People are “offended” by so many ridiculous things these days, this might turn into a much longer post than I planned. I’m sure something else will come to my and make it even longer, so what I’ll do is split it up into a couple of posts, and get this written up over the next few days.

I’ll kick off with swearing, as it’s the least taboo. Here is a list of my favourite swear words; Fuck (obviously, it’s so versatile), cunt (it’s a pretty good insult, obviously not when taken literally, but when said in a cockney accent its brilliant), bollocks (if you mess something up, you need to say bollocks to begin the path to recovery). There are more, but these are my favourites.

There is no reason what-so-ever that one particular word would be any worse than another. A word being a swear word is so arbitrary, that literally any word could be included. There are many reasons that swear words would or could be used, more often than not they are added into a sentence for emphasis or as a replacement for another word which might not be considered swearing.
For example, “You fucking idiot”, if you’re annoyed at someone you might wish to express that annoyance, adding the swear word conveys that fairly well. Another example would be “I feel shit”, now we all know he doesn’t mean he feels like faeces, yet we understand he doesn’t feel his best. In both of these examples the swear words could easily have been replaced with other things; “You blithering idiot” and “I feel bad”. What makes the words “blithering” and “bad” so much better words?
Any word in the world can be used as a swear word, and singling out some words because at some point someone didn’t like them, is ridiculous. If I was to start a tirade about how much I hate someone, using words like “bonehead” and “cretin” I could still get it into a PG12 film, as opposed to if I called him a “twat” or a “bastard”. Why is this? I’ve still verbally abused someone, and surely that’s where the problem lies.

The only problem I can conceivably  see with swearing, is laziness. Instead of wording your gripes eloquently, you resort to interchangeable phrases with little real meaning. If this is the case, what is the point of censorship? Ever seen something written as “tw*t” or “f**k” before? Hell, even comics that kids read do it with a couple from the top row “#’!$%”. Not only do we still know exactly what the word says (except in the case of the comics, when a little guess work might be required), but it’s the same laziness as before. There’s nothing specific about the chosen word, not that deciding to call someone someone a “nincompoop” actually means anything.
Are we that stupid that hiding part of something automatically absolves it from any wrong doing? There are so many reasons why that is not the case, that it’s not even worth going into.

If someone cares that you said a word that they don’t like, then surely it’s their problem because they chose not to like the word. If I had a problem with the colour red, I wouldn’t be within my rights to complain if I saw anything red. Get out there and bastard swear if you want. Who fucking cares?

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