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I dunno man. Construction workers are obviously among the most crass in all of America, so there's some bias right away, and even to this day, the word "cunt" is seen as the most genuinely offensive and vulgar and strongest bad word without any contest. "Cunt hair" is doubly obscene because, you know, pubic hair isn't really typical in polite conversation, and it forces the meaning to be physical and sexual rather than merely colloquial. So you really are double layering there. No culture warring necessary. In a forum assuming it's deliberate antagonism is for sure the default.
Not that I think we should be schoolmarming each other over naughty words, but I’m pretty sure that title belongs to “nigger” for most normies.
I’d say “cunt”’s like an inverse Scalabrine (who is closer to LeBron than you are to him) in being closer to “faggot,” “tranny,” or “retard” than it is to “nigger,” maybe even ranking behind them. After all, “cunt”’s featured in a lot of well-memed quotes in Game of Thrones-related subreddits, hard to imagine “nigger” being thrown around so casually and merrily on Reddit. Even for comedians, "nigger" is viewed as an edgy, risky thing to say in a way that "cunt" is not; a certain Seinfeld alumnus experienced this the hard way.
As @The_Nybbler mentioned, “cunt hair” in this context is less offensive as a humorous unit of measurement—not more—much less “doubly” so. It’s not like “dickhead” or “asshole” are twice as obscene as calling someone a “dick” or an “ass,” and those don’t have measurement-specific niche use-cases. Well, not yet at least, perhaps one day they can come to serve as common units of radii.
Plus, the offensiveness of a bald “cunt” without “hair” can be mitigated—or even canceled out—by throwing a “white” in front of it when describing or insulting a woman.
Well, to be clear I think that although the line is obviously never clear-cut, I do distinguish between vulgar bad words and slurs, which I do consider to be in different categories both in meaning and the situations in which they are used. There's a long human history of words that are sexually or scatologically oriented that pop up across cultures pretty regularly (the "vulgar" category). Offensive people-category and behavior/intelligence words do also show up (the more general "slur" category), but their use and deployment seems to often form a parallel path, rather than one that frequently intersects and has interchangeability. Mind you, a foul-mouthed person is more likely to employ more words on both axes, but in more independent situations -- at least it seems that way to me.
Of course in the case of "cunt", there might be a little more crossover due to its frequent use as a gendered insult, but I'd argue the word still has more to do with the personality of a person rather than their identity, when used solo.
When it comes to adaptations, yeah it's pretty variable, and obviously highly contextual, something greatly missing over text. But I'd still say that "asshole" is stronger than "ass", as the vulgar connection is stronger and more direct (referring more explicitly to a "dirty" bodypart), but "dickhead" to me seems about as strong as "dick". "Dickhead" is a little weird because it usually is taken as referring to your head on top of your body as opposed to the glans, and yes there's a humor element too which can be a diminisher. But I don't think adding "white" does anything to the offensiveness at all.
Bad words are funny things, because they are at once extremely flexible and context-dependent, and highly culture-dependent too, but also seem to rhyme quite often across cultures which suggests something deeper at play.
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Eh, I think this is a reddit thing. Lots of people who are at least more normie than a typical motteizean would find 'cunt' incredibly offensive and 'nigger' merely very offensive. These people skew female and would probably not use either term themselves. Like, my grandma wouldn't be happy to hear either word, but she'd get a lot more offended at 'cunt'. Honestly it seems like the normies accept that 'nigger' sometimes gets used non-offensively- mostly by blacks themselves- but that 'cunt' almost never is.
It's not just a Reddit thing, as the comedian examples illustrate.
If I had a Twitter account under my real name and called a black person a "nigger," even if such a black person is on video battering/homiciding someone—for example, sucker-punching an Asian American grandparent on the street—I'd almost certainly get canned from my job within a business week, perhaps the next business day.
Whereas, if I called an woman a “cunt,” I'd probably still be let go, but at lesser probability and immediacy. If I stuck a "white" in front of the "cunt" in calling some chick a "white cunt," my survivorship probability might very well be above 50%. I could probably fend that off.
It's mostly in "nigga" form when it comes to black usage. But as always, Who? Whom? Blacks can also otherwise use terms like "cunt" more freely with lesser or no repercussions. For idpol reasons for several decades now, black men (and women) have more latitude by which to call women bitches, whores, sluts.
For the most part, the only thing blacks have been called out, and on occasion faced repercussions for, in the mainstream is alleged antisemitism.
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"Cunt hair" in this context, while still extremely vulgar, is rather less offensive than "cunt" used to refer to someone.
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Kind of a shame that us Americans have taken a word which is pretty fun and lighthearted form of obscenity in the rest of the Anglosphere and made it like the be all end all of the worst things a person can say.
I’m still salty that I once was banned from /r/askanAmerican for using the word cunt with an Australian who came to ask a question.
I wouldn't say "cunt" is a lighthearted form of obscenity in the UK. It is one of the three words you really can't say on TV (along with "nigger" and "Paki"). Using the term to refer to actual female genitalia or to insult a woman would be shockingly misogynistic. Using it to insult a man in earshot would be fighting words. You wouldn't use it to rib a casual acquaintance the way you might in Oz.
The difference between the British and US contexts is that the word is permitted to insult people who it is okay to offer otherwise-unpardonable insults against, such as the manager of your team's arch-rivals or the Prime Minister. There is no misogynistic connotation when the word is used to insult a man.
I am 50-50 on whether "nigger" will turn out to be acceptable (obivously only in the UK) in this context if the Tories elect a black leader, which is less likely than it was a fortnight ago but still very plausible (Jenrick has overtaken Badenoch as the bookies' favourite, but she is still 9-4 and Cleverly is still in the race).
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Now you know how Cajuns feel about coullion.
The point is words with the same definition can have different valences from culture to culture.
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I was about to say it's common in the military as well, but then again they aren't known for decorum either.
Thing is, this is an anonymous internet forum, so we also have a specific cultural substrate. Ever since september 93 never ended, normalfaggotry has been tolerated on the series of tubes, but it is not the endemic culture. Interference with our ancestral traditions of variable geometry language registers is in fact the uncouth behavior.
When in Rome.
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