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This book is appallingly bad.

I bought it for a couple of reasons. First, I am about to teach Lady Chatterly's Lover for the first time, and I thought any book that makes the case for widespread use of "cunt" was an important bit of prep for D.H. Lawrence's infamous classic. Second, I was under the impression that the book delivered an overview of the etymology of "cunt." Third and last, I read Betty Dodson's introduction and was led to believe that Cunt A Declaration of Independence was the kind of book I could one day pass on to my daughters, a gift that would show them the existence of a community as comfortable and proud of their menstruation, sexuality and "cunts" as I hope my daughters will one day be.

Instead, there was nothing in Cunt that I could use in my class, an unreliable and disappointingly skeletal etymology, and little for my daughters that wasn't written by someone other than Inga Muscio.

In fact, most of the interesting bits of Inga Muscio's book were from much better writers and thinkers (Ursula K. LeGuin, Cristien Storm, Nina Hartley, Audre Lorde, etc., etc.). Muscio's own work was illogical, poorly argued, continuously fallacious, and often full of hate. She did offer a couple of inspired ideas -- such as her call for menarche parties to celebrate a woman's first menstruation and the need to remove shame from masturbation -- but these moments were too few to mitigate the overall shabbiness of her work.

And that shabbiness was heightened by Muscio's voice. She shifts from pirate to gangbanger to urban artist to pretentious author without any textually supported reason. It's obvious that she adopts this potluck style for effect; it's a voice used to make her cool and accessible, but she would have done better to spend her energy fully developing her ideas of how to make "cuntlove" universal and rid us all of "cunthate" than to waste time offering up piratical dialogue like, "We be powerful people when we bleed." Arrrrrr! Avast matey!

This book wasn't anywhere near good enough, and it could have been amazing in the hands of someone with the skills to propose an idea, sustain an argument, deliver the proofs, and avoid digressions. Hell...I wanted it to be amazing. But Cunt is pop drivel of the worst kind. I am going back to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to cleanse my feminist tastebuds.

As for Cunt A Declaration of Independence...I want my money back; instead, I suppose I will just have to use it as kindling come summertime.