Aweh fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 444 of Re-Modified Lock Down Currently Level 2.
Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 71 days
Swearing is an appropriate topic for Ruminant Pink Friday ™. I grew up in a household where there was a high tolerance level for swearing. My father taught me to perform maintenance on cars as a teenager. There were always cars in need of maintenance in our household.
It is always the case that there are nuts which are barely accessible that need to be loosened. It is then extremely difficult to get the spanner onto the nut which has not been loosened for years and is now partially rusted so significant force is required to loosen it. Then the spanner slips off the nut and your hand scrapes against a bolt taking all the skin off your knuckles.
What a person says next is an important measure of their character. The more extreme, profane, and colourful their language, preferably involving mothers and motherhood the better their character. Someone who can stub their toe badly and just say “Ow” has serious repression issues and cannot be trusted. They are not going to be honest in their communication. Not to mention boring.
There is a fallacy that swearing reflects poor education, low intelligence, and a poor vocabulary. Well-educated people with plenty of words at their disposal, a 2015 study found, were better at coming up with swear words than those who were less verbally fluent. In addition profanity is positively correlated with honesty and integrity. https://www.academia.edu/29725191/Frankly_we_do_give_a_damn_The_relationship_between_profanity_and_honesty
Someone who says, “gosh we are having load shedding again” is not to be trusted. When my boys were small, I was regularly reprimanded by Nerine for swearing in front of the boys. If I never used naughty words, then they would never learn these words and they would become delightfully polite. Unfortunately, I slipped up a few times and once the cat was out of the bag the boys started swearing. What followed was an entirely futile decade long battle to return our boys to a state of perfection and grace. Worse than that Nerine started swearing as well and her most eloquent and creative swearing has to do with me. Apparently, I am not perfect. I have particularly good reason to believe that this has enabled her to vent her frustrations and has saved me from being thrown out.
On the positive side we now had access to the better movies and books and could ignore the warnings about strong language. The world of weak language is a dreadfully dull and boring place. We now allow innuendo, strong language and bawdy jokes, and limericks. Apparently, the royal family can even indulge in an off-colour limerick or two. Although the queen was not amused many others were. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExUN7t5mtGM.
Apart from not swearing in front of children men are not supposed to swear in front of women and women themselves are not supposed to swear. It seems many do not have a problem with swearing or even with politicians swearing; they have a problem with women—particularly women in power—making use of strong language. Feminist writer Mona Eltahawy summed it up succinctly when she wrote that, as a Muslim woman, she swears specifically because she “isn’t supposed to.” She does it to “make the patriarchy uncomfortable.”
She relates this anecdote. “Once while standing in line at Denver airport security, a white man — another passenger waiting to go through — demanded I “prove” I was a U.S. citizen. “F**k you!” was my immediate response. Another white man immediately and predictably chimed in: “Language! Language!” But what is really more offensive here, the first man’s xenophobic prejudice or my language?” I have never met Mona Eltahawy but I like her already.
Why are the worst words the ones that somehow insult or refer to women? Why is one not supposed to use profanity in mixed company? We can be profane and honest when we are with our own gender but then we need to be polite when we are together.
Accordingly, for twenty years I have been organising an extremely exclusive, invitation only, male retreat called the Wilderberg club which is affiliated with the Bilderberg club which runs the world. I have just returned refreshed and renewed from this year’s meeting after last year’s meeting was cancelled due to Covid 19. This involves walking in the bush and then sitting around the campfire to solve the worlds problems. There is also a lot of profanity and strong language to nourish the soul. There was binge swearing at everything. Now that I am back in mixed company my language needs to be weaker until next year.
Thank you for all the helpful suggestions and comments. Please keep them up.
Regards
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 