The Cunt Coloring Book
It´s a week before Easter. On the table there are 12 blown out eggs with a silk white loop attached, precolored in different shades of pink. Two black thick pens are lying on the table next to Tee Corinne´s Cunt Coloring Book, published first at LAST GASP of San Francisco in San Francisco in 1975. What a city San Francisco always was. Everything revolutionary came from or settled there. The beatnik writers, the Hippies, the AIDS activists. Now the city is swamped by the tech industry making it into a chic, cool, hip and very expensive suburb of Silicon Valley big earners. Community hang outs in the middle of the historically Hispanic neighborhood of Mission district making space for French Style bakeries where programmers and designers will cue around the block to get a lemon cake for 8 $.
The opening lines of the book read:
"In 1973 I set out to do drawings of women´s genitals for use in sex education groups. I wanted the drawings to be lovely and informative, to give pleasure and affirmation. I organized the drawings into a coloring book because a major way we learn to understand the world, as children, is by coloring. As adults many of us still need to learn about our external sexual anatomy. Coloring is a way for the child in each of us to revision and reclaim this portion of our bodies from which we have been estranged.
The Cunt Coloring Book, published in 1975, was immediately and wildly popular, although many people complained about the "awful" title. Three printings later, in 1981, the title was changed to Labiaflowers and the book virtually died. So much for euphemisms.
Welcome once again to the Original Cunt Coloring Book (with a few additions). May you color it with pleasure.
IN THE BEGINNING by Martha Shelley
In the beginning we come from the cunt, not from some man´s side: and we are washed in the water and blood of birth, not the spear-pierced side of some dying god. In the beginning women made pots and jars shaped like wombs and breasts, and decorated them with triangles, which were symbols of the cunt. So the first art was Cunt Art. The bones of dead were laid in jars - perhaps to speed the soul to its next womb? Did the ancient women sing, how delicate, sensitive, delicious, how strong the ring of muscle between one life and the next? There are tribal women today who sing praises of their cunts, how pretty and long and full their lips are, how the hair curls and glistens with moisture.
The drawings in this book are of real women´s cunts.
My love and thanks to the many women who participated with me in this project and to those who encouraged and counseled me. These pages are a celebration of your energy."
We read those lines feeling proud and safe and partners in crime. We know everything about our own cunts and each other´s cunt. We´ve tasted them and their blood, touched every corner of them, fell asleep cunt on cunt. We are keepers of the secrets of womanhood that also many women don´t become aware of in their lifetime. That power and responsibility to honor the heritage of women like Virginia Wolf and Judy Chicago or Tee Corinne (and a sheer endless list of millions more) starts out with knowing your cunt. Knowing how all your power lies there. Men know this as well since the beginning of mankind. That´s why rape has always been (and still is if we look at how ISIS builds its state) the most efficient method to enslave others, to break a population, to assimilate and own human life. Knowing your cunt and the life it creates. Knowing your cunt and its bond with nature. Knowing your cunt and teaching your lover about it. Teaching respect and love. Knowing your cunt holds the key to the future.