Are You a Cunt?

Let’s be reasonable. Nobody wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror, and proudly declares, “Today, I shall be the villain of someone else’s story.” Well, almost nobody. Yet somehow, we all occasionally manage to play that role, sometimes without even realising we’ve auditioned for it.

Human behaviour is rarely as black and white as we’d like to believe. Sometimes we hurt others through selfishness, pride, insecurity, or an impressive inability to see beyond our own noses. Other times, we’re simply exhausted, misunderstood, defending our boundaries, or reacting to circumstances nobody else can see, understand, or even bothers to acknowledge. And occasionally, we’re so convinced of our own righteousness that we forget to question whether our behaviour deserves the same scrutiny we generously apply to everyone else’s.

Of course, context matters. Being someone’s villain doesn’t automatically make you one. Some people will happily cast you as the antagonist simply because you stopped playing the role they assigned you. Others may have legitimate reasons to feel hurt, even when hurting them was never your intention. Learning to distinguish between these situations requires something considerably less glamorous than moral superiority: honest self-reflection.