“I’m not gonna say anything inspirational; I’m just gonna fucking swear a lot.” ~ Billie Joe Armstrong
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If you’re easily offended, turn back now. I’m giving you this warning not because I care about your feelings, but because I don’t want to deal with your pissing and moaning regarding your wounded sensibilities.
I’m giving you this warning because I say what I want to and find the whining of those who feel it is their duty to police others’ language to be petty and irritating.
That being said, if you’re going to lose your shit over a few F-Bombs, close your browser now, or forever shut the hell up about it.
I’ve had it brought to my attention in the fairly recent past that I use a lot of profanity in my writing. While this has come from a few different places and didn’t really surprise me much, it was pointless to tell me about it.
I’m well aware of the fact that this blog is peppered with the word “fuck” and various other colorful epithets. Of course I’m aware; I put them there. They are strategically located. They, like every other word in everything that I write, are there for a fucking reason. In most cases, for fucking emphasis.
Now, I’ve heard plenty of people claim that swearing indicates a lack of ability to communicate effectively, that it is a sign of lesser intelligence. This makes no sense, to claim that a lack of being able to swear creatively makes your smarter.
A few months ago, my good friend Nick over at A Gentleman’s Domain brought this video to my attention when he posted it on his own blog. British actor, writer, comedian, television presenter, film director and well-known intellectual Stephen Fry expresses the joys of swearing:
One of the things that I appreciate the most about living in France is the absence of this puritanical mindset. In France, using poor grammar is more offensive than swearing, as it should be. My French husband, who has taught me the most about the French that “real people” speak — the idiomatic French — said to me, “It’s not enough to simply swear in French. It’s an art, putting insults and swear words together in a colorful and entertaining thread. Not everyone is able to do it; it’s a talent.”
Indeed, swearing in France is almost like not swearing at all. Perhaps it’s because the language sounds more elegant and less guttural than my native American English. Or, perhaps it’s because there isn’t the absurd puritanical stigma placed upon it.
Cursing in French… it’s really something else.
Of course, the fact that it’s not as frowned upon here does take some of the fun out of it.
But, do I throw fucks and shits around as much when I speak as when I’m writing? Of course not. Casual, everyday speech isn’t so carefully edited. Words aren’t always so carefully chosen.
Naturally, I’m worse. Stub my toe. Motherfucker. Broke a glass. Goddammit. Someone cut me off in traffic. Cock-faced idjit. Someone elbows me in the métro. Dipshit. The train is late. Son of a motherfucking shit for brained assfuck.
These things just slip out. It can’t be helped.
Sometimes, it’s just a means of communication. It helps to convey a point. Or maybe, some of us are just the kind of people that have a spicy way of making ourselves understood.
Other times, it’s punctuation. Accentuation. Amplification. Exclamation.
Sometimes… it’s just fucking funny.
So… there it is. We say what we want to, we write what we want to. If this is a problem, don’t listen. Don’t read.
More importantly, don’t bitch about it. Surely, there must be some greater cause out there in this big, fucked-up and cluttered world that this energy could be funneled into.
Otherwise, I might have to break down and get nasty. I might even use a few bad words.
But, fuck it… why am I going on about this? It’s already been addressed and appropriately mocked by someone else at some point… and they did a much better job.
“What’s the big deal? It doesn’t hurt anybody. Fuck, fuckity, fuck-fuck-fuck.” ~Eric Cartman
“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” ~ Mark Twain
Stephen Fry is hilarious. He used to be in this show on the Beeb called “Wooster and Jeeves” costarrring the dude from “House”. It was based on short stories by P.G. Wodehouse, and it was pants pissingly funny. I miss watching that Wooster wiggle his way out of sticky situations.
I was one of 3 women of untraditional age in a college writing class (creative nonfiction). One of those classes where you critique each other’s stuff. This one kid makes a great sentence out of two words. He’s talking about his father. The fuck.
He saved us paragraphs and paragraphs about Dad (the fuck) with those two words.
But the other 2 older women are offended. And the class turns to me to make the demographic consensus complete. But I couldn’t. I think of all these stories we’ve read by kids who are mean, entitled, and irresponsible. That offends me.
But great writing? Never!
Thank you, Ras, for this eloquent defense of “blue” language.
You’re familiar with my vulgar, racist, homophobic, misogynist, blasphemous, cruel, and cheerfully misanthropic writing style, so I doubt it would surprise you that I rarely catch any flak for using four-letter words. But it saddens me that kids gotta give you grief about it.
I cuss BECAUSE I’m so enamored of the English language, not because I’m uneducated. Why do anti-cursing types seem to think you can show intellectual superiority by ELIMINATING words from your vocabulary?
Fuck ’em.