Recently, I was severely castigated in a Facebook comment thread for using the term "boob" in the humorous exchange that had formed underneath a meme, posted by a woman, using this picture:
My initial comment was, "teenage boy designs own bedroom." This received lots of laugh emojis, including from the original poster. Then some guy posted that I had left out lots of other demographics that would also enjoy the visual effect depicted. In my response, I explained that I wasn't trying to exclude any other "boob fanciers," but brevity won out over complete detail. The original poster of the image then chastised me harshly for using the word, "boob."
I hate to offend anyone inadvertently. If I'm going to offend someone, I want it to be a carefully calculated maneuver that I might very well regret for the rest of my life, but was at least done with my feet shoulder width apart and the slap or jab delivered precisely. So I brooded. I reflected on my entire history with the term "boob" for breasts. Breasts, by the way, was the acceptable term I was directed to, after I edited the offending comment to what I thought was a humorously overly elaborate descriptor of the anatomical detail at issue.
My awareness of the wider world began in the 1960s. As a younger sibling of the counterculture, I was old enough to feel like almost a part of it, but too young actually to be one. I was part of that generation's trickle-down dilution of culture into cosplay, as happens with any generation's trend setters who have to see their hair styles and clothing go mainstream and end up on school kids and toddlers. I was a hopelessly unhip dipshit, but I tried hard, which only made it worse. It never got better.
My first guide into hipness was my cool cousin, who was the oldest child in her branch of the family. She knew the names of all the musicians who were calling out the failures of the establishment in poetry and song. She was a Wiccan and a pagan and dressed accordingly. She pierced my younger sister's ears old school, with a big needle, after numbing the earlobes with ice. It was a rite of passage that my sister endured with the bravery of any youngster on the verge of puberty, going through painful rituals to achieve another notch toward adult status. It wasn't old school then, it was common practice. She also guided me through my first purchase of blue jeans that weren't just little kid dungarees. And she tried to teach me, over the ensuing years, a few things about language and culture -- as she saw it -- regarding the mode average sexual relations between men and women. Among her stated preferences, she specifically stated that she thought that the word "breasts" was stuffy and stilted, that "tits" was unacceptably crude, and that "boobs" struck the perfect balance of informal and lighthearted.
In 1972, George Carlin presented the world with the list of seven words you can never say on television. They became a mantra. Shit, piss fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. For a conscientious Profanitarian, shit, piss, fuck, and motherfucker remain. But cocksucker can be considered both homophobic, and hypocritical as an insult, if one possesses a penis and accepts the ministrations of a fellationist. And of course cunt and tits are crude references to female anatomy. To some philosophers, no man should utter any reference to female anatomy whatsoever, unless it's part of their duly trained and educated profession. We can spiral off some other time into the question of whether any man should ever be allowed into a profession or trade that requires any reference to female anatomy. But even within the strictures of the first proposition, that no man shall speak of female anatomy unless licensed to do so, most of us are unlicensed to do so.
Working in a bike shop, I do get presented with anatomical details relating to the part of the body that endures contact with a bicycle seat. In that context I do have to hear and use terms describing the female intimate anatomy. Most of those questions can be answered with generic solutions related to saddle shape and position, without ever mentioning the human parts in contact with it. On rare occasions someone will go into graphic, specific detail. In that case I guess I am granted a limited term, temporary license. Even so, I can get by without speaking of the forbidden, only prescribing remedies using the inanimate bicycle saddle and its position in three dimensions.
When one is limited in speech by social strictures, one must rehearse mentally. Otherwise, when called upon to speak of the forbidden topics in a licensed, public setting, one may blurt something offensive, or lose so much time choosing words that one appears incompetent.
The problem is most challenging for the male, the white male in particular. As the dominant players in the rise of civilization, we've grown accustomed to setting the standards to which all others must adhere. This is hardly to say that we represent a true meritocracy. It's merely a testament to the power that bullies have in shaping group behavior over a wider and wider area. White men and their allies will admonish everyone else not to be thin-skinned ninnies when it comes to enduring taunts and slang that owe their origins to hierarchical interpretations that put the white guy on top. The groups under this regime have responded with increasingly rebellious humor through the decades, leading now to increasing insistence on recognition. White men and their allies are pushing back. That doesn't make them right. But it would be a mistake to make them all wrong, too. Beyond the whiteness, men in general possess undesirable tendencies that are the source of their strength and the root of their evil. We, the male, can generally be discounted, but you still want to be absolutely sure that a white, male achievement was stolen from someone of another hue or gender before pissing on it.
Day by day one learns what you can say to whom. As I have striven always to limit my offensiveness only to those who should be offended, I fight a tendency to play with language for humorous value, and to seek audience approval in the form of laughs or appreciative feedback. In a perfect future, people will all, voluntarily and without a dystopian legal framework, just dress in gray and walk past each other quietly. If we have business to conduct, we will conduct it. Sex work will be legalized as a therapeutic service engaged in without emotion or particular excitement. People's own homes might be filled with color and emotive activity, but it stays inside the enclave. Nothing will be forbidden. The underground world can be as bright and wild as one wishes. Go drinking. Go dancing. Go find some fun and have it. But the public face will be gray block buildings, gray clothes, emotionless commerce. The default of interaction will be as sterile as one can be. Any departure from that accepts the terms and conditions that go with any assumption of risk.
3 comments:
Most of the people whom i have heard using the term "boobs" are women. As a matter of fact, IIRC, the first time i heard the term was from a girl. It was less crude than "titties" and somewhat more acceptable in mixed company of young teenagers when i was one, and still heard in otherwise polite conversation in mixed adult company, no more offensive than referring to the buttocks as one's ass.
I know, right? I felt a bit sandbagged by the blowback I received. I’m pretty sure I learned the term “boobs” from a woman, back in the wild and crazy 1970s, when people seemed like they were getting totally comfortable talking about sex with each other. It had been a safe option for decades.
In the 1920s "boob" meant a fool, as in Rube Goldberg's comic strip Boob McNutt (which is said to have unintentionally scuttled the presidential ambitions of a real Senator McNutt). It still has enough of that meaning that puns made on it are sometimes understood. The other words are all old English words that centuries ago were simply descriptive terms. We have an odd circumstance today, a new Puritanism, in that all the formerly forbidden words seem to be acceptable in public discourse, but what the words represent is often not acceptable.
Post a Comment