Why Cuss?
A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles. (Chinese proverb)
I was of course exposed to cussing ever since I was a baby. Mostly I heard the words on television though, since my parents rarely cussed. I didn't know they were bad words though. First grade was the earliest time I remember of an experience of the immaturity of cussing. The second grade kids at my babysitter's house dared me to hold my tongue with my fingers and say, "I was born on a pirate's ship." They all did it themselves and giggled. I didn't understand what was so funny. I told them I didn't want to do it because my hands weren't clean. They said that I was just chicken and afraid to say it. I didn't see why I would be scared of saying that phrase, so I did it even though my hands were dirty. "I was born on a pirate's shit." They giggled again. I still didn't see what was so funny.
My elementary school was known for having the best kids in town. It was only the kids that came from other schools or towns or states that said cuss words. I made friends with one new girl named Gina in second grade. I don't remember who said the cuss word, but Gina said, "She just said a bad word."
I asked, "What bad word?"
Gina replied, "You know!"
I said, "No I don't. What is it?"
She whispered it in my ear. I don't remember which word it was, but I remember thinking that I didn't even know that word was bad.
There was only one middle school in my town, so all five of our elementary schools' kids went to it. It was then that all the former good kids from fifth grade and below turned bad just like all the others. Everyone cussed. And if you didn't, you weren't cool.
I remember a couple sixth grade experiences with cuss words. At my friend Elisa's slumber party, she said "darn," then corrected herself and said "damn." I think she muttered, "I forgot I can say damn now" and the other girls at the party laughed, but I didn't. Another experience was when I asked my acquaintance Elizabeth why she cussed. Her answer: "Because I can." That's what people say when they don't have any intelligent reason to back up their actions.
With all the cussing I heard everyday at school, I sometimes would accidentally say a cuss word. Once I said "shit" when I realized I was walking toward the wrong class. Many times I said "crap" when I accidentally walked into the locker room when it wasn't time to go to P.E. But as soon as I realized that "crap" was also a cuss word (because it's never in children's cartoons), I stopped saying it. I replaced it with "crud," and eventually I stopped saying that too. I tried not to get into the habit of saying cuss words like everyone else. I didn't want to conform to their immaturity. I was already an outcast all my life, so there was absolutely no point in attempting to be cool, especially if I would have to sound like a fool in order to do so. The words were used improperly, way too often, and just to be cool.
I used "bastard" in one of the novels I wrote in fifth grade. When Mom* edited it, she asked me, "You use bad words in your books?" I replied, "I didn't know it was bad." I still have my fictional characters use cuss words because that makes the stories realistic, but I never cuss in my diary, nonfiction, or verbal speech. The only time I have said cuss words has been on accident--and an accident hasn't happened in at least seven years--or when I'm quoting other people or singing lyrics that have cuss words in them. There are cuss words in this essay only because this essay is about cussing.
Yes, cussing is immature. Regardless of the exact age of when everyone first started to use cuss words, probably everyone in America did so sometime in childhood for the sole purpose of being cool. What makes it cool? Because most parents and other adults do not like or allow children to use those words. Yet parents and adults hypocritically use them too. Therefore, cuss words are for adult use only, just like drugs and sex, and thus it is cool because it is the grown up thing to do. If the cuss words were not seen as bad, then people would not use them so often because the words would be no different than any other ordinary words.
Adults don't like to admit that what they do is rooted in their immature childhood. They try to make all sorts of excuses. One excuse is that cuss words are just like ordinary words. I have been told that "fucking" is just like "very;" for example "fucking awesome" is the same as "very awesome." If that's the case, then just use "very." But people refuse to do this; they purposely choose to cuss instead of saying an ordinary word.
Another popular excuse is that cussing gets across strong emotions like excitement or anger. Yelling would bring about the same effect. In writing, using exclamation marks or all-caps would bring about the same effect. I write a lot of angry things, as you must have noticed, and my anger gets across just fine, does it not? Even when I'm yelling at someone verbally, I don't use cuss words.
There is no valid reason to use cuss words. The truth is that people are either in the habit of cussing and can't stop, or that they're still trying to conform, afraid to be seen as childish. The truth is that they sound even more childish by using cuss words than by not. By repetitively using those cuss words instead of thinking of other ways to express yourself, you are showing your lack of maturity, objectivity, intelligence, and vocabulary. Anyone who says phrases like "Goddamn ass-shit mother-fucking bitches!" on a regular basis sound incredibly stupid. You might argue that adults with PhD's cuss too. Well, that just goes to show you that they might have intelligence, but they sure don't have much wisdom. The impressiveness of your college degree disappears if you still talk like a teenager.
"Oh my fucking God!" First of all, it's a sin to use God's name in vain if you're Christian. Secondly, if you don't believe in God, then why would you say "Oh my God" if you don't believe in one? Third, the "fucking" in this sentence is unneeded and makes no sense ("Oh my sexing God?"). Fourth, you could have just said, "Oh my gosh!" I always say "Oh my gosh" or "Oh my goodness." Since I was raised as Christian, I was taught never to say "Oh my God." And even when I became an agnostic when I was fourteen, it made just as much sense not to say it since I no longer believed in God; saying "Oh my God" would be contradictory if I didn't have a god.
This is the reason why I call cuss words "cuss words." They are not swear words, because swearing is using God's name in vain or saying "I swear" (which I also do not do). They are not curse words, because cursing is a curse: "I curse you to live in eternal pain!"
This brings me to my next complaint about cussing: The words are used improperly. Each of the cuss words has a literal meaning: ass is a donkey or butt; bastard is an illegitimate child; bitch is a female dog; cunt/pussy is a vagina; damn is to banish; dick is a penis; fuck is sexual intercourse; Hell is the Christian opposite of Heaven; piss is pee; shit is poop. Yet none of the cuss words are usually used correctly. Replacing these common cuss phrases with their literal meanings, it is clear how idiotic and immature they sound:
- "Is my ass fat?" or "Asshole!" or "Jackass!" --> "Is my donkey fat?" or "Butthole!" or "Jackbutt!" (Sounds like a kindergarten insult. This is what you sound like when you cuss.)
- "He's a bastard." --> "He's an illegitimate child." (Is he really?)
- "He was bitching about the government." or "Son of a bitch!" --> "He was female dogging about the government." or "Son of a female dog!" (Puppy?)
- "Cunt!"/"Pussy!" --> "Vagina!" (Why are genitals insulting?)
- "Damn, that food was good!" --> "Banish, that food was good!" (So you want to banish the good food?)
- "Dick head!" --> "Penis head!" (Again, why are genitals insulting?)
- "I fucking hate you." or "Mother fucker!" or "Fuck you!" --> "I sexing hate you." or "Mother sexer" or "Sex you!" (That last one is not even a sentence, and why would you want to have sex with someone you hate? You want to rape them? Wow, and kids say this stuff everyday.)
- "What the hell?" --> "What the heaven?" or "What the park?" (You can insert any place, and none of them will make sense.)
- "I'm so pissed off." --> "I�m so peed off." (Makes no sense.)
- "I feel like shit." --> "I feel like poop." (How can you feel like poop? Are you stinky? If so, you smell like poop; you don't feel like poop. You don't know how a poop feels.)
Cuss words obviously have been used so much and in so many different contexts that their literal meaning is almost lost. I don't know about you, but I like to use words in their literal meaning and not use words that have more than one meaning. (For instance, I prefer to use the word "gender" instead of "sex" because gender has only one meaning, and I don't want people to think I'm talking about sexual intercourse when I'm talking about gender.)
Because the words are not used as their original meaning, they mean nothing. Cuss words do not offend me. I do not care if someone calls me an asshole, a bastard, a bitch, a cunt, a mother fucker, etc. Those words mean nothing but what was just stated above, and their literal meanings do not offend me either, nor should they logically offend anyone else. What really offends me are words with meaning like naive, ignorant, immature, and narrow-minded. Attacking someone's intelligence is a real insult. Calling someone a butt, a dog, a vagina, a sex, or an illegitimate child when s/he is not is just silly. People who use cuss words only show how lacking they are in maturity and wisdom. Those who are insulted or offended by cuss words are only insulted or offended because they've been taught by our society and culture that they SHOULD be. But in actuality, it isn't logical to be insulted/offended by them, since the words have no insulting meaning behind them. To be stupid means something. To be a butt head doesn't. It's possible to be stupid. It's not possible to be a butt head. Vaginas and penises exist; but why would you be insulted to be called one? Are you ashamed that your body has one? Or are you ashamed that you got called one that you don't possess? Well, if you answered yes to either of those two questions, you need to come to terms with your gender and/or stop being sexist.
In my life, I've encountered many people (teens and adults) who refuse to say the word "nigger." Even when reading a book out loud, they substitute "nigger" for something like "N word." They refuse to say "nigger" because it is bad and offensive, but they don't mind saying "fuck" which is just as bad and offensive. The only difference is that "nigger" is only offensive to blacks; cuss words are offensive to most people of all races; all the more reason not to cuss, hypocrites!
When you think objectively about what cuss words actually mean, you can see how stupid you sound when you say them. It wouldn't be so bad that everyone uses nonsense phrases to insult people, but it is annoying when the words are used so much. It's not an exaggeration to say that the average middle schooler and high schooler say a cuss word at least a hundred times a day. I'm guessing adults aren't any different. Why can't people use the word "idiot" to insult people? At least those words would be consistent with their literal meaning. Or if you're creative like me, you could make up your own insults like "hu hah," "beef jerky," "wax paper," and "mean bean." My little brother (currently fourteen years old) also sees the stupidity and immaturity in cussing; he suggested these alternative insults after he read them from my Cognitive Science notes: "You visuo-spatial sketchpad! You phonological loop! You episodic buffer!" If my brother and I, as teenagers, could stand up against conformity and think objectively about the stupidity of it, then so can you. Why don't you be an adult instead of a dolt and grow up?
*When I was little, I experimented with calling her different things: Mommy, Mama, Mom. I tried to call her Mother too, but this she would not allow. She said it was a bad word. "How is mother a bad word?" I asked. She just said, "You'll find out when you're older." And I did. The word is "mother fucker."
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