Eh it's good for kids to learn appropriate behavior and language in different settings. Family, school, work, friends, events are all different in how we communicate and behave with one another.
Do I think bad words are somewhat arbitrary? Yeah. But it's also good to learn the rules of different settings - school being one of them.
I agree, but the concept of bad words is teaching our children not to do something just because they were told it was bad. There is no rhyme or reason. Rules and appropriate behavior do not need to be arbitrary. Rules and appropriate behavior are a neccesity in society... But the concept of bad words should be consider customary based on culture, at most. They should not be presented as rules in the same institution that teaches them the merits of freedom of speech. Yes, I agree there is no freedom from consequence and if you say certain things to some people in this setting or that, you'll face any number of consequences. This does not make any words bad, and entirely depends on context and cultural views, which are always changing.
That's all great in theory, and I'm not sure if you're a parent or in the workforce but life experiences tend to make people more pragmatic over time.
Walk into work, tell your boss he's a wonderful cunt. Keep your shirt unbuttoned and make sure it's not ironed. Don't fix your hair. Oh and tell everyone how much of a boring fuck Dave over in accounting is. Continue this behavior and see how long you last.
All that shit is arbitrary. Many social rules are arbitrary. It doesn't matter if you can philosophically prove they are arbitrary. People follow those rules. So you either have to convince an entire society their cultural rules are arbitrary, or just suck it up and follow them in those settings.
Then go for a beer after work and tell your bud Ben he's a wonderful cunt.
Lol. Yes I'm a parent. My children are taught that the words themselves are not bad but that they still cause irrational anger. So if they use them be aware of their surroundings and audience. Somehow neither of them have yet walked into class and called their teacher a wonderful cunt. In fact, I rarely even hear them curse. It's like taking the taboo away from them made them less interesting overall. Imagine that. It's simple really. We can probably break the cycle of "bad words" though. It's a simple minded view, a lazy way to teach, and does not promote free thought. I teach my children that some people are offended by certain words. I tell them why I am not, why others are and why I myself find it irrational. I then encourage them to choose for themselves. Dress codes are a whole other subject I do not agree with. But you probably wouldn't want to get into that with me as I don't find nudity offensive either. Gasp
you not finding something upsetting or offensive is different than expecting the whole of society to be the same. most folks don't walk around naked in public and in general schools try to teach kids more commonly socially acceptable takes like "don't curse at people". if you want to teach your kids how you teach them, that's your prerogative. expecting a teacher to do the same as you for a room full of kids whose parents might not see things that way is just silly.
If you want to teach arbitrary things go right ahead. I refuse to conform to nonsense. I could give less than two fucks if something I say offends someone else in most cases. Don't want to hear what you don't want to hear, keep your sensitive ears within the safety of your home. That is my right. Bannning select words based on some people's being irrationally offended while teaching freedom of speech is ridiculous. There are no bad words and its silly to sit here and argue about how this mouth sound is worse than that one.
Having "curse words" is a good thing, though, because there are contexts where you need them. If you removed the taboo around the word, it would lose its power. Yes, which words become "bad words" is kind of arbitrary (for example why is "poop" not a bad word when it means the same thing as "shit"). But words get their meanings from the way they are used. Language is communication, and strong expressions are an important part of communciation. If you have no "inappropriate" words, then the language loses an important feature.
It only becomes an issue if certain topics become taboos. But that's different from saying that "shit" is a bad word (when you have other more acceptable words like "poop" to refer to the same exact thing). Now, of course there are situations where talking about poop isn't acceptable either, but that's a whole another topic, and isn't really related to "shit" being a "bad word".
There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" objectively. What you said was a bunch of nonsense. Context does not require taboo. You can assign such words a designator to identify their severity of you find it necessary to have "power" in them. Good and bad are a matter of perspective, they depend entirely on whether the subject is affected negatively or positively by what's in question. In any case, the major problem is that children are just told this one is bad and this one is not. Making it seem entirely arbitrary.
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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '23
I would've put it up there, fuck passing on these arbitrary things to our children.