Hi Tweets,

Scott Richardson writes:

>Janet Keen wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
>I agree.

Gee, wish I could. Soft censorship is part of what we called 'manners' and
imposed through training, hard censorship through overt authority. Yep,
you're right: there's no clear dividing line separating them. What
governments, religions and, more recently, corporations all have understood
is that if you can mold a person's language, you can control his or her
thoughts and therefore behavior. Sometimes this has 'good' effects;
historically, most times not.

Somebody said a while back something about leaving the dreaded 'F-word'
where it belongs. That's interesting, I thought; because in *real* life,
that means just about everywhere else but this list: the schoolyards, the
restaurants, sports, the jails, daily conversation between most of the rest
of us who don't have deep philosophical converse with plummy accents as they
do on Masterpiece Theater/Theatre, the streets, the parks, the homes, most
movies above the children's market, most books, most magazines, more and
more newspapers, more TV, etc etc, just about everywhere, as I said before,
but church and some on Tweeters, wherein the first is too holy for such a
slangword, and the second which seems intent on pretending it doesn't exist
except in some kind of white-trash hell.

And what *is* it about this word which terrifies so? Because beneath the
--depending on who's posting-- the smarming hypocrisy, the shuddering
distaste, the flannelmouthing, the revulsion, the intellectualising, the
bluster, there is the unmistakeable signs of unease and fear. Why is none of
my, or our, business. Only once in all this tempest on a ten-cent piece have
I seen an objection not bespeaking or suggesting an inner insecurity of some
kind or other, a voice of reason in all the blather. I still didn't agree,
but loved the fact it was reasonable and not based on prejudice or social
class structure learned with mother's milk or father's cane or in the
schoolyard.

Gotta tell ya, I'm like Wallis: I use it all the time and neither have I
become degenerate (dammit) nor has my language become a depraved,
syphilitically paretic, drooling remnant of a once proud and shining purity.
Use it for all sorts of things, love, hate, anger, hanging-out, exultation
(whaddaya think, if I won a lottery I'm gonna jump around yelling 'Exultate!
Jubilate!', do ya?).

In spite of a hard-right Catholic upbringing that on pain of eternal and
excruciating incineration in hell-- that's a real load to put on a kid--
banned just about everything but kissing the Pope's ring ('Wear the big one,
JP, it get's 'em every time!' --where's Lenny when we need him?), I broke
free of the programming, literally, *literally* looking at the sky for
incoming lightning-bolts when my pals dared me to say it one summer
afternoon out on the baseball diamond. Well, like most people, I said it,
noticed I was still standing and said it again to make sure, and went about
the rest of my life.

...Corrupted by the guilt, the terror, the sometimes savage nightmares
introduced by adult hypocrisy on swearing, and the actual beatings by
teachers and priests incurred by my first tentative explorations of
colloquial pungency. I still don't forgive them any of that.

Brings me to my main point, then I'll shut up. What turns my stomach in this
discussion is the assumption of righteousness on the part of those who want
to censor our speech, whether under a Thou Shalt Not or the softer guises of
'manners' or 'taste', or the pretence we in this list are too, too far above
it all to be so vulgar. Bullshit. In the light of the real, everyday world
outside this group--- and I'm disagreeing with friends here, I'll stress--
this I brand as hypocrisy, pure and simple. Don Baccus and I may have our
disagreements, but I stand directly behind the serious intent of his
hilariously intemperate, over-the-top screed (reading which, someone
actually counted the number of times he used the word 'fuck' and gave us the
total and missed the very serious points of view in the posting by about the
same distance as between Paris and Moscow. Except for this posting, and
those previous in this thread, I may never use the word 'fuck' or other
deemed by some to be as or more offensive in posting to this mostly adults'
group myself, but by the bowels of Christ, don't tell me I can't or
insinuate that I'm any less of a mature or decent person than I am for
doing so.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery, and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)