<p>okay, why, as a culture, are we so weird about the S word, the F word, and other “words” or expletives, while ignoring hate, ignorance, lack of educational opportunities</p>
<p>I don’t understand why the S word has more “power” than poop, or the F word has more power than screw</p>
<p>We are fighting battles in court of those words right now, as if those words are destroying America</p>
<p>Is saying S worse than Cr…</p>
<p>Yes, in certain company, we should not use vulgarities, but bugger to some is vulgar, noise snot, </p>
<p>We can say “hooking up” as if that somehow is less crude</p>
<p>If you want to talk about vulgarities, the world is full of mean, horrid people doing awful things, why this fixation on some four letter words?</p>
<p>We need to grow up as a culture and see beyond the few vulgar trees to the real vulgarities in our society</p>
<p>We are programmed to flinch at some words. So it is not the word itself, but the connotation. If we have been trained to hear “f- you” as an insult, then we will (as opposed, I guess, to an offer to make love?). My kids flinch at “stupid” because it was a forbidden word in our house, and always got a reaction from the 'rents. They didn’t use to flinch so much at vulgarities, because they never heard them. They would come home and say, “Mom, what does **** mean?” As long as I reacted intelligently and calmly (rather than, Where did you hear that? DON’T SAY THAT!), the word did not become a flinch word.</p>
<p>For your examples to get the same reaction, they would have to make the listener feel insulted or degraded somehow. The word has to mean something negative to me personally. (In fact, I respond uncomfortably to most words dealing with elimination.)</p>
<p>Maybe that’s a more literal explanation than you were looking for.</p>
<p>I get that we flinch, I flinch, but right now, the administration wants to sue a network because some people said those words!!!</p>
<p>Why are those words illegal? Still?</p>
<p>For instance, if someone says, he was full of S…on tv, how is that worse than he was a big fat ugly sticky gross putrid liar?</p>
<p>Why is one legal and the other not? Why are WORDS fine-able? Why, if someone uses the F word, they can be fined 100000 dollars but if they LIE, eh, nothing</p>
<p>I think because they are considered “obscene.” Also, lying can be actionable if it constitutes fraud, perjury or defamation.</p>
<p>I did always think it was funny that the phrase “f-you” does not seem to apply in the context it is used. Isn’t it usually directed towards the person you would least likely want to engage in sexual relations with? lol</p>
<p>Funny story. When my son was in 2nd grade, a substitute teacher observed my son giving another kid the finger. She told him it was a very inappropriate gesture and took him to the principal’s office. The principal told him it was a very inappropriate gesture and called my husband at home. When my son got home, my husband told him it was a very inappropriate gesture. When I got home from work and they were telling me this story, my son turned to me and said, “But mommy, what does it MEAN?” </p>
<p>I knew that if I told him what it meant, he STILL wouldn’t know what it meant, so I told him that it meant “I hate you.”</p>
Maybe you answered your own question. I think what’s good for ‘certain company’ tends to apply to all company. I don’t use those 7 words at all and wish no one else would either. They’ve become so commonplace that some younger people don’t ever consider ‘company’ as part of the equation as to whether to use the fowl language or not. They’re perfectly happy to use that language around kids, grandmothers, etc. They don’t even understand that they’re doing anything wrong. The movie industry doesn’t help the situation with their gratuitous level of usage of the words. If those words are allowed to be on broadcast TV they’d be used gratuitously as well and there’ll be no haven from them at all.</p>
<p>So, I’m on a campaign to influence others in this regard. I’ve noticed that simply by not using the fowl language others around me, especially those who know me, use it less as well and sometimes don’t use it at all. People will tend to gear their language to the context and if the other person isn’t using the fowl language they don’t use it as much either. My Ds have noticed the same thing and have even had peers ask the incredulously why they don’t use the language. Those peers ended up modifying their language as well so as not to use the 7 words (and more) around them.</p>
<p>I invite others to the challenge of expanding their vocabulary to not substitute expletives for all parts of speech.</p>
<p>Good question. It makes no sense to me. I do think that people are afraid of anger. People are afraid of other people who they feel are free enough from societal restraint that they could use such language. Irrational, yes, but maybe people think that if someone is angry enough to use the F word, and feels free enough to do so in public, they cannot be controlled?
So, could it be about control? Fear of those without the ingrained “manners.” Just wondering, as I really have no idea.</p>
<p>that is my point, and I mean hypcracy as a society- all prim and proper when it comes to a few words, but call someone a variety of other mean words and no government fine there </p>
<p>and is saying the F word in anger soooo much worse than saying friggin in anger?</p>
<p>I say the F word in anger driving, I say Frig while driving, what is the real difference, that as a society we gauge a person’s self control by whether they say this word or that word</p>
<p>and it doesn’t have much to dwith refinement either, “refined” people can say the most cutting things, most hurtful, behind different words</p>
<p>Check out the FCC website. The FCC has decency standards that ban obscenity and profanity. The FCC has defined profanity as including language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance. Like indecency, profane speech is prohibited on broadcast radio and television between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.</p>
<p>I haven’t done the research, but I assume THOSE words have been determined to be profane in previous cases. It seems possible that THOSE words could become so commonplace that they will no longer be determined “grossly offensive” or profane, and therefore no longer banned.</p>
<p>this is why it matters, it is the government going after words</p>
<p>but why those words- why are THEY profane…why is S so much worse than excrement, bowel movement…they all refer to the same thing, but somehow one of those words can cost millions of dollars?</p>
<p>it is just so odd, and frankly scary when the goverment decides on WORDS that they deem profane</p>
<p>I know it is standard, but then they should ban poop, and doodoo, and sexual intercourse, and “doing it” and “hooking up” if they indeed want to “protect the children”</p>
<p>ctm - It’s not the words themselves that the administration has a problem with (after all, Cheney uses them, and I’ll bet Bush does, too). </p>
<p>It’s about the administration’s little war on Hollywood. And it’s women who used these words. Liberal women…the most dangerous population, and they need to be silenced.</p>
<p>Let’s make a federal case here to play to the religious right, so they know we are protecting their children from the Hollywood menaces.</p>
<p>It’s all for show. Nothing new here.</p>
<p>My bet is that Faux News is in on it. They’ll settle.</p>
<p>Granted, they’re ‘just words’ but words can be powerful. Words are used to convey intelligence and emotion. Look at us on CC - everything we convey is by means of the words we use. </p>
<p>Those 7 have traditionally been considered offensive generally because of the emotive force they elicit with their explicit reference to bodily functions, etc. Most people have traditionally found these words offensive which is one of the reasons people use the words in the first place - to cause an offensive reaction. </p>
<p>Today some are using those words as a substitute for parts of speech where in one sentence one of the words, generally the one considered most offensive to use in public, is used as the noun, the verb, the adjective, and every other part of speech. I think people need to expand their vocabulary and be considerate of others around them and choose their words more appropriately.</p>