I realize that the word has come to be used in a derogatory way similar to dick, prick but it has attained a level of offensiveness similar to the n word with blacks. As close as you can get to a male equivalent is probably cock-sucker.

I read somewhere that the reason has to do with the fact that men created all the obscene slang and thus the words they have applied to themselves do not carry the weight of the names applied to women without their input or permission

In any case, whether it is the n word or the c word, I have no problem in not using a word that hurts feelings. That is all I really need to know.

history.

The word appears several times in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be considered obscene at this point, since it is used openly. A notable use is from the “Miller’s Tale”: “Pryvely he caught her by the queynte.” The Wife of Bath also uses this term, “For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve … What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?” In modernised versions of these passages the word “queynte” is usually translated simply as “cunt”.