Posted by All Kaps

WTF: Gender and Expletives

The first few words, when we are learning a new language informally, must include a few choicest sweet expletives. Learning cannot get better than this. On many occasions we can see that those words are mostly directed towards female body parts. What could be the reason behind this gender bias in using/creating/hurling the words?

Do say it loud and scream but don’t hang on to them like you would do to a newly bought shirt. As far as those words are concerned, the learning experience is just incomplete without them. The case is different when we are learning the language in a class where there is a structured approach. A better place but who can afford the comfort of a classroom all the time? Still I doubt even a textbook approach would be insufficient to explain why there is a difference.

Gender bender
When a gender is attached to these words there is a gross inequality with the most number of words preferring to go to the side of the fairer sex, with a dim chance that those sweet words and phrases developed with their consent. But why is it so? No matter what, men and women — who speak the same language — share the profanities regardless of sex. People who are more gender conscious would be more critical to this phenomenon.

Is male chauvinism the primary reason why the expletives originated in the first place? On hindsight the animal instincts in us make us growl and howl in the first place, when we are emotional and ridiculously pissed off. Who knew such an irritating growl and howl would become a full-fledged exclamation or a swearword, taking care of mothers and sisters and suffixed by an exaggerated term of their genitals? Filthier the terms, the better a curse word becomes. Personally, I knew three languages and they are no different in this regard.

Bad improvisation
It is surprising. Even after thousand of years of improvisation on these terms it has always existed against social convention. Some people consider that their inclusion in any art form is immature and dirty and ‘unlikable’. We cannot use them openly and curse someone in a gathering. It is a bad manner. It is a product of an unrefined family. It is an upbringing mistake. It shows where you come from; it is simply a fuck. It shows how the curser lacks refinement. Still nothing changes the fact that there are expletives galore and the choices of word are heavily used against the ladies.

We can leave the ladies for a while. What could be the boundary of decency in a society? Most of the time, the useless conventions and the mores are a way of our society to pretend we are an animal of intelligence. No people are unto their island. That’s the second belief in life; the first being the belief that the gods and goddesses created us after a divine experiment on love, lust and defective contraceptives.

High intelligence can help produce rockets, paedophiles, call girls, aeroplanes, a lot of presumption and assumption, a lot of money, tall buildings, a contented life, and new diseases as much the cure for venereal diseases and so on. Yet it cannot change the fact that the fucking words are so gender-specific.

Intelligence, for that matter, proves absolutely nothing about the eternal space and the reason for our existence. So we create more social mores, no matter how much our ignorance and stupidity are filling up the empty spaces in the universe. A creation grossly limited by our own super intelligence!

Mars and Venus
The last five decades have been the golden period of women emancipation. The ladies are no more your property — so much has changed in the world of men and women. But the legacy remains. The only thing that has remained unchanged is the female-identity-body-organs’ curse. We simply agree to go with the flow; otherwise we are outcast, with no morality and ethics. Whether we are in Mars or Venus, gender inequality and male chauvinism are the reasons why man is always the son of a bitch but never the son of a gigolo.

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Read He, She, They, It or Ze/Zie/Ey: What Is Your Preferred Gender Pronoun?
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Listen to Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole - Martha Wainwright on Youtube
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