Topics Language

Question What does "fucing" mean and why is it a bad word? Does fucing mean sex where there is a desire to express physical control or dominance over a woman? Is that a bad thing? Is it a normal aspect of what is sometimes thought as its opposite, "lovemaking"? If it is normal does that mean that it is not a bad thing? (I use an asterisk because I do not know if this site has a word filter.)

Accepted:
July 26, 2012

Comments

OK, there are a few things going on here. Let's begin with a little bit about obscenity.

Some words are regarded as obscenities, but then other descriptions of the very same things are not. If I use the term "sexual intercourse," no one is going to accuse me of using an obscenity. So why, then, do people object to the f-word, since it seems to refer to the same thing?

Well, the very notion of an obscenity is a bit unclear, and may simply be contextual. I can certainly imagine circumstances in which a use of the f-word would not seem to me to qualify as an obscenity. It might, for example, be a part of a rather intriguing invitation (or promise), under the right circumstances.

The problem you seem to be attending to might perhaps be in the fact that the f-word is usually associated with doing something to someone, as in "f*** you!" So part of what make it an obscenity is that it conceives of sexual intercourse in an offensive (and possibly threatening) way. So the element that makes the f-word obscene may lie in the way in which the relevant sex act is conceived. In this conception (with the exceptions noted above removed), there does seem to be something at least a bit wrong here.

Something of this sort of thing may be similarly seen in other forms of obscenity. Think of obscene terms for body parts, for example, as opposed to the more neutral descriptions of clinical terms. The obscene versions seem to have the effect of making things sound nasty, or bad, or taboo in some way.

My point is that there is a kind of negative valence that attaches to obscene expressions (such as the f-word), which are absent in neutral or clinical terms for what otherwise would count as the same thing. In that sense, they are not really synonyms with the clinical versions--they are not actually references to the same thing--generalizing, they add something nasty.

So as for the act, I hope what I have already said makes the complications with this part of your question clearer. Precisely what act are we talking about now? Are we talking about sexual intercourse (with or without love, which is simply an added complication that I will here avoid, hence my failure to use the term "lovemaking")? Or are we talking about something nasty? If we are talking about something nasty, then whether or not such nastiness is normal (by whatever measure) seems to me to be beside the point. If it is nasty, then to that extent (and in whatever sense it is nasty, whether moral, aesthetic, or even in terms of etiquette) it is bad.

Now, one thing also seems to need a bit of extra attention in your question, and that is in your suggestion that f-ing might indicate "sex where there is a desire to express physical control or dominance over a woman." I suppose it could indicate that, and I think there might be a variety of opinions about whether that impulse itself is nasty or not. I am inclined to think that it is, but it might take me a while to defend this view. But what mostly bothers me about your association of this impulse with the f-word is that it seems to entail that heterosexual women could never have the impulse to f*** their male partners. That doesn't seem true to me--even if we maintain that f-ing entails doing something nasty, to retain the obscenity. Can't a heterosexual women intend something nasty in engaging in sexual intercourse with a man? Why not, and why, then, wouldn't we say of her that she wants to f*** the guy? So I think there is a gender bias in your description, and I would question that. It seems to me that whatever might lead us to think of this activity in terms of an obscenity probably applies to all genders and sexualities. But perhaps not. If angels have sex, perhaps they are simply incapable of f-ing.

I agree with my colleague, N.S., and would like to add that his last line is worth reading the whole post!

Another way to think about this term comes from personal experience - in which meaning and gender analysis had no part. A number of years ago I was walking down a hallway in a classroom building and suddenly remembered that I neglected a Big Commitment...and the word "F**K!!" emerged loudly from my professorial mouth. Horrified, I looked around to apologize to any tender ears but I was spared because fortunately no one overheard me. But the ease with which it blurted out without my conscious permission gave me pause. It was, at the very least, unbecoming behavior. I vowed to amend my ways; I wanted to become more becoming in my speech. With practice I have developed some verbal temperance. As a virtue, this temperance has led to at least two good things: first if, as Aristotle suggests, we are what we do, using obscenities is simply a nasty habit and we become, well, nasty, and who wants to be thought of as nasty? But secondly, the very selective use of an obscenity preserves its impact. The ubiquity of course language around us makes it harder to up the ante when one feels truly vexed. But then, I'm just a professor. As some of my students might say, what the f**k do I know?

-bjm