The good in bad words

When Will Smith starting rapping - he was twelve at the time - he used quite a bit of curse words. His grandmother found some of his lyrics and she did not like what she saw. She wrote him a note that said: ‘truly intelligent people do not have to use words like these to express themselves. Please show the world that you are as smart as we think you are.’ Either that means that I am not intelligent, or that I disagree. I dare say the latter but with the add-on that I have a love-hate relationship with curse words.

It’s clear from the above that I use profanities in my language. The ‘hate’ part of the relationship has to do with the fact that I sometimes find myself swearing about something futile. When I drop something on the floor for instance, I can get angry with myself, and I swear. Or I call people nasty names when they are driving too slowly. Or I look at the scales in the morning and I curse. You know, relatively unimportant stuff.

So, is it understandable that most people disapprove of using profanities? Yes. Let’s face it: it is pretty ghastly to swear and curse wherever you go. It is often uncalled for, it doesn’t set a great example for kids, it puts you in a ‘white trash trailer park' category and yes, it can make you look stupid.

But curse words can also serve a purpose and that’s where my love for them comes in.

First of all, swearing helps to sooth pain. This is not a figment of my imagination. Quite a bit of research has been done in this area and as it turns out, swearing diminishes pain. Research results differ on the exact amount, but our pain acceptance level is up to 50% higher if we swear while experiencing pain.

I am prone to accidents so you can see where this is headed. I am always falling over or bumping into things and no matter how much my husband pleads with me to be more careful, I cannot help it. Most of the time it is he who notices my bruises in the first place.

And I have my profanity to thank for that. Swearing upon impact mitigates most pain and I immediately forget that I bumped into something. So, when my husband then discovers a cut or a bruise, I have no idea how I got it. It’s F…ing brilliant.

But there is more.

Profanity also helps in the department of sarcasm and irony. Just compare these two sentences. 'I am his mom’ and ‘I am his f…ing mom’. The first sentence simply indicates that I have borne a son.

However, ’I am his f…ing mom’ means something entirely different. It could mean that I am seriously pissed off about how my boy is being treated and that I do not intend to let, whoever is doing that, get away with it. Or it indicates that he is famous, and I want to use his fame for my personal benefit. In any case, it means so much more than without the F word.

Which leads me straight to the next point. Swearing is like a huge exclamation mark. If you want to grab people’s attention to raise an issue, use a curse word.

Take the demonstrations that are currently taking place in the USA against the expected reversal of 1973 law that made abortion legal in America. Simply saying: let women be the boss of their own body just doesn’t cut it for me. I cannot help but feel that a sign with something like ‘My uterus, my f…ing decision’ is a lot more impactful. Something like ‘I refuse to carry the child of my f…ing rapist’ would be even more shocking. And it is thanks to the shocking that we might get through to those that need to hear us.

So, although a part of me detests profanities and the fact that curse words sometimes roll off my tongue rather easily, I also love swearing and the function of it in certain situations. Therefore, completely rejecting swear words would actually be a pauperisation of our language.

If you, after this plea for more tolerance for profanities, still do not appreciate my point of view, maybe you can take comfort in the fact that I often swear in my mother tongue, so most people won’t have a G…en clue what I am saying anyway.