Why no cussing?

[GunslingerCS]

So, I dont understand what the deal is with the censorship. Dont get me wrong, I dont like it either when some kid who just learned to swear and is out of mommy's earshot tries it out, but that doesent mean we must destroy the tool completely.
I refer to swear words as a tool, because thats exactly what they are. Think of them as really emotive words. For example, the word "energetic" is kinda boring. "Charged" creates a much more concrete connection between poet and reader, which is really what all this about. What about "angry" and "seething" ? " "Vivid" or "Lucid" ?
Likewise if someone wants to carry through an idea that he/she feels must be very strongly expressed, then who are we to say that they are wrong? Or that some words are alright, and some arent.
I am not suggesting that idiots run rampant. We have moderators, obviously if someone is just spouting swearwords off for no reason, something must be done. But to censor these words in a poem...well, I thought that was exactly what fellow artists were not supposed to do.

Some may say that swear words are not art, but are a form of pornogrophy. Let's remember ourselves people; they are just words. And perhaps porno is an art; why not?

Hopefully this poorly worded thesis will succed in swaying you over to my opinion. Please, respond with your thoughts and ideas on this matter.

[HowardM2]

What are you talking about?

[arthur_henry]

Back under the bridge with you

[Jeanne G]

If you think swearing isn't aloud in here, then you definitely haven't met our Harry yet, he has some very emotive moments. And then there is our own Canadian grown Rachel Lindley, who sports a footnote advising everyone to play hide and go fuck yourself.

My guess is you have been reading blurbs and some forum stickies and came across something about profanity stifling creativity or there being much more original word choices. I forget exactly where I read it, but I, for the most part agree. There is no active banning of it that I have ever seen, but it just doesn't come about often that a swearword it totally apt and adds rather than detracts from the piece. But when it does, which happened recently a critiquer of that piece may actually commend the writer of said piece that it was a good call.


Jeanne

[MEHope]

What the fuck do you mean?

[HowardM2]

What the fuck do you [editorial deletion]?

[Donner]

Are you referring to this (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/misc.php?s=&action=faq&page=3#censor)? I believe that the auto-Big Bro is not activated at the moment.

[Scavella]

GSCS:

Why the fuck don't you (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&postid=122117#post122117)

read around the fucking site (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&postid=59664#post59664)

and fucking get to know (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&postid=65529#post65529)

garyg (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&postid=36029#post36029)

fuck (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3894)

[Tony Hoffman]

How about an automatic cliché censor?

[HowardM2]

What, you want to turn Chaos and the lower critical forums into an arid wasteland? Sheesh. I mean, Shit.

[Tony Hoffman]

Or Robo-critic:

"This [banal word choice] of a [meaningless platitude][arcane inversion]
has [hackneyed phrase] to warble like a [incomprehensible simile]
along the [cliché] [cliché] [self-indulgent drivel]
to [mawkish melodrama] [way retro inversion]."

[HowardM2]

Hmmm, maybe you are on to something there.

[Scavella]

GSCS:

For fuck's [bleep], get a fuck[blip] grip. (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23666&poems)

[size=1]Censorship while under the influence.[/size]

[mindsweeper]

pee
po
belly
bum
drawers

is all I have to add (courtesy of mother's dictionary of foul language).

[Nanphi]

See, Casey, no censorship.
And while we're hovering over the topic of how this site functions, please note that the moderators are not Nazi-fascists (the typical and oh-so-boring newbie insult) and the common-sense rules are not restrictive to anyone's freedoms.
Post your poems in an appropriate forum for your skill level. Thank all those who comment, no matter what they say (this is known as "courtesy"). Work on developing your writing. Offer thoughtful critiques to other posters. That's all you have to do.
Good luck, and may you come to enjoy PFFA the way we all do.
- Nanphi

[romac]

"There is no such thing as bad language; only language used badly."
- James Kelman.
(who used "fuck" over 4,000 times in his Booker prize winning novel, How late it is, how late.

[SarahJF]

I don't know much about this, but I do know that 'fuck' is an Anglo-saxon word. I think 'buggery' is, too. 'Pussy' is Norman, in origin, I think. No idea about 'wank' or 'piss', although I assume 'piss' is norman, too - having seen pissoirs in France. But it's interesting, isn't it, why some words are seen to be 'rude', and some not. I wonder why fuck came to be a rude word. If one really thinks about it, then it's one of those words that has a sound that can describe the action, if we're seventeen, and doing it outside a nightclub in a fumbling sort of way.


Sarah

[SarahJF]

Not that I ever did, of course.

Sarah
(prudish, but unafraid of visceral words)

[Donner]

For the more statistics-minded folks out there, I did a search for four of the most common "cuss" words in use today. My search yielded the following information:

"fuck" (in all its various forms, i.e. "fuck", "fuck you" and "fuck off") was found in 409 posts;
"shit" was found in 562 posts;
"bitch" was found in 200;
"damn" (rather quaint by today's standards) was found in 1055.

Donner,
an inquiring mind

[Searcher]

“I don't know much about this, but I do know that 'fuck' is an Anglo-saxon word.”

I am not positive but I think FUCK was an acrostic used to label sinners put in the stocks For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge


Gene
fucked if I know for sure though

[B.D.]

According to the alt.usage.english FAQ:
Quote:

"[Fuck] is a very old word, recorded in English since the 15th century (few acronyms predate the 20th century), with cognates in other Germanic languages. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (Random House, 1994, ISBN 0-394-54427-7) cites Middle Dutch fokken = "to thrust, copulate with"; Norwegian dialect fukka = "to copulate"; and Swedish dialect focka = "to strike, push, copulate" and fock = "penis". Although German ficken may enter the picture somehow, it is problematic in having e-grade, or umlaut, where all the others have o-grade or zero-grade of the vowel.
AHD1, following Pokorny, derived "feud", "fey", "fickle", "foe", and "fuck" from an Indo-European root peig2 = "hostile"; but AHD2 and AHD3 have dropped this connection for "fuck" and give no pre-Germanic etymon for it. Eric Partridge, in the 7th edition of Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Macmillan, 1970), said that "fuck" "almost certainly" comes from the Indo-European root *peuk- = "to prick" (which is the source of the English words "compunction", "expunge", "impugn", "poignant", "point", "pounce", "pugilist", "punctuate", "puncture", "pungent", and "pygmy"). Robert Claiborne, in The Roots of English: A Reader's Handbook of Word Origin (Times, 1989) agrees that this is "probably" the etymon. Problems with such theories include a distribution that suggests a North-Sea Germanic areal form rather than an inherited one; the murkiness of the phonetic relations; and the fact that no alleged cognate outside Germanic has sexual connotations.

In plain English, this means the term's origin is likely Germanic, even though no one can as yet point to the precise word it came down to us from out of all the possible candidates. Further, a few scholars hold differing pet theories outside of the Germanic origin one, theories which appear to have some holes in them.

'Fuck' is an old word, even if it's been an almost taboo term for most of its existence. It was around; it just wasn't used in common speech all that much, let alone written down and saved for posterity. Likely its meaning contributed to its precise origin becoming lost in the mists of time — scholars of old would have been in no hurry to catalogue the growth of this word, and by the time it forced its way into even the most respectable of dictionaries, its parentage was long forgotten.

The earliest cite in The Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1503. John Ayto, in his Dictionary of Word Origins cites a proper name (probably a joke or parody name) of 'John le Fucker' from 1250, quite possibly proof the word we casually toss about today was being similarly tossed about 750 years ago.

Spurious etymologies such as this one satisfy our urge for completion — we want to believe such a naughty word has a salacious back story, something replete with stocks and adulterers, or fornication permits handed out by a king. How utterly prosaic to find out 'fuck' came to us the way most words sneak into the language — it jumped the fence from another tongue, was spelled and pronounced a bit differently in its new home, and over time drifted into being a distinct word recognized by everyone. Takes all the fun out of it, it does. "

Brian
I've gotta get a fuckin' life.

[Empty Chairs]

Perhaps one of the most interesting and colourful words in the English language today is the word "fuck". It is the one magical word which, just by its sound, can describe pain, pleasure, love, and hate.

In language, "fuck" falls into many grammatical categories:

It can be used as a verb, both transitive (John fucked Mary) and intransitive (Mary was fucked by John).
It can be an action verb (John really gives a fuck), a passive verb (Mary really doesn't give a fuck), an adverb (Mary is fucking interested in John), or as a noun (Mary is a terrific fuck).
It can also be used as an adjective (Mary is fucking beautiful) or an interjection (Fuck! I'm late for my date with Mary).
It can even be used as a conjunction (Mary is easy, fuck she's also stupid).

As you can see, there are very few words with the overall versatility of the word "fuck". Aside from its sexual connotations, this incredible word can be used to describe many situations...

Greetings: "How the fuck are ya?
Suspicion "Who the fuck are you?"
Fraud: "I got fucked by the car dealer."
Resignation: "Oh, fuck it!"
Trouble: "I guess I'm fucked now."
Aggression: "FUCK YOU!"
Disgust: "Fuck me."
Confusion: "What the fuck...?"
Difficulty: "I don't understand this fucking business!"
Despair: "Fucked again..."
Pleasure: "I fucking couldn't be happier."
Displeasure: "What the fuck is going on here?"
Lostness: "Where the fuck are we?"
Disbelief: "UNFUCKING BELIEVABLE!"
Retaliation: "Up your fucking arse!"
Denial: "I didn't fucking do it."
Perplexity: "I know fuck all about it."
Apathy: "Who really gives a fuck, anyhow?"
Panic: "Let's get the fuck out of here."
Directions: "Fuck off."
Disbelief: "How the fuck did you do that?"

It can be used in an anatomical description: "He's a fucking asshole."
It can be used to tell time: "It's five fucking thirty."
It can be used in business: "How did I wind up with this fucking job?"
It can be maternal: "Motherfucker."
It can be political: "Fuck George Bush!"

[Harry R]

Dictonary.com provides this fantastic window onto medieval life for an earlier usage of 'fuck' -

Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past.

Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, “Flen flyys,” from the first words of its opening line, “Flen, flyys, and freris,” that is, “fleas, flies, and friars.” The line that contains fuck reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.”

The Latin words “Non sunt in coeli, quia,” mean “they [the friars] are not in heaven, since.” The code “gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk” is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w.

This yields “fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli.” The whole thus reads in translation: “They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].”

[johnkeough]

My question about the cussing is:
Why the fuck can't we fucking just fucking say whatever we fucking want to, I mean why the fuck should we have to fucking follow fucking rules or any-fucking-thing? Who in their right mind fucking beleives in any semblance of fucking order or fucking structure to a fucking work-fucking-shop? Who the fuck came up with that fucking brillant fucking idea? I don't need you silly fucking bastards because I can go to fucking starlite, fucking poetry.com, fucking fluff.net, fuckingrandomwordsinrandom order.org and they all fucking think I'm the fucking shit, just the other day I had five fucking comments in three fucking minutes that all said fucking great fucking stuff, so fucking powerful, i mean fucking missplelling 'I' as an 'e' is fucking genius and fucking no one has ever fucking done that fucking before, we all think you could publish fucking a fucking book or something you fucking great fucking writer of all fucking great fucking poems that I have ever fucking seen!!!!! So there you can take your fucking fuck-fuck-fuckity fuck rules and fucking shove them!


I think I might post this as a poem in Merciless, is that okay?

I mean it looks like a poem so it must be one, right?

[emitchel]

In the United States, we have the famous Pacifica case, in which the Supreme Court established that George Carlin's "seven words you can never say on television" couldn't be said on radio either, costing me my job.

The court's official reporter, however, included a complete transcript of Carlin's routine. May I paste the court's web edition here to prove that if the United States Supreme Court can say fuck it, PFFA can too?