famous court case where…

271. 2 Live Crew took the issue of censorship to court.

272. And they won.

273. It doesn't feel good to be referred to

274. as women who are penetrated by men as just "pussy."

275. I mean, we're so much more than that.

276. We're our necks, our backs, our pussies and our cracks.

277. While groups like 2 Live Crew, up through Ice-T, NWA

278. were pushing the boundaries around censorship,

279. they were absolutely being conventional and problematic

280. when it came to… oppressing women in their videos and in their music.

281. And so it really took a huge revolution among the women

282. to be able to speak up and speak back to men.

283. People like Lil' Kim. I'd say Foxy Brown…

284. Talking about their pussy as a powerful thing…

285. that can do shit,

286. and that you will ruin your life for this pussy.

287. That's the way they were talking about it.

288. And so, like, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion

289. are definitely standing on those shoulders

290. and definitely taking it to the next level.

291. You heard the song "WAP"? It's "Wet-Ass Pussy."

292. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about the way that

293. "Wet-Ass Pussy" got such a reaction,

294. specifically amongst white conservatives.

295. Because so much of profanity is us quoting songs and quoting movies.

296. And even lines from poetry.

297. It's good to let them short-circuit a little bit.

298. I think it's— That's like, good art.

299. Yeah, and I think "Wet-Ass Pussy" is poetry.

300. How is "pussy" being used in protest?

301. Currently, "pussy" is undergoing this really interesting transformation

302. in that there's an attempt to reclaim it.

303. Um… you really start seeing that…

304. uh, actually with Riot Grrrl punk music.

305. So Pussy Riot is a great example of that.

306. It's the name of a band, and they were jailed in Russia

307. for saying negative things about the government and the church.

308. Part of reclaiming a curse word that is derogatory, like "pussy,"

309. is, like, understanding where the power is in the word.

310. You know, we're talking about the way the male gaze has been projected

311. onto cis women's bodies.

312. And to take that back in political protest, it's a powerful tool.

313. You start also seeing a lot of backlash to, uh…

314. Donald Trump's reported comments that came out in 2016,

315. where he said that he, you know,

316. moves on women like a bitch and he grabs them by the pussy.

317. Don't tell me you're offended when I say "pussy,"

318. - but you're not offended when Trump does. - I am very—

319. And suddenly you have a whole lot of marches.

320. Women who are so incensed at that action,

321. that suddenly you see "pussy" all over protest signs.

322. There were pussy hats that were pink with cat ears.

323. So really, in recent years, you're starting to see a push

324. into at least the acknowledgment that this word has been weaponized

325. and can be unweaponized by women.

326. But it's right at the beginning of this reclamation process,

327. which means it's really controversial still for a woman to use the word "pussy,"

328. even of her own anatomy.

329. I personally have…

330. criticisms of the pink pussy hat.

331. I think there's some complex layers

332. uh, to mainstream feminism.

333. I think the pussy hat stuff, that was not for me.

334. With its many uses and evolutions,

335. it seems that the word "pussy" is a universe unto itself.

336. Or is what we call the universe actually just one giant cosmic pussy?

337. And what will the pussyverse's future hold?

338. Will it blow up like a supernova,

339. or collapse into a black hole and suck us all in?

340. These are the questions I ask myself at night.

341. Our new society is redefining gender, sexuality,

342. to think in really inclusive ways,

343. so that we could talk about pussies as anybody having a pussy,

344. as including trans women, but including men having pussies.

345. In the queer community, there's like, "bussy…"

346. Butt-pussy…

347. So, really detaching the language from the actual physicality

348. or what somebody's body looks like in the traditional ways.

349. And that, to me, is really exciting.

350. I think the word "pussy" has a bright future.

351. Be strong.

352. "Pussy" is for everybody. Not just comedy clubs and strip joints.

353. Be flexible.

354. I think it's gonna go to, like, a cool school.

355. Be resilient.

356. Your Aunt Susan is puttin' pussy memes on her Facebook right now.

357. Be a pussy.

358. Uh, it's gonna make a lot of friends and, um…

359. it's gonna come out as, um, bi.

360. Pussy just may be the strongest muscle in the human body.

361. Pussy. Pass it on.