And because Athenae tweeted this, and I couldn’t agree more,
some thoughts on the effectiveness, or non-effectiveness, ofprofanity. Best of all, one of the commenters links to this video, which, getting back to ruining children by exposing them to reality, contains one of my favorite bits ever from Fry & Laurie, at 0:45 seconds.
Lady, you got the wrong guy. I don’t fit that description at all.
(Waits for lightning to strike.)
Ya lyin’ pimhole
I say this all the time, but I was just talking to some friends about this recently: I cannot recall my conservative parents ever making me or my brother and sister paranoid about people who were different in any way. At most, it was, “well, that family is Jewish and they believe something different than we do” and then it was on to “do your homework without whining for once in your life, please.” Or I was young and asked about a family acquaintance getting married someday, and was told, “he’s gay” and that it meant loving another man (and, back then, thus never getting married). I just don’t recall a whole Scary Explanation of the World of Homosexuals or Jews or Muslims or anything that signaled to me that this was some kind of trauma.
There were subtle forms of privilege, of course, and we lived in a fairly homogenous community, but this idea that we had to be kept in the dark lest our little brains explode from the horror is … not necessarily new, but still really dumb.
A.
Hah I was just talking to my sister about this very topic. She worries that my use of profanity on my blog “limits my reach” or some such. To which I say: “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
🙂
Athenae:
“Think of the children” is shorthand for “OMG now *I* have to be put in the uncomfortable place of explaining icky things that me feel squishy inside.” In other words, “I don’t give a crap about the children, I’m more concerned about myself.”
In a nutshell.
nothing was more delishes as hearing my grandma say my shirt was a shitty color. i am SO saving that shitty shirt forever.
Great! “Fusker.” I learned a new one 😉
My kid (then about 2) cussed at a playground once, b/c I am a terrible influence and swear like a biker. It was a fairly mild cuss considering what she could have said — she fell off the end of the slide and, with perfect intonation, exclaimed, “Christ!”
I thought it was pretty funny, mainly because of hoe perfectly she said it. But this dad got all upset, because it was a toddler playground and “kids” were playing there. His kids, he added, and he didn’t allow ‘that language’ around them.
I think he was mainly upset because I laughed instead of (I don’t know what) hitting her or yelling at her. I just gave him a “Seriously, dude?” look and took her off to another part of the playground, since it’s my rule not to engage with crazy people in the playground.
But I’ve always wondered what he thought was going to happen to his toddlers if they heard a ‘bad’ word. Did he think they would be stained and ruined forever? Implode? What?
I don’t know…our generation appears to be the explainingest bunch anyways. I remember growing up when “explaining” consisted of “because I said so and I’m the parent” and that was reason enough all the way up until we were old enough to need or understand an explanation.
*shrugging*
Whenever Barbara and/or I start using “fuck” randomly throughout sentences, we just explain that we are Debra Morgan fans.
my mom still has this thinjg about the NOT USING THE LORDS NAME IN VAIN. you know, the ones made up to use instead. JEEZ it drives me crazy.
Christ, like Jesus, is a one word prayer. You would think peeps would know that.
Oh God, is a two word prayer.
I had to school myself out of using profanity because of where I worked. I do like and use the behavior descriptor asshat and wanker. My English friend gasped when I called someone a wanker a while back. I think perhaps it is a stronger insult there than here.
It’s interesting to see how some terms become less obscene over time, too. I’ve noticed that it seems to be no big deal to call someone a dick on TV now, for instance.