OddThinking

There is nothing magical about swear words. They only have impact because people let them have impact.

If you are offended – even slightly – by someone saying “bitch”, then “bitch” works as a swear word, and people who want to be offensive – or at least use a simple shortcut to add impact to their words – will use it as a swear word.

Over the past year or two, I have found myself noticing an increase in the use by adults of some swear words that I find offensive: for example, “gay”, “retard” (perhaps lightly disguised as “tard”), “spastic” (or equivalently “spaz”).

I half-expect to hear this sort of language from 12-year olds; too young to really understand what the words mean or the impact that they might have.

I am sure I used this language and worse when I was that age. My English-as-a-fourth-language grandmother told me she had never heard the word “poofter”, until she heard me say it when I was a child whilst playing with similarly-aged children. I am ashamed of my younger self.

However, I feel quite disappointed when I hear these words from adults – people who should have enough compassion to know better.

Then I realise that my reaction is exactly why they work as swear words. I am the part of the reason people choose to use these words, rather than the swear words that I feel more comfortable with – and hence have no effect.

I am being hypocritical. After all, there’s no real difference between using “retard” as an insult than using “cretin”, “idiot”, “imbecile” or “moron” – all swear words I can’t deny have been in my vocabulary as an adult, and swear words I don’t take particularly strong offence to.

I need to get over this offence. Maybe one day, I will get better at ignoring these new terms to help them fall into disuse. I might even start a movement of people who pretend to taking offence at words like ‘nice’ and ‘intelligent’ – that way, by the time I am walking slowly with a cane, impatient youths will yell at me “Get out of the way, you charming old genius!”

The real reason I wanted to write on the topic of swearing is to mention a story about swearing that has stuck with me for a few years.

I was reading a blog from an American soldier fighting in Iraq just before George W. declared “Mission Accomplished”. I wish I still had the link. His vivid descriptions of the conditions (both phsyical and mental) that they (both US and Iraqi) were in were horrific. The situations which they found themselves in, the violence they saw and inflicted, the decisions that they had to make, the inhumanity and unfairness they suffered were all unspeakable, but this blogger did his best to speak about it.

Of course, in describing this hellish situation, this soldier, quite literally, swore like a trooper!

I was bewildered to read one entry in his blog where he started apologising for his language. It seems he had received an email from (if I recall correctly) the father of one of his fellow soldiers. The email explained that his wife (i.e. another soldier’s mother) really wanted to read the blog to learn what was happening to her son, but the language precluded her from reading it. The father had to go through it first and expurgate the expletives to make it palatable for the mother.

I found this attitude incomprehensible. This mother was reading about some of the most disturbing concepts that I had read in ages, knowing her own son was in a similar situation, seeing similar horrors, sharing similar risks, and she was getting offended at the salty language? Wood and trees, lady! Wood and trees!

When I am feeling a little more generous, my heart goes out to this poor woman, who was watching helplessly as her pride-and-joy was being pushed into harm’s way without her being able to do anything about it. I imagine if I was under such stress, I might not sound entirely rational either. I hope her son has got home safely, and hasn’t suffered too much.

Nonetheless, I think we need to keep an eye on our reactions to swear words, and keep our responses in proportion to the damage that is being done by them.