Thanks for stopping by, Chris Crawford, and giving me some words to chew on. 🤓

Not sure where you’re based but swearing is a very cultural thing. America doesn’t take kindly to it, England doesn’t bat an eyelid, and Scotland is on another level altogether in terms of creativity.

In some of the places I worked at, swearing was newsroom lingo and yet we were all unfailingly polite and articulate folks when taken out of there.

A lot of my swearing happens in jest and I will rarely blow up at a random stranger unless they’ve done something that warrants it, like throwing a water bomb at me a few weeks ago and soaked me from top to toe… With hindsight, it was funny as they had perfect aim and there was a loud cartoon “Splat!”. But I certainly wasn’t at all amused at the time.

Similarly, if I close the door on one of my fingers or walk into a wall, the pain will immediately translate into the unprintable. That’s reflexive, as is the case with many of us. If I catch it in time and I’m in a good mood, I might go “Oh, fiddlesticks!” because it’s playful.

And because swearing is blunt, it’s also more honest than fake smiles and phony words, IMO. As with everything, context matters and I’ve no problem switching registers and conveying what I feel without making my interlocutor’s ears bleed or throwing a temper tantrum, which isn’t my style at all as I left adolescence behind a few decades ago and was never prone to them in the first place.

As for gender stereotypes, it’s not because they’ve always existed that we can’t make a concerted effort to do away with them altogether so let’s try!

As things stand, too many people are being othered and left behind, hence my belief that we should eradicate not just gender stereotypes but gender altogether to reflect all facets of humanness…