Rex Collins ~ Cuntiness

Words are abstract, arbitrary, silly. They can be meat, tough to chew, a mouth full of water which almost can not be held, a stingy slap to the back of the head, a rising heat in the chest, sand paper rubbing on the skin. They can be the most warming relaxing bath, a soft kiss on the cheek, a hyperventilation of ecstasy, a cat sleeping on your chest, a gleeful bubbling of laughter. Words hold us, push and pull us and let us dream.

Cuntiness investigates how a historically derogatory term is transformed within queer, trans, and ballroom cultures into a powerful mode of embodiment, performance, and resistance. Through autotheoretical writing, performance-based research, and critical theory, this thesis explores how the words cunt, cunty, and cuntiness function not simply as language but as affective and material forces that shape how bodies are perceived, move through space, and claim presence. Grounded in lived experience within queer and trans communities in Amsterdam, cuntiness is approached as a collective, relational practice forged in response to gendered, racialised, and sexualised forms of marginalisation. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Karen Barad’s agential realism, Sara Ahmed’s work on affect, and Audre Lorde’s writing on the erotic, the thesis argues that cuntiness operates as a performative and affective strategy that disrupts the naturalisation of gender and sex. Rather than referring to anatomy, cuntiness names a mode of doing: an unapologetic, self-authored inhabiting of gendered and sexualised flesh that fuses pleasure with defiance, beauty with refusal, and softness with force.