And profanity has other proposed possible benefits. Timothy Jay, for instance, notes a long history of theorizing that profanity may have cathartic benefits.22 Perhaps a well-placed fuck can alleviate anger that would otherwise come out in the form of physical or interpersonal aggression. Maybe swearing while you drive actually makes you less likely to take out your anger or frustration through your driving, thereby making you and those around you safer. Jay also notes that people often report feeling better after swearing23 and that the place of profanity in some humor (so-called working blue) suggests that it might create an experience of relief. Moreover, there’s evidence that some people perceive the use of profanity as a valuable social tool. One study reports that people—more so men than women—find that profanity demonstrates social power and makes the person who utters it more socially acceptable.24
For the most part, as we’ve seen, profanity does no harm. A fleeting fuck yeah! fades in comparison with things that demonstrably harm children and adults. There’s good reason to believe that children might not be well served by exposure to violent or pornographic images until they’re old enough to digest them, and of course no one could reasonably object to working to protect children from abuse, including verbal abuse. It’s important for us to understand how these potential dangers affect children, their health, their development, and their relationships, and to the extent that we know they cause harm, it’s worth advocating for safer environments that allow children to thrive. But to the best of our knowledge, profanity (aside from slurs, which I’ll return to in a moment) leaves no such fingerprint on the child’s psyche or future. Take the word fuck. How exactly can hearing fuck hurt a child? Proponents of censorship often claim that the language is “strong” or “offensive” or “immoral,” but as we’ve seen, this means nothing other than that they themselves are offended by it or believe others might be. And there’s no evidence that profanity of the Holy, Fucking, or Shit varieties harms children.
But not all profanity is equal, and all signs point to a strengthening in the United States of one specific class of profane language, namely, slurs. As Richard Dooling wrote in the New York Times, “We are caught between taboos. Vulgar sexual terms have become acceptable in the last two decades while all manner of sexual or ethnic epithets have become unspeakable.”25 That change is visible in the offensiveness ratings we saw earlier—where slurs are perched atop the offensiveness leaderboard. So what should we make of this drift in usage from Holy-, Fucking-, and Shit-type words to Nigger-type words?
We should care. Slurs may be the exception to the harmlessness of swearing. As we saw in the last chapter, overhearing faggot or nigger describing homosexuals or African Americans leads people to treat them as less human and to retreat from them physically. This is a type of harm. It’s possible that a carefully placed nigger or bitch has the potential to lower a person’s performance on tasks that his or her group is stereotyped as not good at. We saw that being called fag or homo, as an indirect, general term of offense, correlates with middle schoolers’ reports of feeling less connected to their school lives and experiencing more symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Consequently, the shift away from fuck and toward nigger is a bit troubling. Holy, fucking, and shit were good dirty fun. But we’re now giving the most power to slurs, the words that, although the evidence is still a little murky, threaten the greatest harm, at least when used in particular ways in certain contexts. So what’s a socially conscious person to do? Certainly we don’t want to inflict harm on anyone, especially children or people who belong to socially marginalized groups.
To add insult to injury, the rise in the prominence of slurs is a wound we’re inflicting on ourselves. Our resistance to words gives them their muscle, and slurs are no exception. This means that we can’t ban or censor our way out of this situation.
And other sorts of linguistic engineering seem just as quixotic as censorship. The reappropriation strategy—flooding the linguistic market with positive uses of the same word—has historically worked in certain cases; adoption and co-optation by the relevant communities may have blunted the damage that queer and gay cause. But it hasn’t taken the sting out of nigger or slut. Those trying to take control over their own labels would be well served to remember that reappropriation isn’t a silver bullet.
Instead—call this professor predictable—if you want to make slurs a little less powerful, you would meet with more success if everyone knew a little more about how they work and what they do. You know, better living through education.
Let’s start with the supply side. Is it possible that a little knowledge would lead people to use slurs less, at least in ways known to cause harm? Here are some avenues. The first involves the low-hanging fruit. Some well-meaning people inadvertently use slurs. For example, many people use words like gypped, Jewed, or tard because they simply haven’t ever noticed the relationship between gypped and gypsy, for example, or because they don’t know the history of tard and retarded. So they have no reason to think Romani people, Jews, or people with cognitive impairments could take offense at the words. Such people don’t have to be told twice why Jewing someone might be offensive or that Redskins has a history as a slur before they turn on their linguistic heels.
The second is the slightly more complicated case in which a slur gets used indirectly—still as a pejorative but not in direct reference to the original group. For example, when a twelve-year-old boy calls an opponent in an online video game gay or fag, he probably means to insult him and call him weak, but he may have no specific thoughts about his target’s sexuality.26 This is a more complicated scenario because the slur user can adopt a line of defensive reasoning that rejects any connection between a word like fag intended as a slur and its use in other ways. Suppose you use fag or gay or bitch, for example, not as slurs for homosexual people or women but rather as general terms of offense. You can easily convince yourself that you’re not using sexist or homophobic language. After all, you might think to yourself, I merely called my dog a fag, and I know very well that he’s straight from how he tries to mount the bitches at the dog park. You tell yourself, I’m not using the word to describe him as homosexual, and that’s proof that I’m not using it as a gay slur. Nothing wrong with that, you might conclude.
But here’s the counterpoint. We know that no matter how you use fag, it will bring up negative connotations. That’s why slurs are often conscripted as more generic insults—using a slur for one group to insult others works only if you implicitly think the slur is derogatory in the first place. But slurs generalized beyond their original scope often still retain certain stereotypical features of their original target. Calling a man a bitch isn’t a generic insult; it could imply that he’s weak or emotional or has other attributes perceived as more stereotypically feminine. And critically embedded in this is the assumption that having these attributes is bad. So using these terms indirectly perpetuates the idea that people in the defamed group are themselves somehow bad and that having stereotypical characteristics of that group is bad. There’s a lot here that could give offense.
And what’s more, this may not be the most damaging use of slurs. We know that many such words crop up more often in conversations that don’t include members of the targeted groups at all27—the majority of Caucasians use nigger a lot more when African Americans aren’t within earshot. But this is precisely where the consequences of outsider slur use will be felt. We’ve seen that exposure of members of majority groups to slurs affects the way they treat and think about members of the maligned minority group: fag biases heterosexuals against homosexual people, for instance. So the issue with slurs isn’t just what you say around the people the slur defames. It’s also what you say when potentially maligned people aren’t around.
I’ve talked through the consequences of slur use with many, many college-age people in a class I teach on profanity. Some remain undeterred and report that fag is unlikely to disappear from their vocabulary. But othe
rs are swayed by the evidence. And remember, a conversation with me, someone who’s not popular in the slightest, accomplished this. One tweet from Kobe Bryant on the use of gay could change literally thousands of interactions. All things being equal, most people would prefer not to do harm, and I find that people who use slurs indirectly usually simply haven’t understood the possible consequences. So that’s the second way that a little knowledge might change how slurs are used.
Here’s the third—reserved for the most intransigent people, those who simply like to offend. You might know these people. You might be these people. If so, you might use slurs for ideological reasons—you might see their use as a free-speech issue. And you’re legally in the right. Profanity, including slurs, is protected speech. If you wanted to, you could walk down the street talking about niggers and cunts as much as you wanted without legal ramifications. Or maybe you enjoy the rise you get out of others when you slip cunt or nigger into conversation. I get it. And I get that even you, staunchest slur supporter, may possibly never be swayed by evidence. But it’s also possible that the following argument for linguistic self-determination will convince you.
Here’s how it goes: As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with writing but probably didn’t,28 “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” I think this adage aptly characterizes how we think about individual rights in a lawful society. Translated to language, you have the legal right to say whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t cause harm to the next person. A society clearly has a right—and a duty—to outline norms for behavior so that individuals don’t hurt one another. Language is powerful, and it makes sense that some of its uses should be regulated. That’s why the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld limitations on free speech for harmful language, like libel, slander, fighting words, threats, perjury, and so on. And so, if it can be demonstrated that slurs cause harm, and there’s some evidence that they do, then the fist-nose principle applies. Even if the courts haven’t caught up, calling someone nigger or bitch is the linguistic analog of closing your eyes and swinging in full knowledge that there’s a nose within arm’s reach. The fact that you can swing doesn’t mean you should.
With a little more evidence, this could become a legal argument, but I think it’s still compelling as a moral one. If using language is likely to cause others harm, then maybe don’t do it?
Instead, it seems respectful to refer to people and address them using the words they want to be called by. Let’s call this the principle of linguistic self-determination. It’s fertile for abuse, of course, and it could become time-consuming (I want to be called a Featherless-Bipedal-Lacto-Vege-Merican!), but most people aren’t absurdists. And what’s more, we know the strategy of allowing people linguistic self-determination works because it has succeeded in the replacement of Negro and colored with black and African American, of retarded with developmentally challenged, and so on. These efforts take time, but they do demonstrably create lasting change. It’s possible that self-determination is a compelling enough principle to sway even some of the most hard-core slur users.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for a ban on slurs (because, as we saw in the last chapter, that’s ill conceived and counterproductive), and I’m not arguing for violent knee-jerk reactions (in person or online) to people who do use slurs, even when they do so in ways that we believe may cause harm. I’m saying something quite different. In a free society, people are and should be allowed to make their own linguistic choices. But where you have a legitimate difference of opinion (about language or anything), you’re also free to use the power of reason to try to persuade. That’s what I’m doing right now.
And that’s also where we get to the other side of the coin. It’s not just that people who utter slurs might be convinced to use them a little less, at least in ways that denigrate. People who hear them might also be persuaded to temper their reaction. It’s natural for people to have hair-trigger responses to words. (Anytime someone says nigger, it’s a hate crime! Anyone who says bitch should be fired!) And yet, it seems like many of us would be less likely to draw immediate offense, and might enjoy better relationships with more people and more diverse ones at that, if we could overcome our immediate associations with strong words. Slurs might be offensive, but they are only words after all. Because they are neither sticks nor stones, they have to pass through the filter of our brains to cause us harm. And it’s possible that knowing a little about how ephemeral and precarious their power is would allow people to worry somewhat less about superficial things like the words others are choosing. That might create more time for mindful magnanimity—assigning more import to people’s actions and intentions than their word choices.
I guess this goes under the rubric of “tolerance,” but not in the traditional sense. We all tolerate linguistic choices that we disagree with—even the ones we find most vile. Perhaps people who find slurs infuriating can see them for what they are: mere words. Just like any other word, each slur has a history and a future, and neither of these is the same as their present. The knee-jerk reaction to suppress these words is as unlikely a strategy as any to bear fruit. And that’s probably not the worst thing in the world. After all, as George Carlin said,
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They’re only words. It’s the context that counts. It’s the user. It’s the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent.29
Acknowledgments
I began writing this book as a way to procrastinate while working on another project. Like other stalling techniques, this book soon came to occupy more of my time than what I was actually supposed to be doing. You are now holding in your hands the product of seven years of committed procrastination. There’s some satisfaction in leveraging one’s own character flaws against themselves.
Although I was the chief procrastinator, this book is not a product of my making alone. Writing a book is hard in many of the ways that writing other things is hard. Words don’t lend themselves easily to clarity, especially when the thoughts behind them are muddled. And I have many people to thank for helping me think and write more clearly. At the outset, I owe a debt of gratitude to my writing group collaborators: Loriena Yancura, Katherine Irwin, and Ashley Maynard. Even if it’s been said before, it bears repeating that laboring over each word is essential; it yields better results when you do it with other people, and you end up a better writer for it too. If we hadn’t laughed so much reading early chapter drafts, I might not have stuck with the book.
I’ve also been fortunate to have smart, energetic students—most of them now colleagues—read the book in part or in its entirety and help shape the argument, the ideas, and the writing. Thanks to Tyler Marghetis, Kensy Cooperrider, Ross Metusalem, Josh Davis, and Arturs Semenuks. I also discussed the book along the way with—and got ideas that you’ll find in these pages from—Nancy Chang, Hans Boas, Lera Boroditsky, Scott Klemmer, David Kirsh, Jawee Perla, Iris Kohlberg, Madelaine Plauché, Elizabeth Moyer, and Adam Ruderman.
Writing a book is also hard in its own particular ways. Books cover ground beyond one’s area of confident expertise, and a number of experts in the various fields the book’s chapters touch on were kind enough to share insights into their areas of research or provide feedback on chapters. A hearty thanks to Timothy Jay, Eric Bakovic, Roger Levy, Seana Coulson, Marta Kutas, Michael Motley, Donna Jo Napoli, Michael Israel, Elinor Ochs, Piotr Winkielman, Karen Dobkins, Andrea Carnaghi, Taylor Jones, Christopher Hall, Al Schutz, Alison Gopnik, Vic Ferreira, Matthew Fisher, and Diana Van Lancker Sidtis. These people didn’t merely deliver platitudes and tell me the work was fine. They told me what I got wrong, and the book is better for it. One person even held the considered and expert opinion that I got everything in one chapter wrong and said in so many words that the book wasn’t worth the cost of its ink. I told this esteemed colleague that I’d express my g
ratitude for his candor by refraining from sending him a copy of the book, and I intend to go through with that promise, but I would be remiss not to also thank Roger Lass on this page.
Books are also especially hard because they compete in a marketplace of unlike kinds—with not just other trade science or nonfiction books, or even books in general, but also with basically all gift and entertainment products. So they have to be appealing, and they have to be accessible. I can’t imagine anyone better equipped to take the bird’s-eye view and lay out the path to writing a book that will have broad appeal than Katinka Matson. She and the staff at Brockman helped craft the immature product of a procrastinating mind into something worth showing to anyone. And in the same vein, T. J. Kelleher at Basic Books has been my Charon through the production process. How fortunate I’ve been to have an editor with such a very similar sense of humor and aesthetics to mine. And if I do say so, T. J. has impeccable taste.
Books are also hard to write because, concretely, doing so requires many thousands of hours. In my case, those hours were virtually all spent on the couch in my living room, many of them in long stretches. This makes the living room largely unlivable for other members of the household, not merely because of the droning electronica “for focusing” but also due to the inevitable squalor. I want to thank Frances for pretending that this is a normal state of affairs and for accommodating my appropriation of the living room. She has also helped me work through specific ideas, chapter organization, and writing details. She didn’t write this book, but I wouldn’t have been able to write it without her. Thank you to poop-machine Matthew and to the rest of my family—David, Karen, Dori, Ira, Joshua, Seila, Dave, Caroline, Jon, and everyone else—for your support and love throughout.
Notes
Introduction
What the F Page 27