Political Leader Says Women Must Reclaim the C-word: 'I Stand by Using That Word.... We Have to Disarm and Reclaim'

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is encouraging New Zealanders to reclaim the C-word.

During a recent anti-racism rally, the 44-year-old politician casually used the C-word three separate times in front of families and children.

But instead of apologizing, Davidson told Newshub: "I stand by using that word."

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, "c**t" is a "usually disparaging and obscene" term used to depict "the female genital organs." The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as one used to describe "an unpleasant or stupid person."

"That word is a powerful word for women and shouldn't be used as abuse," Davidson explains. "I think it's a word that we have to disarm and reclaim."

The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority recently found that the C-word is currently the most offensive word used across the country, with the N-word a close second.

Davidson's intent to "reclaim" the word means turning it from a negative insult into a more normative word that can be used synonymously with the more accepted vagina.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the LGBTQ+ community began to reclaim the derogatory word queer, which at the time meant "strange" or "peculiar," but was often used pejoratively against same-sex couples and homosexuals.

Nowadays, the word is largely used to describe sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or cisgender, in a positive or neutral way.

Although the C-word's true origins are unknown, Quartz reported that it was used throughout the ancient East and West. Catherine Blackledge's The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality, published in 2003, notes that the term kunthi was used to describe female genitals in Sanskirt, while the word kunt was also used by Ptah-Hotep, an Egyptian vizier, to respectfully describe women in the 25th century B.C.

Today, feminists all around the world are fighting to reclaim the term. In 2011, New Statesman's Laurie Penny argued that there were "no other truly empowering words for the female genitalia" other than the C-word.

"Pussy is nastily diminutive, as if every woman had a tame and purring pet between her legs, while the medical descriptor vagina refers only to a part of the organ, as if women's sexuality were nothing more than a wet hole, or "sheath" in the Latin," she wrote. "Cunt, meanwhile, is a word for the whole thing, a wholesome word, an earthy, dank and lusty word."

Davidson did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.