This is something that’s been bugging me for a little while, and after reading the discussion over here, I feel the need to comment on it.
I don’t like the fact that it’s OK to call someone a dick or a cock, but not a cunt or a twat. And that’s it–it doesn’t piss me off, or ruffle my feathers, or anything else. I just don’t like it. There are probably good reasons for it, but it still bugs me.
But I’m not going to take it. I refuse to live by this double standard any more. So from now on, I’m not going to refer to anyone as a dick, cock, cunt, or twat. In fact, from now on, I’m not going to insult anyone by referring to them as a useful body part.
And if you don’t like it, go run headfirst into a tree, you worthless appendix.
I don’t think of it as a double standard as such. It’s more of a sliding scale of offensiveness which our society has evolved, and which happens to have placed c*** at the upper end of offensiveness:
c***
fuck
asshole / arsehole
shit
boobies
big poopoohead
who’s a silly monkey then?
…and so on.
I censored c*** in this example because somewhere between that word and the word “fuck” is the level the SDMB has found for itself. Talking to a Catholic priest might find you lower down the scale of offensiveness, and talking to the lads at a drunken bucks’ night might well be a free-for-all.
Personally, I was glad that thread title was amended.
Nah, I don’t mind that the thread title was changed. That is the standard around here, and it doesn’t bug me. I’m not the type to scream censorship cause people wouldn’t like my screaming bloody fuck in church.
Like I said, this just irks me a little. Hence my resolution.
I get where you’re coming from, ultrafilter. It bugs me too, but on the Federal Scale of Unfair Double Standards, it barely rates. Yeah, I’m a little irked that I can’t use my favorite insult: “stunned cunt,” a phrase passed down to me from my dear old mother. But, like I said, it’s small potatos. I can find better insults that don’t offend people I don’t want to offend.
It’s a very interesting social phenomena isn’t it? I mean, TLD nails the practical reality, but if you go looking for logical patterns beyond the simple socially imposed scale that TLD sets out, it just makes no sense.
If I was to call someone a “vagina” that would mean what? But if I them a cunt (which is exactly the same…) no one would be in any doubt about what I meant.
I wrote that OP. I suggested to the mods that it be modified not because I consider cunt to be a “worse” word than cock or anything else, but because I didn’t want the word to distract from my point.
If someone who I didn’t intend to offend is bothered by something I said, I will attempt to set things right. I just don’t consider a minor linguistic point to be worth offending decent people over.
I don’t think it is really a ‘double standard’ as you call it **ultrafilter, ** because I am equally disdainful of the word ‘cock’. It is just that referring to a person as a genital is pretty off no matter which gender/genitalia is being described.
Now that is NOT to say that I refrain from calling some people dickheads regardless of the gender.
But cock and cunt seem to belong in a class all of their own, and are apt to offend. Well, they offend ME anyway.
Hello, my name is TheLoadedDog, and I’m a watcher…(of ‘Are You Being Served?’).
I know it’s shameful, but I’ve been in denial until now…now that I’ve shared my dysfunction with you, I hope you’ll all understand the depths to which I’ve sunk…I started out on Benny Hill, and then I got to the harder stuff with ‘On The Buses’. But I couldn’t stop.
And now I’m a self-confessed ‘fan’ of the most degenerate show to come out of the British comedy scene for over a century.
But I’m in recovery now!
puss-air be damned!! Is that in the same vein as '**Tar-geit. ** Bwahahahahaaaaaa
Oh, and I wouldn’t watch ‘Served’ in a pink-fit either!! (well, I have been known to, but don’t tell nobody will’ya…let’s keep it as our secret.
Good God. Even the Dutch weren’t spared trashy 70’s British sitcoms. :eek:
I was more a fan of the sleazy young guy with the working class accent, and also those animated mechanical store dummies with spinning bow ties, hats that lifted up in the air, and recorded voices saying such gems of wit as “I LIKE it, I LIKE it”.
