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No, really. Fuck the "F-word". Not the word "fuck" but the phrase "F-Word". While we're at it, fuck the "n-word", the "c-word" and all the rest of this cowardly alphabetic avoidance.

Fuck

Nigger

Cunt

<Looks around> Holy shit, nothing burned down, exploded, or was degraded.

But how can that be? How can I say FuckNiggerCunt, and not have anything bad happen?

Because folks, words have little inherent meaning out of context. For example, if I just walk up to a random person on the street and say, at the top of my lungs in an aggressive tone of voice with aggressive body language the following phrase:

You are SO getting fucked in the ass tonight!

Yet if I walk up to someone from the crowd I hang out with at Macworld and say it, the reaction will be to return the favor, laugh, or turn around while yelling "SWEET!". Same phrase, totally different reaction. Why?

Context

Words have little meaning outside of context. The things you say to lifelong friends in a bar would get you in some deep shit in a board meeting. I have friends who say what would appear to be the most horrid, foul things to me on a regular basis. But they have the right context for it. Someone else saying it? They may get a rather hostile, or at least annoyed reaction.

But now we have such a fear over certain words that context no longer matters. We now fear some words so much that we DARE NOT EVEN SAY THEM TO TELL PEOPLE THEY CAN'T SAY THEM...You can't say that...it's the N-WORD?

or

Oh my GOD, he used the F-Word

Da fuck? Have we all become so consumed and ruled by fear of...whatever the fuck these <letter>-word prats are worried about that we can't even say the word? Holy shit, we're all like characters out of Harry Potter running around saying "you-know-who" instead of "Voldemort", only with less reason and we look twice as stupid. You can't say the word people aren't supposed to say! It's recursive stupidity!

Actually, it's worse than that. We're so fearful of saying even the remotely wrong thing to anyone anywhere that we end up in thought processes like this post from Violent Acres. Holy crap, it's not just the obvious offensive shit like calling someone a nigger/spic/kike/wop/greaser/wetback/gook/frog/mick/whatever. Now you're a racist if you use black instead of african-american? Well that's fucking stupid now isn't it. The fact you say "Bill's black" instead of "Bill's African-American" doesn't make you a racist, and it's stupid to say it does. Even if the person saying so is black. First of all, unless you were born in Africa, and are now a citizen, you ain't African-anything. You may be of African descent, just as I'm of Irish/Luxemboug descent, but if you were born here, you're not African any more than I'm Irish. Get over yourself. You know who the first African-American I knew is? Jed. Jed's about as white as he can be. Fishbellies say "Damn son, get some color". Jed has a British accent due to his parents being from England. But Jed was born in South Africa, and now he's a U.S. Citizen. (I think. It's been a decade or so, but I think Jed is a citizen.) Jed, skinny, fish-belly white, british accent Jed is an African-American. Now, you want to call yourself anything you want, hey, that's your right. But someone not reading your mind and calling you something else with no offense or ill intent? Not racist. Just someone who made a mistake.

(Aside: You know what pisses me off? All the rest of the world has cool-assed racist terms, and all us fucking white goyim get is "honky". Shit, where's my cool-assed racist term that only me and my white goyim get to use. Hell, even worse, it's just the guys. At least the Christian sisterhood has shiksa. Damn, being a white man is lame. I WANT MY COOL RACIST TERM!!!!)

I guess perfection is now the requirement. Imperfect = Racist in our brave new world. Whatever.

Oh, and to all the lamewads who still cling to this asinine idea that somehow, not using profanity makes you a better/more intelligent/nicer person, like the commentary going on in this post of Le Scoble? Sorry, wrong answer, you are the dumbest link, good-bye. Get a fucking grip people. Profanity, or lack thereof doesn't make you good, bad, or indifferent. The only thing that using profanity means is that you use profanity. Period. These inane mental defectives whose hypocritical lack of moral direction lead them to practice this idiotic pop-psycology based on the presences of invective make me want to vomit.

Oh look, no profanity at all. That's obviously nicer than "These more-holy-than-thou fucktards who let their egos delude them into thinking they're the Sigmund-Fucking-Freud of cussing make me want to fucking puke". Yeah. The version without profanity just reeks of love and brotherhood. Yee-haa, I can hear "Kumbaya" in the background everytime I read that sentence. Oh wait, I can't, because it's just as mean as the version with all the profanity. Whaddya know, another pretentious blimp of an idea shot down in flames again. Hindenburg redux.

Look, if you don't want to say "fuck" or "nigger" or "cunt", great. More power to you. If nothing else, most people can't cuss worth a damn anyway, so it may reduce the number of amateurs cocking things up in profanity-land. But if you really think that saying "You're just a N-WORD" is even SLIGHTLY less offensive than "You're just a Nigger", well, you're just a moron. What, saying "Yo' momma's a c-word" is magically better than "Yo momma's a cunt"? What planet DO you live on if you think that? Besides, it's just going to get confusing. Pretty soon, we'll have to specific whether by "f-word" we mean "fuck" or "faggot". "That's the f-word!" "Which one?" "I can't say it!!" "Well, you're just a BIG fuckin' help there Bill. Can you pantomime it? NOT ON ME for christ's sake."

You want to not use certain words, then don't fucking use them. Ever. Don't dance around them, don't <firstletter>-word them, don't *ster*** them. If you pull that shit, then not only are you a coward and a hypocrite, but you're also a failure, because you're still using the words! Not only haven't you had a net positive effect, but you can't even stop using the word! Yet, somehow, I'm the mental defective for using profanity? At least I can successfully not use a word when I choose to.

Carlin is right. This..."flaccidization" of the language has nothing to do with making the world a better place, and everything to do with some bullshit attempt at behavior control. The people pushing this really think that if we use "n-word", (or even worse, "niggA". Don't even get me started on that stupidity) instead of "nigger" or "f-word" instead of "fuck", that somehow, society will become better.

Bullshit. People being the contrary asses they are, it probably makes them want to say them more. Trust me, without this n-word bullshit, cinema genius like "Boss Nigger" would lose a metric shit-ton of giggle points.

Just because some racist fuck doesn't call Jesse Jackson an uppity nigger doesn't mean he's not still a racist fuck. He's just better at hiding it. I don't know about you, but hiding racism is not the same as ending racism, at least not in my world. You can't change thought or behavior with bullshit like the n-word. You know what ends racism? People stop being racist. You know what ends sexism? People stop being sexist.

But I suppose doing that's too hard, so we're all fixin' to settle for the appearance of progress instead of accomplishing progress. As long as we all look like we're all getting along and respect each other, that's just as good right? Tell you what, go ask James Byrd how well that shit's working out. Lemme know what he says. Somehow, I doubt he or his family will agree.

Fuck the "F-word".

Technorati Tags: Language, Profanity, TEH STOOPUD

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