Dirty Words @ MindSay

The Question:

"Can you say more about this? 'The argument that some persons require harsher language than others is the same argument used by proponents of physical violence.'"

I hear this all the time in class. "That's the only thing they understand." Sometimes students mean taboo language, sometimes they mean hitting, sometimes shooting, sometimes (in politics) torture or bombing.

I hear it a lot from parents: "A spanking is all a toddler understands." I hear it from the toddlers now grown up: "I deserved it. I was a brat. And it worked."

It seems the more spankings the children receive, the more they argue as adults that they "deserved" them and that the punishment "worked." It doesn't make any sense, of course; if it worked, why would they need a spanking every day?

Once we discussed washing out mouths with soap. One teenage girl said she had her mouth washed out with soap two or three times a week for seven or eight years. "It worked!" she insisted.

In the '80s I got a lot of papers on violence against women. When we read these in class, many women volunteered their own stories of being hit or beaten or worse.

Many times they'd say, "But I deserved it! I'm a bitch." Or "I deserved it—I shouldn't have said what I said."

In class we often discuss the concept of "fighting words." The word "nigger" is of course one. Among young black men and women, to be called that name by someone other than a friend almost guarantees a physically violent response.

Among many young white men, to be called "bitch" by someone other than a friend demands a physically violent response. Often the brawl escalates to beatings, stabbings, gunfire.

Nearly all my students on the West Omaha campus, all "white," have been present at parties where brawls occurred and knives and guns were brandished if not fired.

The reasoning? "Some people just won't understand any other way." Essentially this was the justification for both the attack on the WTC and the attack on Iraq. It's also the rationale behind the suicide bombings.

The last person I told to "fuck off" was one of my oldest friends, three years ago, when I tired of his condescending, insulting remarks in defense of the war.

In retrospect, my telling him that was obviously just a selfish venting. It felt good at the time, I even bragged about it to a mutual acquaintance, but it did no real good and probably degraded our discourse—meaning that it invited similar venting from him if he chose to do so. He didn't.

It's no big deal, but it's also an impulse I hope I will not indulge again. I'll try—I'll practice—not to.

Before that "fuck off" to my friend, it had been thirty years, probably forty, since I'd told or written anybody that.

But of course in private or among friends I cussed all the time—and I still do—without thinking anything about it. I don't do it in real anger, though, nor do I address the real human objects of my anger in that way.

What for?

I just don't see any benefit to it. Like I say, it just invites reciprocity. My next door neighbors—Jack and Maureen—quarrel about once a month early in the morning outside in their driveway.

Sometimes it goes on for thirty minutes. It's impossible to tell what the issue is. It's just anger loudly expressed in long strings of "fuck," "shit," "bitch," "goddamn," "asshole," "motherfucker," and so on.

I suppose the last person to tell me to "fuck off" was my wife—I don't remember how long ago, five or ten years ago probably. I don't like it—which is why she does it, of course, when she's mad—because it degrades discourse.

When she does, similar words arise in my mind and travel to my mouth and tongue, but I just watch them and they dissolve. I've never talked to her that way.

Why start now?

I don't like being told to "shut up" either, and I've never told her that, but it's no big deal. I don't have any control over other people's language nor do I want any.

It's just a mystery I enjoy observing, thinking about, and exploring in myself. I think it's fair to say I've "studied" it for a long time.

I don't think I've given anybody the finger in almost fifty years. I just don't see any good use in it. But I have students who do it almost every day, so they say, usually on the road.

When I've asked my zen teacher about taboo language, he's inferred that I object to it and want to censor others. That's not it, really, although I can see how it might appear that way.

I'm just curious about it so I ask people questions about it. Why does "Jesus!" pop out of my mouth? Or "shit!"?

It's just a signal of emotion, kind of like a heart monitor that beeps when I lose mindfulness and indulge my annoyance, I think.

Or is it? I don't know—just curious.

When you felt your parents were interfering in your life, did you give them the finger or tell them to "fuck off"?

If so, did it have the intended result? Was the intended result a positive one?

If you did not give them the finger or tell them to "fuck off," why not?

Around the temple, the zen teacher uses taboo language far more—a hundred times more—than anyone else. You're probably a distant second. I'm probably third.

Does your zen teacher's use of it "invite" your use?

I don't care how people speak. I can't help but observe, though, that the teacher's use of taboo language alienates some visitors to the temple.

His reaction to this observation is basically, "Hey, fuck 'em! I talk the way I talk. If you don't like it, find another teacher."

It doesn't really matter to me. He's the boss. It even makes me laugh.

I don't think I've ever heard John or William or Dorothy use taboo language.

Some years ago a student of mine came to class every Tuesday and Thursday wearing a tee-shirt that said above its breast pocket in half-inch-high capital letters, "Fuck this shit."

One school of counseling—for K-12 students who are physically violent—is to move them one step at a time to other means of expressing their depression and anger.

The first step is from hurting people to hitting or breaking inanimate objects. The second step is from smashing objects to verbal expression, cursing, and hate speech.

The third step is from cursing and hate speech to articulation, explanation, and then to poetry, music, and art.

Is all this just theory or the truth of experience?

Years ago, I was telling a friend of mine, a jazz musician, how mad I was at some people. He said, "Oh, when I feel that way, I just fantasize shooting all of them in the head."

Yes, he did own a gun.

Thanks for writing, my friend. I enjoy exploring this stuff. It's what I do for a living. I don't expect any definitive answer anytime soon!

Your friend

Mister  Skank
Secretary, The International Pacifist Conspiracy