A. a sexist--get over it.
B. just not used to hearing women use profanity--you are more desensitized to hearing men use profanity.
C. in denial--women use profanity just as much as men but your lofty ideals blind you from seeing it.
D. completely normal and justified in your offense.
E. None of the above.
I get more offended when I hear women use profanity than when I hear men use it. Offended may not be the best word--I at least experience a stronger internal jolt--especially for the hard core profanity. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't put profanity at the top of my list of moral or secular concerns--but it's not something I find particularly praiseworthy either.
Perhaps I react differently when the volatile words escape from female lips because I grew up without sisters--and my neighborhood was dominated by males. When I got to college, I frankly didn't hear much swearing, but I was caught off guard when I first heard females belch. (I don't remember if I actually believed if that was physically possible or not--when I was real young, I actually believed that women peed green and didn't poop. Yes, I'm saving up for psychoanalysis.) It could be basic ignorance on my part then, though I have read that research shows that in actuality women actually do use less profanity than men.
Do I hold women to a higher standard? Perhaps. Maybe I have given up a bit on men. In some ways, my faith in males may not be as high as it is in females. That certainly was true maybe 15 or 20 years ago. I have often had greater appreciation for the stereotypical gentler natures of women--communicative, sensitive, empathic, self-sacrificing. I've realized over the years that perhaps such a package is a bit exaggerated--yet I think there is some truth to it (and I believe research in general bears that out, in terms of overall group differences). I've never related too well to the archetypal masculine male--heck I have a blog! In short, maybe I've come to expect less from males than females--not to excuse males, but an acquiescence to reality.
There are of course, the exceptions. There are and have always been exceptionally compassionate, responsible, noble men. I could name a long list. Yet, I suppose I may think of them as being toward the extreme end of the bell-curve instead of in the middle.
Moreover, in more recent years, I've become somewhat of a male apologist. In my field particularly there has been such an attack (though often subtle) on males and masculinity that I find myself being a bit defensive about it and wanting to highlight the virtues of malehood--though not at the expense of valuing femalehood. I've tried to better value what both bring to the table, in the case that their entrees differ. But I admit I still tend to hold women to a higher standard (as a group--I personally don't use that as an excuse to justify my own pitfalls--more as an observation of how I perceive things to be). But that's not my ideal.
Maybe I take solace in the notion that at least only half of us is doing it, and when I see the other half picking up on the trend it seems like a greater shame. Come to think of it, I roll my eyes with more fervor when I see men smiling while clothes shopping or when they look forward to watching The Bachelor.
2 comments:
I had a hard time deciding which option to pick, but I do consider it very unladylike to swear. I actually hate hearing profanity from either gender - to me it is showing a lack of vocabulary that one cannot come up with better words to describe things. I wasn't raised around profanity, although I know one set of grandparents used h__l and d__m freely.
I must say that I consider business men and women to be very unprofessional when talking with a potty mouth in a business setting.
Some keen observations. I agree with Nana J. I dislike it at all and fortunately because I don't use it, rarely hear it because people around me just don't use it in front of me. There's a cute story about a student up on a huge scaffold hanging lights for my show. He didn't know me- a friend of someone's and when I was walking into the room I heard a flow of words like **xX you know and another student hushed him up saying don't use those words here. It was really gratifying. Not on topic of course, but that's a woman for you.
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