Why I Love the Word Fuck

Some of my favorite words are curse words and not least because they tend to convey emotions far better than other words.  There is something visceral and real about curse words that, for me, tend to break down pretense in conversation.  I also realize that curse words can do the exact opposite for some people and I'm okay with that, I guess.  But I also feel like there is a component that is both psychological and physiological when exclaiming fuck or shit or some interesting combination therein.  Sometimes, it just feels good.  And I know, we're taught to be wary of things that make us feel strongly one way or the other, and we tend to demonize those things or at least control those things so people don't feel TOO good or are TOO angry.  But fuck it.  Thankfully, I can rest on the laurels of scientific inquiry.  Timothy B. Jay (a personal hero and, I'm sure, a wonderful human being), a professor of psychology, relates through the research he's done that curse words fill a vital role in society.  Namely, curse words alleviate anger and help prevent people from physical violence.  This, of course, is what I try to explain to my partner when someone cuts me off in traffic.

Besides all of my personal feelings and preference for the vulgar, the history of curse words is a fascinating trip through social change and etymology.  Curse words change over time, are different from place to place and carry with them a history of dissent and revolution that appeals to me on a human level.  Many words that we find completely harmless today draw their etymological heritage from religious imagery that would have been offensive to contemporaries of its conception.  Zounds, for instance, was an oath of anger that meant, "by God's wounds" and was offensive because it made light of the crucifixion.  I always thought zounds referred to some imaginary large number.  Who knew?  Well, I guess those English speakers living around the time of Shakespeare did, but that was like eleventy billion years ago.

I guess there is a part of me that wonders to what extent curse words become the scapegoat of controlling emotional outburst or keeping some arcane notion of public decorum.  Because, I assume, it would be a bad idea to reveal so much of ourselves to the world.  I mean, we all feign some level of public outrage when our role models or public leaders are caught using some vulgar language.  This is not to say, however, that words shouldn't mean something when we use them.  Few days go by that I'm not reminded of the power of words when reading about the newest back and forth political pageantry from the tea party, republicans, or democrats.  Words are powerful things and I'm not discounting that; my problem is that society has chosen to care about some words that are basically harmless.

Cursing in the past revolved mainly around religious imagery.  Even today, saying something akin to goddamn is a near capital offense for some people.  Most of our other common curse words refer to the body or acts of the body and I can't help but wonder what the words we choose to vilify say about our society.  Religion and sex, sex and religion (why is it always one or the other?).  We can't talk about sex so we convince ourselves if we just preach abstinence things will be okay.  We can't talk about religion without pissing someone off so we hear explanations of religious practice and theology from mainstream media that is sterile, ancient and meaningless.  So, conversations in the public realm about these things tend toward the safe and non-confrontational instead of the places where actual discussion is not only helpful, but desperately needed.  It's frustrating, even maddening at times, but here we are.  Maybe if we could interrupt those conversations once in a while with a little anger management in the form of a good curse word...