Green Heart Guidance
  • Home
  • About Elizabeth
  • Specialties
    • Healing Trauma, Abuse and Loss
    • Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
    • Pregnancy and Infant Loss
    • Healing Messages
    • Pet Services
    • Remote Home Viewings
    • Green Living
    • Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
  • Guidance
    • Consultation Fees
    • Classes
    • CEU Seminars
    • Client Forms >
      • Liability Form
      • Policies and Procedures Agreement
      • New Client Information
      • New Pet Client Information
      • Bereavement Questionnaire
    • Payment Options
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

“Bad” Words

9/23/2015

0 Comments

 
J. K. Rowling once wrote, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” She illustrates this concept so beautifully throughout the Harry Potter series as most of the characters are afraid to speak the name of "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” or “You-Know-Who,” but the brave and powerful wizard teenager of Harry Potter refuses to join in their fearmongering. Instead, Potter says the words “Lord Voldemort” loud and clear much to the dismay of many of the other characters who are afraid that just mentioning the name will bring evil upon them.

We might laugh at this example and see it as absurd, but our own mainstream culture lives in fear of certain words which it has labeled as “bad.” I was recently chided for using “the F word” by my middle school son’s principal. I then proceeded to use it again along with some other words she probably didn’t appreciate either. The absurdity of her inability to name the word that disturbed her was both annoying and amusing to me.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a “bad” word. Words have cultural connotations, but they are just words and letters. The word fuck, for instance, is both a noun and a verb. The adjective is fucking. These words contain the letters f, u, c, and k just like many other words in the English language such as futtock, firetruck, rackful, sackful, unfrock, truckful, and fullback. There is nothing inherently wrong with those letters or any way that they can be used to form words.

However, if you decide that you find the word “fuck” offensive, then it is you (along with many others in our society) who is labeling the word as bad, and it is you who has issues around the word which you need to process. The word itself is not actually bad. If you don’t know why you are afraid of that word, look to your childhood. Your parents, teachers or church probably taught you that the word was bad and that if you used that word, you were bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. The words we use are merely words. The intent behind the word is what matters. If you tell someone to “fuck off,” in most situations that person will be offended, and probably rightfully so since you are telling them that you don’t respect them or their opinions. However, if you ask your romantic partner, “Want to fuck?”, the response will likely be quite different. The fact that the word fuck is considered profane by many is rooted in a societal fear of sexuality that exists simultaneously in a culture where sexual references abound. It’s a strange bit of hypocrisy in our world.

When we continue to teach others that certain words are “bad,” then we are perpetuating misinformation and conditioning our next generations in the same way we were conditioned as children. My own kids all know every “profane” word in the book, what they mean and why people find many of them offensive. They know them because they’ve heard them come out of my mouth on many occasions! However, my children have been fortunate to have been brought up in a family where it is recognized that words are just combinations of letters, and the connotation that one puts behind the word is the true issue. I know that is not the most common way for kids to be raised, but I am so glad that they are learning how not to bow to the fearmongering around language.

It’s not just so-called profanity that our society is afraid of. Words like feminist, queer, witch, nerd and pagan become taboo words when our culture deems them to be. Yet those words are ones that friends and I use frequently for we consider them part of our identity. We have chosen to embrace the parts of ourselves that many fear. Others can’t use words such as penis and vagina that describe their reproductive organs due to conditioned shame; those body parts are definitely not inherently bad for they are involved in the creation of every human on the planet. However, our culture definitely has issues around words that represent things that we are afraid of.

Synchronicity decided to kick in last night as I was writing this blog post during commercials of the new series premiere of The Muppets. One of the skits and ongoing gags in the show was about Sam the Eagle acting as the show’s network censor to filter out words that he deemed inappropriate for the public to hear. His list during the first staff meeting of the show included “crotchety, twiddle, and gesticulate.” Clearly the show was making a point about how arbitrary our censorship of certain “profane” words really is. Later in the episode, Kermit the Frog declares in frustration with about his ex-girlfriend Miss Piggy that his “life is a bacon-wrapped Hell on Earth.” As he speaks those words, Sam the Eagle walks past to declare, “You can’t say hell.” Such is the role those who wish to censor language: Utterly annoying to those who wish to express themselves freely. While the majority of our rational society agrees that censorship of books is wrong, we still have not come to a place where we agree that censorship of language is just as inappropriate. It’s long past time for all of us to embrace our lives, our sexuality, and our language rather than living in fear of things that aren’t really fearful.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Join our newsletter list

    Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.

    Holistic Life Coach and
    Intuitive Energy Healer

    Categories

    All
    Abuse
    Announcements
    Body
    Body Mind Spirit
    Chronic Illness
    Crystals
    Death
    Disabilities
    Family
    Gender
    General Guidance
    Green Living
    Helping Others
    Holidays
    Infant Loss
    Inspirational Mantras
    Lyme
    Marriage And Divorce
    Meditation
    Metaphysical Gifts
    Mind
    Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
    Narcissism
    Natural Healing
    Nutrition
    Parenting
    Past Lives
    Personal Growth
    Pets
    Popular Culture
    Pregnancy And Childbirth
    Product Recommendations
    Reviews
    Sexuality
    Spirit
    Spirituality And Religion
    Stress Release
    Subsequent Pregnancy After A Loss
    The Other Side
    The Single Life
    Trauma
    World Events

    Archives

    December 2024
    January 2023
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    RSS Feed

Services

Green Living
Healing Messages and Intuitive Energy Work
Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
Pet Psychic Services
Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Remote Home Viewing

About Green Heart Guidance

About Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
Contact Elizabeth
Consultation Fees
Client Forms

Social Media

​Facebook
Flickr
Goodreads
Instagram

LinkedIn
Pinterest
Spotify
Twitter
Youtube
Subscribe to GHG's Newsletter