Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?
Whatever you say, Kaiduorkhon. Whatever you say.
Kaiduorkhon said:
Take note that your exemplified six year old daughter had already, somehow, been educated to the fact that the word was 'bad', and asked why. She didn't learn that from listening to loving talk and gesture, which is indeed, where the word - philologically speaking - originated.
Well, that's what familial bonds are for. Without religious idiots to teach her stupid things like, "Curse words are from Satan," the situation would be much different.
Do you not remember what it's like to be young? I learned to cuss sometime around second grade, and like all things verboten—bad words, bad television (and, sometimes, good), Dad's old
Playboy stash, peeking at girls' underwear, &c.—we wanted to do it
more simply because we weren't supposed to. Ask around Gen X; I don't think I'm making any particularly unique claim.
I can also tell you my daughter learned those words from uncensored episodes of
Family Guy and
South Park, the former having been regular viewing material pretty much her whole life. (I believe her first complete sentence was, in fact, "
I need a Jew." Which was either adorable or horrifying, depending on which parent you were.) Oh, those and a couple of video games.
And while this approach to parenting has proven controversial even within my side of the family, I can tell you that, practically, it's paying off. She asks me about words, their meanings, and why they upset people. Instead of the usual reprimand she faces from her mother or maternal grandparents, she gets practical advice and insight from me. So far it seems to be working. She tests out new words and combinations on me to see how I react; I tell her how the words work, what they mean, how they're used, and why she shouldn't use them. And I get
no reports of her mouth being a problem like that. Not from her school or from my mother. Not even from her paranoid, Jesus-freak maternal grandparents whose world-flight neurosis is so tangled that they're upset because my daughter
wasn't raped. I know, sounds fucked up, right? But it's really hard to explain that chapter and have it sound believable. Needless to say, she will experience greater negative effects from being bundled off to a strange office to have her anatomy poked and prodded for a negative test result, and her mind raked over by psychologists, lawyers, and a couple of detectives—her first video interview when she's
five?—and you should have
seen her mother's head snap to attention (and nearly off) when the lead detective told us they had nothing, and our daughter said nothing happened. I mean, there's very little joy to be had in such an episode beyond the relief of being officially told what you already knew, but yes, watching a nearly pure Freudian neurosis quietly explode right before my very eyes
was satisfying.
But I digress. The proper test of my parenting theories began last year, and will continue in this phase for the next two or three years. Covers a lot, not just cussing.
Constructing a defensive argument against the herein qualified 'misusage' of the word and its - rape mentality supporting - connotations, is a distinctive form of 'blaming the victim (an American recreation)'.
One of the interesting things about curse words is that they have no genuine meaning anymore. We know what "fuck" and "shit", for instance, are supposed to mean, but they also have oddly diverse applications that have nothing to do with rape or excrement.
Yet here you are, trying to forcibly reinsert the rape paradigm into a word that has largely lost its meaning. I think you're an example of someone who has a need to be offended.
And that's the thing, Kaiduorkhon. You could do much more to fight the rape mentality if you didn't depict the effort as a caricature of a serious issue.
'People will always find something to be offended by' , is an irrelavant pretext, finding 'people' responsible for the responsibility of others (refer, 'blaming the victim').
To what responsibility do you refer, and who assigns it to any given individual?
The use of a word is the responsibility of he or she who uses it. Finding offense in that word is the responsibility of the offended.
I mean, you and I are posting in a virtual community in which the idea recently arose that
calling cowardice by its name was insulting and should be forbidden. And the same thing applies. I recognize that nobody likes being called a coward, but when that's how you're behaving? Well, there goes our ability to address untoward conduct in our community. I mean, anyone should be able to denigrate ethnic minorities, women, and homosexuals without facing the insult of being called a bigot, right? And, certainly, those who lie regularly should be spared the offense of being called a liar. And it works both ways. It is anyone else's choice to be offended by being denigrated for their skin color, sexual anatomy, or the gender of their sex partner. And it is a bigot's choice to be offended at the notion that he is a bigot. (It should be noted, however, that the issue has passed, and it does not appear we are about to impose such a standard generally.)
Again, I think you'll find more success in fighting the rape mentality if you don't present the issue as a hyperdramatic, emotionally incoherent scaramouche.
This discussion actually reminds me a bit of Marge Simpson:
Bart: Hey, boy, you want to play fetch?
[SLH looks up, tired, then puts his head back down]
Aw. Me and Santa's Little Helper used to be a team, but he never wants to play any more since his bitch moved in.
Marge: Bart, don't ever say that word again!
Bart: Well, that's what she is. I looked it up.
Marge: Well, I'm going to write the dictionary people and have that checked. Feels like a mistake to me.
(The Simpsons)
I would suggest that, just like Marge, you're determined to be offended. This doesn't help your cause. Now, naturally, some people use profane words to insult, but the conduct in question here is the intention to insult. What words one uses, generally speaking, are irrelevant. (Specifically speaking, the insult is more effective if the words are tailored to the target.)
Give me enough time, I can make "popcorn" a profane word. I can always find a way to make it offensive to
someone, because there will always be someone to be offended. Hell, I managed to make a three-letter shorthand—"het"—into an offensive word even though nobody has ever demonstrated to me that calling a homosexual a heterosexual is fighting words. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a fistfight break out because someone wanted to rebuke the pejorative that they are heterosexual?
I just can't wait for the part where you start going after women who tell their lovers, in the heat of passion, "Fuck me."
____________________
Notes:
Scully, Mike. "Two Dozen & One Greyhouds". The Simpsons, #2F18. FOX Broadcasting Corp., New York. April 9, 1995.