From: coren@osf.org (Robert Coren)
Subject: Re: "fuck"
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:25:06 GMT

In article <4947@news.duke.edu>, John_Graves@cellbio.duke.edu writes:
> In article <1992Aug28.082007.914@reed.edu> nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar)
> writes:
> >Is there any good explanation for the multiple uses of the word
> >"fuck"?
> 
> [delightful sexual examples omitted]
> 
> >But I don't understand using the word "fuck" to describe people.
> >Phrases like "you stupid fuck" or "dumbfuck" as insults for people -
> >what's going on? Is it just that the word "fuck" is inherently
> >obscene and nasty, and so is useful even when it is ungrammitical?

I think that's about it. Well, except for the "inherently" -- the word
is "obscene and nasty" because modern humans have weird ideas about
sex, and have made the words that most clearly express sexual ideas
taboo. You might say the society is "fucked up" on this subject.
[We can explain *that* usage some other time.]

> >
> >I won't even begin trying to understand "Fuck you!" as an insult.
> 
> Perhaps we can deconstruct this to be the verbal equivalent of rape.  One
> implies the [I will] Fuck you [if you ...].  It is a power giving term to the
> user and implies a less than manliness on the part of the usee who doesn't come
> back swinging or with a similar retort.

I agree as to the social import, but I think the grammatical
derivation is slightly different -- it's one of the few remaining
examples of the subjunctive in English. Compare "damn you" -- which
means "you be damned", or "[May] God damn you". Thus "fuck you" is a
way of wishing on the other person that they be fucked -- which, for a
man, is supposed to be about the worst thing that can happen to him.
As for women, well, you're not supposed to say things like this to
women, and besides, women don't enjoy sex anyway, do they?
(See above on societal attitudes about sex, strangeness of.)

Given this, it could be seen as odd indeed that those of us who think
being fucked is a *good* thing, and/or otherwise refuse to share
society's sexual hangups, still less its misogyny, nonetheless use
"fuck" as an intensifier with negative connotations: fuck you, fuck
off, you stupid fuck, fuckface (I reserve this one for other drivers,
myself), this fucking weather/program/can opener/etc. All I can say in
dubious defense of this practice is that we developed these habits
when our attitudes were unformed, and largely so by imitation; when
one is very angry, there's not a great tendency to think very hard
about appropriate verbal ways to express that anger. And the
intensifier still has some "shock value", even though the days are
long past when one rarely saw the word in print, and never heard it on
stage or screen. (Commercial television and daily newspapers are the
last holdouts, although even the _Boston Globe_ has been known to use
it in direct quotation.) My use of the word is mostly unthinking, and
rooted in habit; the same kind of habit, born of imitation, that
causes me, a secularly-raised Jew, to use "God" and even "Jesus
Christ" as intensifiers.

But everyone draws the line somewhere:

> More to the point of motss, I wonder why gay and bisexual men so often use the
> term "you suck" to denigrate someone.

Some may argue with you about this, but I'm old enough to remember
observing the origin of "suck" in "cocksucker" -- I don't think "that
sucks" was common vulgar speech in the 50s and early 60s -- and when I
made the connection, after I came out, I stopped using it. I still
cringe when I hear it, especially from gay folk. I know this is
inconsistent with my own habits as described above, but if we humans
were always consistent, we'd be much less interesting.

Robert
Newsgroups: soc.motss