Swearing: it’s not big and it’s not clever—FUCKING YAWN.
Quick question: who's swearing to look big and clever? No actual adults, surely.
Welcome to this month’s episode of I’m A Vocal Puritanical Twat Who’s Appalled By Swearing.
Disclaimer: you’re permitted to like and dislike whatever you wish, please, feel free to get angry/irritated/disgusted at anything you choose.
From my tone, you’d be correct in thinking this is not my first rodeo writing about dirty words and it’s unlikely to be my last. Why? Coz people can’t get over swearing.
Swearing is not cool.
According to a smattering of LinkedIn’ers (a platform that attracts individuals who are decades behind the rest of the world—yes, I’m one of those people), swearing is not ok.
Here’s an actual comment I read: “Oh look, I’m swearing on LinkedIn, aren’t I cool.”
What a ridiculous human. Anyone who puts the word ‘cool’ and ‘LinkedIn’ in the same sentence struggles with satire (or has mastered it). You’d have to be some kind of special idiot to make such an unironic statement on LinkedIn—the social media outlet that proves just how uncool you are. As a lifelong swearer, I can confirm that I have never been cool. NEVER. And the proof of that is I listen to Frank Ifield and I watch Talking Pictures TV.
LinkedIn is the place that time and irony forgot.
The debate about swearing along with tattoos in the workplace and biscuit choice makes up 45% of the published dross (and yes, that is a very specific number considering I don’t have any stats). The false position that cursing demonstrates a limited vocabulary still makes the rounds too. As does the idea that you only use rude words to appear to be something you’re not. Some self-righteous arseholes can’t fathom that a handful of folks swear as part of their everyday lives.
I’m proud that my mouth is a public toilet, spewing out effortless effluents.
It spills over with impeccable timing. It spurts forth onto digital paper. Obscenity is part of my creative and day-to-day vernacular.
Who would have thought that people could be their natural selves in life and in business? And I say business because I am no different when I work. I wrote an eBook about SEO content writing (thrilling). I included a little off-colour language and that’s often the focus for some. It’s as if I wrote the entire thing using ‘fucks’, ‘cunts’ and ‘shits’. Further evidence that we can’t let go of our bizarre, outdated and repressed views on profanity.
I hate snobs.
Listen, I have snobby moments, I can snoot with the best of them but I hate that part of myself. And yes, we all make assumptions and we make them about almost everything. We make snap judgements based on very little. So when you express a ‘fuck’, a snob somewhere is making a judgement about your moral character. They assume the position of knowing better.
Ok, some folks just don’t like swearing, for whatever varied, mundane, simple, inexplicable reason. Others glow with rage at the profane—again, ok, let them feel affronted but they do not, I repeat DO NOT have the monopoly on decency.
Swearing is a class issue.
If you enjoy naughty words, you might be described as having no class but here, I’m referring to social hierarchy. Culturally, ‘vulgar’ language has been the converse of the working classes. Rough, unrefined lingo is the slang of sailors, builders and tradespeople. And those people are seen, at large, as being coarse. Some might go further and say their tongues keep them in the gutter. How can we ever hope to aspire and drag ourselves out of our filth if we continue to talk like a sweary Eliza Doolittle?
Growing up working class, I ironically didn’t hear all that much swearing.
But when Mum lost her rag (which she nearly always did because she had to put up with a lot of shit) she would explode in a fit of expletives.
There are plenty of working-class folks that do not swear—we are, of course, individuals. My grandparents, for example, saw themselves as respectable so swearing was not something I heard from them. And working-class people who wish to make it in a world, not theirs by birth, would probably feel it prudent to leave all that loutish lingo behind.
Class never goes out of style in Britain.
And many will do as much as they can to avoid being seen as having low status. I mean, sometimes it’s cool to be common—Jarvis Cocker sang as much, albeit sarcastically about those using it as a sort of fancy dress costume.
NEWSFLASH: swearing is good for you.
Swearing can increase your pain tolerance. So that might be why, when you hit your thumb with a hammer, you shout “FUCKING SHITTING HELL!”. There’s also something somewhere (I can’t be arsed to look, might have been The Guardian) that says swearers are more honest people and make better friends.
Like most things, lots of what we think stems from our upbringing. When we get older, we decide if we still align with the things we were taught. We also have to contend with the views society imposes on us. But despite all that, we need to grow the fuck up when it comes to foul language.
I love swearing. I'm 54, and when I was a teenager then a uni student, I wanted nothing more than to expand my swearability. Fuck the haters. See, I could have said something else like, don't listen to the haters, but that's just bullshit. Hemingway taught me to be sparse with words. There's nothing better than a good Fuck. That said, it appears that the kids have taken the last of the really bad words away from us (the "c" word - I won't write it here because I know many are tetchy about it) and are trying to rehabilitate it. Why? Leave me "c*&t" alone FFS!