Please note; that this article, like a good number of our posts, contains sensitive language.
It must have all began with the dawn of time itself. I imagine that when Adam realised he had bit into the proverbial apple he yelled ‘goddammit!’ for the first time. And so the centuries of dirty-talking-potty mouthing began.
What is a ‘swear word’ anyway?
The Oxford Dictionary explains swear words as: an offensive word, used especially as an expression of anger. Still, swear words can be used as other types of expressions as well, such as surprise, agreement, contradiction, or joy. The Merriam-Webster describes it as a profane or obscene oath or word. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as a socially taboo word or phrase of a profane, obscene or insulting
character.
But one must be reminded that there is a dominating societal power and control structure attached to cursing, cussing or swearing. A woman who uses ‘foul’ or as I’d rather refer, ‘expressive language‘ is deemed both inappropriate and unattractive based on society’s ridiculously biased moral codes.
And yet, men appear to have dramatically cut their use of the word fuck since the 1990s, while women have increased it significantly. So significantly that according to The Times in a study administered over two decades by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), in conjunction with Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press reports that after recording 36 volunteers for up to three hours of their daily lives; the survey found that women were swearing more than men. That’s not all; according to the data, women’s use of the f-word has “increased by more than 500 percent over the past two decades,” while men’s use of the word has cut in half. The findings show that women use the word fuck 546 times per million words while men use it 540 times! This has been the first time changes in speech have been studied over a period of 20 years.
Thank goodness for science!
Tony McEnery, a professor at Economic and Social Research Council, told online platform Refinery29 that…
“As equality drives on, the idea that there is male and female language, that there are things which men and women should or should not say, is going to be eroded. Gentlemanly behaviour and ladylike language is becoming something of the past.”
It is true, in our time women are more likely to vocalize their discomforts, opinions, thoughts and desires sometimes explicitly. Sadly, this freedom is not free from mansplainers, and moral code wielding arses who still believe a woman is, just as they foolishly believe a child, is meant to be seen and not heard.
Well, just as a piece on BBC Culture so correctly highlighted, “strong language at the very least, it aims to upset power structures that may seem a bit too arbitrary”, and yes we are here for this!! We’re glad swearing is losing its masculine image and becoming more gender neutral.
Even as this article was researched, all the main images featured women, (predominantly white) as yelling or angry as if swear words or women who use these as forms of expression are both angry and irrational individuals. Perhaps as these liberal mindsets grow we can only hope that the perception of expressive women will shift from judged to accepted.
If not, I guess we’ll just have to tell them quite expletively to FUCK off!
