CURSING – Excuse Me – Your Bias is Showing

A Lady is not to swear! Well people, I am NOT a trust fund baby, so I ain’t no lady. Now, I have been told by too many men AND women that I swear too much. Who made you the language police? What etiquette rule do you seek to suppress me with? What? You do not think you are trying to suppress me? Have I affronted you by even asking that question? Why do you now feel defensive for my inquiry as to why you seek to possibly influence my right to speak? As a lawyer, if you recall, the First Amendment protects a great deal speech - both flowery and course.

So, why has my wording made you feel uncomfortable to the extent you want to punish me? Judge me? Influence my behavior to conform to some level of social obedience? What is it about cuss words that triggers this reaction in you? You realize I can curse you out in German and French, and unless you learned those languages at the ages of 5-7, you would not react the same way? Scientific studies have been performed demonstrating these results. In fact, I could even use British curse words, which offers a far greater lexicon, in cursing an American without triggering the same emotional response in the American.  So why are there gender related implicit biases in cursing?

So, why do we curse? I know I curse when I am physical pain or am scared. I have cursed a blue streak while driving 20 miles after a horse accident to the hospital with a shattered wrist – especially with every road bump along the way. I have cursed and screamed while giving birth to a 10 lb baby given a failed epidural. The doctors and nurses didn’t flinch. Actually, some of the best cussing I have learned are from surgeons – female ones at that. 

Swearing actually can help your brain deal with pain and even numb the pain. And, the cruder the word, possibly the greater psychological relief. Ask yourself how you feel after saying “sugar” versus really letting loose. And guess what? Swearing can also assist you with social pain. The pain of being excluded or feeling excluded by a group of people or bullied by a group of girls or even women. The pain or fear of speaking to 1000+ people – yep, cursing before you get on the stage to give a speech is a great way to let off steam. 

Moving on to swearing in the workplace. Some studies out of Australia and New Zealand especially have revealed data that the team that swears together stays together. Does that peak your interest to ask why? Or, are you affronted that this concept of team cursing has violated a social rule and therefore inevitably must be incorrect? What if you are swearing as a means of dealing with a crisis? Is that still unacceptable?  Or, is the swearing incident in the form of an insult to another individual? Is it in that instance that the societal rule has been transgressed? Are you even distinguishing between the circumstances of how the swear was used? Or are you immediately jumping to and judging a person for the use of the course language without examining why behind its usage? If the latter, I am sorry to say, but you are personalizing the event to yourself and not present in the moment. Go meditate on that for a bit.

Have we returned to the era of the 1950’s and 1960’s when women and men fell into very rigid roles of behavior? After that era, we entered the late 60’s and 70’s when the laws sought both gender and racial equality. For example, in 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibited sex discrimination in the workplace - but a woman could still be fired for getting pregnant. Title IX (1972) made sure girls weren’t discriminated against in education (more money could be spent on girls’ sports than boys – I remember it well). But today, we seem have reverted to more rigid rules of gender identification. Men are only men who do not cry, show compassion, etc. And, women must be more feminine, but *#$%* forbid, if they cry at work. 

So back to swearing – what about swearing as rhetoric? I have a good friend who was at the Department of Justice and Homeland Security during the Obama administration and at the beginning of the Trump administration – she confessed had “to learn” to curse when doing White House intelligence briefings with the FBI. Before leaping to conclusions as to what that says about “her” or what it says about “the FBI,” [remember, be present in the moment and do not personalize your political views on cursing], lets return my question. In today’s society, has our domestication rules and roles for gender roles become stricter? More rigid? More extreme?  Why is it wrong to curse as a tool of rhetoric? Think how your responded to this story of my friend. Did you immediately judge her or the FBI without asking why? Curing as rhetoric gives us a glimpse into emotional stance. Studies have shown that post-arrest testimony by men and women using curse words are more “believeable” than testimonies without.

So could it be that when I curse, I curse to be heard. Maybe. I have used psychology in swearing to make sure my point is heard, and especially when I am in a room of only men. And yes, I still am in situations where I am the only woman in the room. Women’s speech is frequently found to be indirect. And condemned for being indirect in the Western male business world. Yet, swearing can improve the directness of the speech. I live in the United States, where directness is generally preferred, although kindness may be more important in some States (the Midwest) than candor. In contrast, Japan is a country that prefers indirect expression. Ironically it is why western women sometimes appear to fair better in business in Japan given their more indirect speech patterns.   

So why are women judged more harshly in swearing than men in the United States? Most of what I am saying I learned from Emma Byrne’s book, Swearing is Good for You – The Amazing Science of Bad Language as well as various psychology papers on the subject. In 1673, Richard Allestree published, The Ladies’ Calling, in which he postulated that women who swear are more masculine. Richard Allestree, chaplain to King Charles II, stated “there is no noise on this side of Hell can be more amazingly odious”…than “an Oath…out of a woman’s [mouth].” As Byrne postulates, swearing by the sick or hungry, by a child, etc. are all okay, "but what really pisses off God is a woman saying “asshole.”"

Wow! So let’s step back. Men and boys – think about it? A woman or girl is reprimanded or judged by men and women for cursing, but also may need to curse in in some circumstances in the male business world. That's a Catch-22. Talk about inequity. INEQUALITY IN THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Ladies, women and girls, do I have your attention now? You are unequal in the freedom to use your speech! 

Back to the present. Does Richard Allestree’s belief system on women cursing have implications for today’s rules that girls and boys and later women and men must abide by? In gist, Mr. Allestree believed that women’s swearing is a sign of the breakdown of acceptable social order, whereas masculine men were put on this earth to keep “fragile femininity” safe from the harsh knowledge of the world. Allestree’s espousal seems as pertinent today as it was in 1673. Are you offended by that for both his rigidity of how men should act, as well as women? 

I have found along with Emma Byrne that the second wave feminists (both our contemporaries) are far less tolerant of women swearing. Yet, swearing is still seen as a gender transgressive act – namely a mark of being more one of the boys than the girls. Yet, why is swearing so acceptable for women when reading Shades of Gray or other forms of erotica? Do we feel that we are safer in reading course language, versus speaking it out loud?

As a gender, we have moved away from weeping and swooning to cursing, but we nevertheless still offend some societal rules, even if cursing may be considered as part of freedom of speech. As a gender, are we granting boys and men greater freedom to speak, for they are less condemned less by women and girls, for their use of course language? 

In conclusion, pardon me, but who the *BLEEP* are the ones making these societal rules? And why are you so blithely accepting the rules and subjecting others to it in an unequal fashion? Certainly the makers of these rules ought to be educated on the science, psychology, neurology, and history behind cursing. I am not condoning the use of course, language, but instead I am asking to listener to understand the why of its usage, before blithely judging another person