When I was growing up and my father was home, he often used to swear. Like A LOT. He looked like your typical biker, worked in the aircraft industry, ex-military and Christian. One might think that being a Christian would prevent the swearing, it did not. One of our favorite stories to tell was how I got in trouble for telling a kid to “Shut the F@#& up!” at recess in the fifth grade. I was trying to break up a playground argument, no one was listening, so I did what I knew. It worked, they stopped arguing, but a little boy ran and ratted me out. I was terrified of getting into trouble, so I tried to pull it off and tell the teacher that I didn’t say the f work, I said “puck”. That didn’t work, so I was held after school and they called my dad. What happened next is my main memory of my dad having my back, I don’t remember him doing it often, but this was our proud, weird bonding moment. My father told the teacher that if I felt the need to use that word then it was obvious that I felt that it was important. I learned that word from him, so no, I would not be in trouble.

That day, I was basically given permission to use the same words as my dad. There was no longer anything wrong with it. I was a tom boy, I didn’t care if it didn’t seem “lady like”. When our first son was born, I worked very hard to stop swearing, I was a stay at home mom and I didn’t want my eventual toddler running around saying F this and F that. Then I went back to work, in communications. I now worked at a job full of ex-military guys who now work in IT. “Shit, there went that plan”, surrounded by guys who swear I went right back to my old ways.

It’s weird, eventually, co-workers would move on to other companies and I eventually found myself with mostly new people. I was now that bad influence, when the hell did that happen? Nearly all the ex-military, cursing like a sailor colleagues were no longer there, and I was “swearing too much”.

My Multiple Sclerosis has made it so that I must work from home most of the time, which helps with swearing. I have been trying to lessen the amount I use curse words, mostly because of my boys keep asking me to, but I noticed some of the medical professionals are offended. I can laugh at the ridiculousness of what life has dealt me so not to be pitied from everyone, make awkward jokes about my life but dropping the F bomb is too much.

Why is that, why do some people look down on you for using “bad” words? There are a couple of words I won’t use, I find them offense and vulgar, if someone else uses them I may cringe, but I won’t look down on them. What is the point of freedom of speech if you can use all the words? I had a medical professional make a special note in my post appointment notes about my use of swear words. I am sorry, what the fuck is it to you if I swear when talking about MY life? It’s not like I was calling them names, yes when asked a question I found difficult I may have said “shit”, but I didn’t say “fuck, why the hell did you ask me that question?” why does it matter? Why does my word choice matter?

What’s your opinion, should freedom of speech not allow for the use of “vulgar” language? If not, should we also censor religious language since there is a separation of church and state? Where’s the line?