Today… I shall be swearing on this blog… You have been warned… Do not continue reading if you are offended by words labelled by some as swear words… Let me tell you why i am going to swear here today…
There seems to be some sort of uprising in England; a re-emergence of the old members of the Mary Whitehouse fan club… They have dusted off their “no foul language” sticker albums, donned their “I love Mary” t-shirts once again and set about this country trying to force their dogma and righteousness down the throats of the rest of us.
These Mary Whitehouse wannabes seem to have the same manner as Barbara Woodhouse… The famous UK dog trainer… They seem to be unable to communicate without giving orders… Instead of offering up a strict tonality to deliver the instruction “SIT!” They instead use the same tonality to order the rest of us to stop swearing… Not only does it make me want to swear, but surely the tonality, underlying intention and delivery are just as harmful.
The Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper here in the UK is championing this cause. Which seems bizarre on so many levels, they are running a campaign to clean up language in the media in the UK… Oh dear… They are running the risk of turning into the Daily mail…
So first of all we had this recent media scandal involving Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross… hardly anyone complained about it when it went live, yet when the rest of the media honed in on it, suddenly, hundreds and thousands of people decided that they had nothing better to do than to consume their energy protesting about how offensive it all was… They must have tuned in afterwards to check it out in order that they could complain about it! Hahaha.
Then this week, we had a Panorama documentary charting public opinion — based on feedback from focus groups! — about whether or not we need to stop ‘bad language’ in the media.
Sheeeeez… What century are we living in? Hasn’t the Victoria era passed us by?
You see, I beleive, it is the association that the individual has to any given word that is the problem… You are the listener of the word, not the user! I have used a story many times before that I first heard Michael Breen say when someone complained about him swearing at an NLP training, he replied “what about the word ‘duck’ then? Is ‘duck’ 75% as bad as the other word I just used?”
Hahahaha… I love that.
You know what? Many of these words are Anglo-Saxon words and part of our history… The Sex Pistols were taken to court and prosecuted in the late 70s because of the title of their seminal album “Never Mind The Bollocks” — which is a piece of musical history and a truly rip-roaring, poignant, exciting and enthralling album which very few acts have ever managed to replicate since… It was quashed in court because the word was shown to have been around in history… I mean, it was also a real working class expression used by many at that time too!
How on earth can anyone attempt to deny me (or anyone else) the right to swear?
I use the odd swear word on my trainings… I have sworn my entire life… I am not limited in some way, it has just been part of who and how I am.
Answer me this, how can you ban language? How can you ban words? How are words offensive?
Why oh why should I tolerate someone else’s interpretation of the words I use?
I am the one using the word, so ask me how I am using it, don’t tell me!
What’s more, if you don’t like the way I’m using it, so what? It is my right.
It is freedom of expression, without that we are nothing but some kind of slave… This is not some totalitarian state, we are not an opressed mass, we did not democratically choose to live under a regime of word Nazis.
It is my language, I’ll say fuck if I want to.
🙂
As Voltaire was attributed as saying “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
That said, I totally agree with you that words are just words and the meaning is most often in the mind of the listener rather than the speaker. However, I have to add that I don’t like to hear children in the street using words that are generally accepted as particularly offensive.
I believe that in many cases (though obviously not in yours, Adam) the use of swear words is a substitution for those who lack sufficient vocabulary to be able to put their point across any other way, and as such are not meant to be offensive.
Don Robertson of http://www.ukhypnosis.com said this at facebook, where my blog gets posted too:
There are a whole lot of things more offensive in life than swearing. The kind of people who get their knickers in a twist about sex words are often people who are happy to turn a blind eye to racism, bigotry, sexism, and oppression. The Nazis didn’t like young people swearing. (Fuck the Nazis, incidentally.) The Daily Mail are now on a campaign against Ross and Brand but they were happy to support Hitler’s blackshirts before the war broke out. The message is clear: persecute minorities, but keep it clean.
There’s a bit in Apocalypse Now where they muse about the fact that they’ve been reprimanded for painting “fuck” on the side of bombs. So it’s okay to blow up villagers, but you have to use clean language doing it. Somewhere along the line, our moral priorities went completely haywire.
Even more bonkers: some of these words are only “offensive” because of religious connotations: Jesus Christ! Bloody Hell! For God’s sake, how offensive is mythology, by Zeus’??
I saw a recent Hitler film recently; can’t remember the title. In it, the pre-politician Adolf was talking about his views on Jews, Gypsies and others, as well as possible solutions to some of Germany’s problems. Someone objected and in doing so used either “shit” or “bastard.”
Hitler than objected to their foul language. That guy could be such a Nazi sometimes!
Herein lies the problem. Your entire article is written to cater to you without considering the sensibilities of others. You take more offense to the people who are telling you not to swear than they do from your swear words. Everything you’ve written here is wholly selfishness looking for others to agree with it. You are pushing your own ideals on others just because of your own rebellion.
Do you have a right to swear? Yes. Should you? In consideration to others, maybe not. Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean you should do it.
Many people have grown up around swearing and still simply choose not to because they don’t want to offend. Perhaps that’s the point of this article though. merely to offend.
(BTW, I’m not offended)
Hello Noel (see what I did there?)
And herein lies yet another problem… I do not swear just because I have the right to do so. I have not said that at all. I believe in congruence and being who you are.
Contrary to what you say about people objecting…. If you flick through the pages of recent months editions of the Daily Express and Daily Mail, you’ll see national campaigns of people who really do object to swearing – who are calling for it to be outlawed in some way and certainly not form part of any public media… It is that stance that provoked me to write in the slightest.
And yes, I like a fevered discussion… I like to debate in a heated manner, I like to provoke, I like to state my opinion… That is being alive… My job is never, ever, ever to please everyone and anyone.
Would you prefer me to discuss my own topics of interest and offer up some bland sitting on the fence stance, which does nothing more than simply reiterate points?
If so, there are other blogs far better equipped to serve your needs.
My blog, on my website, is written by me. It is utterly self-centered, I am not writing to attempt to be anything or anyone else. It serves as a means of people knowing and understanding who and how I am and also forms part of my marketing methodology.
Thank you for your contribution Noel, and for keeping me on my toes this morning.
Best wishes to you, Adam.
Fuck yeah!