I worked with this woman at WaMu who swore like a character in a Kevin Smith movie. Fuck this, cunt that, shitty shitty bang bang. Anna was all about expressing her feelings in a clear, direct manner. There was plenty to be frustrated, upset, and angry about where we worked. So-called "vulgar" language helped air those feelings in a nonviolent manner. I felt comfortable swearing because I knew she wouldn't mind. At the time, I was a Loan Coordinator for the Home Equity Lending division of Washington Mutual. Which means I was a middleman between the Loan Originator (Mortgage Salesman) and the Underwriter (Loan Decision Maker). And being the middleman, the blame was directed my way nine times out of ten.
One time I was working weekend overtime to help wipe out the overflow of volume in our queue. I got a loan where the Originator fudged the numbers on the application so badly I had to collect the borrowers' corporate tax returns from the past two years and figure out how much they were actually making. It took me six hours to organize and calculate everything in order to process the loan, killing my production on a day meant to catch up. Toward the end of this overtime shift, the Originator (also working on the weekend) called me and demanded to know why I hadn't gotten this loan approved yet. I got defensive and raised my voice, "explaining" how badly they had messed up, which caused the delay in decisioning the loan. (This incident would later result in my involuntary enrollment in Customer Service Sensitivity Training.) After I hung up, I buried my face in my hands, and Anna appeared over the wall of my cubicle. I looked up, and in a defeated tone, I said, "Goddammit."
She immediately winced, as if I slammed a baby's head against my desk. She waved her hands in front of her face and said, "Please don't say that. I just can't handle those words." I had just spent six hours fixing someone else's mistake and then got yelled at by the perpetrator of that mistake because it was taking so long to remedy the problem. Now I get chastised by the foul-mouth queen for expressing my displeasure? I wanted to tell Anna she was being ridiculous. I wanted to use every curse word in the book to do it, too. Then I wanted to make up new swears that were so vile, she'd beg me to use Goddammit exclusively in the future. Instead I shook my head, packed up, and left for what remained of the weekend.
I know that words have destructive power. And in the case of Goddammit, I understand the religious implications and how people of faith might cringe when I take the Lord's name in vain. But they are just words. Words made up by humans. (Sorry, Believers. But if you try to sell me on the idea that God invented language, I'm going play the skeptical card.) What if I don't believe in God and I take his name in vain? If you hear me say it, how does it effect you? I don't ever remember seeing the Commandment, Thou shalt not hear a curse word. Nor can I locate the Bible verse about hearing a curse word casts you into the depths of Hell. My point is this: people need to lighten up when it comes to cursing. When I went to Toronto on a church Serve Project, the Canadians (kids and adults) used the word shit almost as often as they used definite articles. When someone used the word crap, the Canadians went crazy. They consider crap a swear, but not shit. On the BBC, they say fuck and cunt without batting an eye. Here, that would cost a network $500K. I'm not saying we should teach swears or encourage their use. But people do use this language, and sometimes it's included in art in order to mimic reality.
Case in point: some overprotective parents in Antioch, IL tried to get Sherman Alexie's award winning book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, banned at the high school due to its use of foul language. I don't know if this in an attempt to shelter their kids, or what, but have these parents never been to a public high school? Do they not know how excessively kids swear in these places? This book isn't teaching kids anything new in terms of swearing. I can guarantee it. One woman stated that she's not trying to censor the book; however, she blacked out parts of her son's copy because she didn't want him reading it. Isn't that censorship?
I really think you should read the article (linked in the previous paragraph). The chairman of the English Department, John Whitehurst, makes a much better (and more concise) argument. For instance, that same woman makes a logical fallacy when she says "if [profanity] is part of the curriculum, the students will believe the school condones [swearing]." To which Whitehurst replies, "That is like saying because Romeo and Juliet committed teen suicide, we condone teen suicide."
We apply additional meaning to certain words through tone and context, giving them power to hurt, anger, tear down, etc. When used appropriately, yes, a curse word can hurt. When used frivolously, it's puking up nonsense. But I think kids are smart enough to know the difference. I don't think that foul language is to blame from the dumbing down of our society. When people say I sound less educated when I swear, it sounds like an excuse for their own social hang-ups. Plus, I can string together several non-offensive words to make a statement much more offensive than a swear. What's more offensive: "Fuck you," or "Get on your knees, and I'll give you something to choke on"? None of the words in the second phrase are offensive when looked at individually; however, the phrase can be seen as offensive, demeaning, emasculating, among others. Are some words more powerful alone than when used in a sentence?
In light of President Obama's Tonight Show faux pas, the Special Olympics vowed to gain pledges and set a day of awareness for people to stop using the word retard. You can read about it here. The ad campaign they ran included a poster with a list of racially offensive words with the vowels removed, followed by the word retard and the caption, "Therein lies the problem." Their point is that since this word is just as hateful as the other ones, why isn't it as taboo to use it. In the same context, Hillary Duff stars in a commercial pertaining to the use of the word gay. In it two girls are trying on clothes and one comments on the other by calling the outfit gay. Duff says you shouldn't say gay when you mean bad.
In both of these campaigns, I believe the message is good. Think before you speak, chose your words carefully, don't apply one word to another word's meaning--I'm on board. However, I don't think any words should be banned. Ever. Especially words that have multiple meanings, like the two examples in the last paragraph. Banning words doesn't solve the problem of hate, nor does it address it directly. If we all stopped saying the word gay in the context expressed in Duff's commercial, would homophobia disappear? If we stopped using the word retard, would people stop making fun of special needs kids? I don't think so in either case. One reason: words aren't the source of the problem, they're just the labels, the identifiers. Another reason: there are other words used to identify mentally challenged and homosexual people that are offensive. Do we ban all of them?
I want to make sure all ten of you (if you've read this far) realize that I'm not saying we should teach children to swear or condone the use of hateful speech. But the out of sight, out of mind approach doesn't solve anything. It just sweeps it under the rug. There should be dialogue about the use of "foul" language. A dialogue used to identify the problems. Those campaigns mentioned above are a fantastic start; however, they fall apart in the practice (banning words). We shouldn't be afraid to let high schools read books that contain these offensive words. If those words are in there, maybe the writer intended to spark a certain emotion with their use.
I guess I wrote about this because I get fired up about language. It feels sometimes like it's used as a scapegoat, the way movies and video games are blamed for violence. My argument has been long-winded and likely could have been thought out better. There's probably some generalizations in here, I got on a rant, and for these things I apologize. But I'd like to know what other people think about banning books and words. (I think Bryan Johnson may have posed this question, or something like it, in the past. I'm not trying to steal your thunder Bryan.) My hope is to get a dialogue going. Please chime in.
6 comments:
I agree with you mostly. People take language much too seriously. It's not the words themselves that count, it's the emotion behind them.
However... sometimes the meaning of the word is so shrouded in violence and hate that it's hard not to say that a word has no power, and we don't need to draw a line. I'm thinking mostly of racial slurs. Characters in my stories use racial slurs. But I don't think I could say them comfortably in conversation. Maybe because the times I heard them used in the past have all been in conversations with racist people.
I don't know. It gets kind of confusing. Here's an example: I'm sure some women think it takes power away from men to call each other bitches and sluts and whores in everyday conversation. Other women think it opens up the door for men to talk about women in a degrading manner without consequence. Are they both right?
Are they still allowed to call flame slowing materials "flame retardant" or is that a no-no now?
And has the word queer, which traditionally meant strange, unusual, or odd, now completely synonymous with being homosexual?
My point is that words change meaning. If you ban one word, or discourage it's use, people come up with other words.
Throughout my life, until my father died when I was 17, I can count on one hand the number of times I heard him utter a profanity. One hand! And each time, I sat up straight as an old-fashioned grade school chair and paid attention.
Words have enormous power because words are what we use to make sense of the world, and to make the world make sense to other people. But, as with any kind of experience, we get accustomed to excessive profanity. This is what effect "too-muchness" has on us.
My daughter will happily throw around new words, "dork" and "weirdo" being recent examples. I ask her what these words mean. She doesn't know, or she makes something up. I tell her not to say these things about people because she doesn't know what they mean. But as soon as she does understand the proper context for even the mildest of profanity, she is free to express it.
Jorge: I am quite fond using the word "queer" in its original usage. People tend to pay more attention to such things.
I think it says a lot about how stupid and ass-backwards this country is and can be when, on a television or radio broadcast, the phrase "God dammit" is uttered, and the word "God" is bleeped out like a profanity while the word "dammit" is left alone and aired for everyone to hear. I'm sure that's what God wants, though.
I saw this thing on the Science Channel...or Discovery or some shit...and it was arguing that humans gained the power the speech by loosing the power of photographic memory.
Susan Patron wrote a children's book called The Higher Power of Lucky. In fact, it won something like the Newberry or the Caldecott last year. There were parents who didn't like the book, thought the book shouldn't be allowed in the school library. There wasn't violence in the book or swear words, but there was a word that threw these parents into a panic: Scrotum. From the interviews and articles I read about the subject (this was last year some time), it seems that the word "scrotum" was a problem because parents didn't know what to say when their kids asked them what a scrotum was. Apparently, the scrotum is a human body part we don't want to talk about.
When parents/citizens/governments want to ban books, we learn more about personal hang ups, about what embarrasses people, than we do about some moral sense of propriety. I mean, they'll try to pin it on morals and godliness, but it's more about a fear of dialogue. I guess it's easier to say to your kid, "You can't read that, it's bad," than it is to say, "Oh, a scrotum? Your father has one of those."
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