Cotton Wool World by Eve Westwood - HTML preview

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One hundred and thirty eight

I’m continually reprimanded for swearing. I don’t understand why. It’s a form of expression as worthy as any other in my opinion. I enjoy swearing when the need takes me. I’m not a person of particularly limited vocabulary. It’s just that when I feel strongly about something, positively or negatively, it emphasises the way I feel. Something can be equally fucking incredible as it can be a pile of bollocks. Bollocks for example is a great descriptive word. You can understand what someone means immediately when they say, ‘This is just bollocks’. I don’t think it is discriminatory to either sex but we have been taught that. We have been successfully conditioned. Well, most of us anyway.

I’m not offended by the words ‘cunt’ or ‘twat’, I use the words liberally myself. I don’t think many men are offended by the words ‘cock’ and ‘bollocks’, unless of course you are referring to them in person.

Of course I was told it was wrong to swear when I was young, it made it more exciting to do it then so object defeated really. I know a lot of women who pull a face when the word cunt is use, followed by ‘I hate that word, it’s the one word I can’t stand’. Why.

No-one ever says why. I’d hazard a guess that the reason is that everyone around them has said it at one 138

point or another. It’s a knock on effect. Also, there is a huge stigma about talking about sex in this country anyway so it makes sense that a lot of sexual terms, no matter how polite are frowned upon. Why can’t I be free with my use of language? I’m not judging anyone.

I don’t swear very much infront of my family. There are the words I know I can get away with like shit and bugger. Its odd how people easily forget meanings of words isn’t it. The first meaning a poo coming out of your bottom and the second meaning to have anal sex.

But god help me if I dare say fuck, which only means having sex, which in my book is supposed to be a pleasurable way of recreating life or just a pleasurable activity full stop, I’d get a right good slap off my mother. Does this sound familiar or is it just me?

To go off on a tangent, not to get me wrong, I don’t believe anal sex is immoral. At the end of the day it’s all about personal choice and if two consenting people want to do something, they should be able to do it as long as it is they alone who are affected by it. If penis’

were only meant to go in vagina’s why do a lot of people stick them in their mouths. A whole new subject matter entirely, my point is simply this, I can say ‘bugger’ infront of my mum, my dad and even my gran but imagine instead if I started this topic of conversation with them over drinks.

I’d have been fucked if I was born two hundred years ago wouldn’t I. Amongst other things I wouldn’t be allowed to even discuss swearing. I wouldn’t have been educated well, if at all. It would have been frowned upon to know how to read, let alone, write my opinions down. I wonder how many women went through life as housewives as mothers and were thoroughly miserable? Only having certain topics fit for conversation. It’s unthinkable really.

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All you need do is watch an old Hollywood film to see the way society was portrayed. Women were thin and sexy and happy with their lives spent baking bread and looking after the home. If they were well off, they may even have a Negro servant or housekeeper who was always overweight and jolly.

Then, they could sit and embroider. They still show these films, usually in the middle of the afternoon and I imagine a lot of bored, suppressed housewives sit and watch them without making any sort of correlation. Why are these stereotypical films still shown? I think they’re more offensive than the word

‘fuck’. A million times worse. Is it a bid by the television executives to reinforce these beliefs? No, they’re all as thick as each other in terms of not even letting certain thoughts register in their minds. How can it be not only acceptable but the norm to portray black people as happy with their lot, pandering to the needs of white people? It makes me sick. They censor sex and violence because human beings are apparently easily influenced and there is a fear of children especially acting out what they see on the television.

So why then, do we reinforce sexism and racism?