The first time I attempted to use a naughty word at school, aged seven, has become family folklore. I was aching to try out a grownup term that I’d heard an older girl utter in the playground, so when my friend was standing at the classroom sink, washing her poster paint-covered brushes, I took my chance.
“Hey, move your bom,” I loudly declared, my cheeks turning bright red as I realised the whole thing had come out wrong. I scuttled away as fast as I could, shocked by the power a single word could hold – and how shaming it could feel if not deployed just right.
I have swearing on my mind thanks to Olivia Colman, who is promoting her new film Wicked Little Letters – the true story of a 1920s scandal involving very sweary poison pen letters, which were suspected to have been written by a woman. Colman pointed out that there’s still a gendered double standard when it comes to obscenities. “If a woman swears, people act shocked. Fuck off! Women are human – funny, filthy, loving, caring – just like men,” she told the Radio Times.
Too bloody right. Take a 2001 study by Louisiana State University, which concluded that people find swearing more offensive when it comes from women rather than men, who also swear more. Of course, there would be a sodding gender swear gap, wouldn’t there?
To understand how far we are from equal opportunity swearing, you only need look at the reaction towards women in the public eye. A personal favourite was Kim Sears’ “outburst” during husband Andy Murray’s Australian Open semi-final in 2015, when she seemed to mouth “fucking have it you Czech flash fuck” in the direction of his opponent’s team. Granted the reference to nationality was unnecessary, but it was hard not to admire her sheer alliterative fluency. Her response to accusations of “unladylike” conduct (now there’s a really offensive word) was to wear a “Parental advisory, explicit content” T-shirt at the final. Game, set and match, Kim.
If we do approve of a woman swearing, it tends to be fetishised – held up as evidence that she’s “salt of the earth” (I’m thinking Kathy Burke’s inimitable “about fackin’ time” as she picked up a comedy award in 2002).
My own education began with Bridget Jones’s sweary journalist friend Shazzer, who quite reasonably asks, “has he ever actually stuck his fucking tongue down your fucking throat?” of Mark Darcy. It was Bridget herself who, as far as I know, coined the phrase “emotional fuckwit” for a certain type of man and for which I’m for ever grateful.
These days, we’ve certainly become more permissive. There’s even sweary swag: I’m the proud owner of a Karen Cheung porcelain ring – painted with “fuck this shit” – which always sell out instantly to her fans; for them, a delicate piece of jewellery featuring an expletive feels like an act of rebellion. It sticks two fingers up at the notion of polite femininity, and you can’t put a price on that.
Do I think it’s big and clever to swear? Sometimes. But I always think that a well-placed profanity is the perfect way to reject outdated ideas about female delicacy and polite society. Plus, it can be deliciously creative. Colman has said her favourite line in the script was “fuck you in the nose holes”. Favourites of mine include: buggeration, knobber, clusterfuck, arse biscuits and “fuckpigs”, which was also used by Dominic Cummings to describe the cabinet.
I can’t deny that my own potty mouth might have something to do with the industry in which I work. Would I be so sweary had I spent the past two decades in a corporate environment, or the public sector, and not under some male editors in journalism for whom calling someone a “cunt” counted as people management? That word might have been used with derogatory intent and some women find it horribly misogynistic, I know. But I relish saying it: that it immediately forces you to confront any preconceptions you might have about women swearing is, for me, where its power lies.
Of course, the conundrum in all of this is that I want people to stay a bit offended when I swear and, inevitably, the more you do it, the less impactful it becomes. But the least we can do is remain equally offended by foul-mouthed men and women. Anything else is just rude.
Claire Cohen is a journalist and the author of BFF? The Truth About Female Friendship
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