Swift versus Berlin on Positive Liberty

They couldn’t make the point stick without resorting to good old fashioned bigotry?

…The kids these days. I wonder if any of the students involved with this project were female, and if so, how those students felt about the use of “sad twat” and “stupid cunt” to denigrate the female participant — one gratuitous gender-insult per minute goes a bit beyond rude to me, and into the category I’d charitably designate ‘insensitive and misguided.’

I hope there’s at least one feminist philosopher discussed in the course they presumably put this together for, and I hope at least a few of them come to regret those choices of parlay-insults. If any of the video’s authors pop by here by chance, may I suggest the replacements “sad sack of shit” and “stupid idiot” for future iterations or remixes?

This was made by some 15 year-old schoolkids in the UK.

I am simultaneously impressed by these adolescents’ familiarity with the basic arguments over autonomy and positive liberty, and appalled by the fact that they apparently think that creating a couple of repulsive trash-talking emotionless avatars to spout it off is somehow witty or ironic. Good grief. If these were my students, and they turned this in as part of a report, they’d get a taste of my positive liberty all right.

Roberto: those insults apply to men too

Phil: I’d go so far as to say that in British English those insults apply primarily to men

Me: Really? Obviously I’m not watching the right British tv shows…

Why is it people object to the use of the words “cunt” or “twat” never object to the use of the words “dick” or “bollocks”?

and Russell Arben Fox – what British TV shows have you actually seen where people don’t apply those insults to both men and women, or even primarily men?

I am simultaneously impressed by these adolescents’ familiarity with the basic arguments over autonomy and positive liberty, and appalled by the fact that they apparently think that creating a couple of repulsive trash-talking emotionless avatars to spout it off is somehow witty or ironic. Good grief.

I agree with you about that though.. damn it, but computer generated speech is irritating….

I’m not so impressed. Sounds like they took the arguments, word for word, out of a book and interspersed bad words. I realize that part of 15-year-old positive liberty is using bad words, but those irruptions seemed quite unnecessary to me.

It may be that the affectless avatars (and speech) are what give the arguments a rote feel and the students actually worked out what is being said. But, IIRC, it wasn’t ever that difficult to take book words and give the teacher what he/she wanted.

And, it may be that British slang for men consists of rude words for female genitals, but, um, can anyone see the sexism there?

The “repulsive trash talking” is the fault of the kids, but the emotionlessness of then avatars is just the nature of Xtranormal, which is quickly becoming as overdone as “Downfall” parodies. Admittedly, Xtranormal does allow more variation than the Hitler rant.

They’ve got the arguments, and haven’t just lifted the words from a book. Frankly, the best bit is when the Berlin avatar pauses before the third “yes it is”. I, too, dislike the swearing and especially the sexist swearing (well, maybe only the sexist swearing) which is why I didn’t pass it on to my students. I’m curious how many of the above writers have spent much time listening to 15 year old boys and girls though.

I guess if you’re gonna lean on “jewboy” you’ll have some sort of justification.

I think there’s a general point to be made, too, about argumentation.

It’s possible that 15-year-olds insult each other frequently in their arguments and that therefore they felt that adding insults to this argument made it more realistic, colloquial, whatever.

But I think it’s generally accepted among the educated that insults don’t add in any positive way to an argument and have a tendency to gratuitously rile up bad feelings, even violence. So the insults are at least veiled.

And insults of the kind used in the video are boring.

Teach the kids either to be more creative and subtle in their insults, or to leave them out.

Given it was made by 15 year old kids, the “parental advisory” warning seems a tad … pointless. It shows by example exactly the reason tipper gore invented the phrase – to control adult speech, rather than to protect children. Stupid sack of shit.

Is this that non sequitur stuff you were yammering on about?

I’m curious how many of the above writers have spent much time listening to 15 year old boys and girls though.

Quite a bit, Harry–though perhaps my experiences as a youth leader don’t count, as I’m dealing with kids on camp-outs and service trips and other activities, as opposed to listening to them in the hallways of the local middle school. In any case, I’ll happily grant that my reaction to such misogynistic language is downright prudish, and perhaps should be discounted accordingly. I’m still waiting for someone to back up Phil in #4 though, and his claim that in British English “c—” and “t—” are primarily predominantly non-gendered general male insults nowadays. I haven’t learned that from Mitchell and Webb, but I assume there are other, better sources.

27:
As someone with many male british friends I can confirm that in British English “c—-” and “t—-” are primarily predominantly non-gendered general male insults nowadays. At least that is my experience.

I’m still waiting for someone to back up Phil in #4 though, and his claim that in British English “c—-” and “t—-” are primarily predominantly non-gendered general male insults nowadays.

As a British person from a demographic who is pretty comfortable with swearing (“swearing”), I can confirm anecdotally (but strongly) that the words “cunt” and “twat” are used almost exclusively of men in the UK – and in the former case, using it of a woman would be pretty shocking and offensive, whereas using it of a man would be (socially at least) not. I doubt you’ll learn this from TV (other than the aforementioned Queer as Folk) because it’s not used enough.

The Wikipedia entry on the word is suggestive, if not quite as conclusive as you probably want:

Reflecting different national usages, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines “cunt” as “an unpleasant or stupid person”, whereas Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a disparaging term for a woman” and “a woman regarded as a sexual object”; the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English defines it as “a despicable man”.

Ok, I’ll confess I’ve spent approximately zero hours listening to British youth, so their use of [word1] and [word2] may be considered mild and normal and entirely appropriate across the pond from me. Fair enough. Among those views represented above, y81’s is the closest match to my own experience (teaching high school in the rural South). To answer Peter H’s request for clarification in a somewhat unsatisfactory way, probably this is a uniquely American-yankee-transplanted-to-the-Deep-South reaction to seeing a white male tear into a black female, who is the predominant recipient of the abuse. Maybe more evenly distributed insults wouldn’t have triggered my squick filter, I don’t know.

Anyhow I’m more than happy to drop it; I’d meant the “the kids these days” to be funny.

“To identify what would be rational for a person does not necessarily justify interfering with their irrational actions… to recognize that there can be internal obstacles to freedom is not to say that anybody other than the individual should be the judge of that.” was well-said, and if it really was the students’ own distillation, then bravo. And “So there. I win the argument” made me laugh; it’s very delightfully age-of-15.

I’m intrigued. If, in today’s mother of Parliaments, the c-word and the t-word are primarily used as mild insults directed at men, what words would be used as sexually aggressive insults directed at women? The b-word? A reference to some other female animal? Some other slang for female genitalia which is not used insultingly in the U.S.? Inquiring minds want to know.

Incidentally, there is a parallel to the asserted British usage, in that the p-word is mostly used in America as a mild insult for men, rarely directed at women.

I agree about the use of c and t words in the UK and Oz, though I dispute the claim that they’re “non-gendered” terms. Using a woman’s genitals as an insult seems pretty gendered to me.

It seems to me that the corollary of “t***” and “c***” (which I am not reproducing here per Harry’s request, above) in my own experience of North American usage would be “p***y”, which is pretty much exclusively used to denote weakness in the person. That is, it is an essentializing of the weakness of women in reference to men, and is the same as calling the person “woman” as an insult. Ironically, women can easily be called a p***y, apparently without any realization on the insulter that the word is in fact simply calling the insultee a woman by reference. That doesn’t make it any less of a put-down of women.

This doesn’t seem to be the case for t*** and c*** in the UK. I admit that I am often shocked when I hear brits using the word so casually, since its use as an insult (in Canada, anyway) hasn’t made its way into the vernacular in the same way — and I hope it never does. Anyone calling someone else a c*** here would stop the conversation dead in the same way using a racial epithet would.

Also, it surprises me to read so many people debating whether these insults are “gendered” though. They’re obviously gendered. What else could they be? It’s not like they’re calling people thumbs, eyeballs, or even assholes — which everybody of either gender has.

C*nt is certainly a gendered word but here in oz I’ve never ever heard it used about a female. Same as with pr*ck – never heard it used to describe a female.

s.g. – that was the meaning I recall from the novel Trainspotting, something like a more-vulgar version of “sonuva bitch” in U.S. English. What’s weird with that usage of “c***” (to the extent I interpreted it correctly) is that it’s quite divorced from any identifiable female-specific gender stereotypes. I’m not sure I agree with your theory here, because I think you could perfectly well say, “That c*** always sells good weed.”

(Of course, it’s interesting that “c***” can’t refer to a woman in this more-positive sense, as F.X.H. notes. Perhaps the female-specific, and extraordinarily offensive, U.S. usage bleeds into other countries’ slang and prevents it. I would note, contrary to F.X.H.’s experience, that in U.S. English it is definitely possible to refer to a woman as a “prick,” though perhaps a bit unnatural.)

gosh we don’t half have a lot of bluenoses and wowsers in the CT comments these days.

A few years back, Silvio Berlusconi said he didn’t think the Italian people were such coglioni as to elect the Left instead of him; I commented at the time that the Italian “pair of testicles” has a fairly good equivalent in the AmEng “asshole”, although the BritEng form doesn’t have the same connotations (“dickhead” would be closer).

More on BritEng usage here.

As for whether these terms are gendered, arguing that they’re *not* seems counter-intuitive, to say the least, but I think the association between the literal meaning & the figurative meaning is buried quite a long way down. I remember a conversation with a French sales rep at a trade show. “I don’t like dealing with those guys, they’re… do you say ‘asshole’ in England?” I said we didn’t, but we knew what it meant. “Yeah, they’re assholes.” I asked what he would have said in French. “C’est des cons.“

Maybe I shouldn’t have called him a ‘c**t’, and I do now regret the sexually aggressive gesture with which I ended the argument. I guess I wouldn’t have done either if I’d known some kid was going to stick it on Youtube. But, give me a break, the guy was winding me up – dressed up as a black woman! – and he had called me a tosser. I suppose I started the argument by calling his theory of liberty ‘s**t’ but that’s fair academic criticism, no?

I did meet Sir Isaiah Berlin a couple of times. He interviewed me for a Kennedy Scholarship and I, an undergraduate, saw this as my chance to explain to him why negative (by which I meant ‘formal’) freedom was not so great without positive (by which I meant ‘effective’) freedom. He was not impressed – but he didn’t call me a tosser.

I notice that nobody’s commented on Berlin’s calling Rousseau his ‘froggy friend’.

(Sorry, on re-reading, it looks like I’m implying that all of the above were TV shows. Only Monty Python was actually a TV show, although the others have been on TV)

wowser is in the old usage strictly applied to militant non drinkers – Rechabites – but nowadays more often used to denote a killjoy or pursed lips type of disapproval of anything resembling relaxed enjoyment.

I was just about to mention Phil’s superlative piece on British English swearing; I don’t think there’s one better.

Of course, we’re not even getting into dialect terms, which would take all day; there’s a peculiar habit in Scotland, especially the West, to use perfectly ordinary words as terms of abuse (tube, nugget, rocket, spoon), if said with enough vehemence. These are all generally mild swear words, but heaven help you if you do call a genuine “pure mad rocket” a “pure mad rocket”…

My friend that told me the above, an outlander raised in Plymouth, trains English teachers. She was once in the middle of a lesson on “Taboo and the power of language” when the man from OFSTED came in. On the board, in huge caps, was (of course) the word C***

She says he dealt with the situation fairly well.

To be honest, I don’t have a clue what any of you cunts are talking about.

are you sure of that, belle le triste? My mother grew up around Plymouth, and I spent years as a youth being bullied in that area, and I’ve never heard anything except “my darling” and “my love.” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone in the West country swear. I think you should check your friend’s references.

My father uses that kind of language, but he’s from Great Yarmouth, so he would wouldn’t he? My Grandmother never swears, but manages to say things about black people and foreigners that make you wish she were just swearing outrageously.

My mother grew up around Plymouth, and I spent years as a youth being bullied in that area, and I’ve never heard anything except “my darling” and “my love.” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone in the West country swear.

But then, sg, you’ve apparently never heard anyone with a Cambridge education swear either. Maybe people just don’t swear around you.

I work in a girls’ school in the states. If somebody made this video here they wouldn’t make it out of the bathroom without a verbal beatdown for weeks. Their car might also get keyed. And btw, they’d be suspended for violating the schools’ honor code. The words under discussion are that strong. If any boy called a girl a c***, he’d be exiled from all social contact. And girls would not use it on each other. Lest you think I work at some neo-puritan coven, let me sure you that bitches, (generally used in a positive sense as in “my bitches”) fucks, shits, etc. emerge frequently from their mouths. And about once a year the kids get so carried away in some discussion in class that somebody drops an f-bomb, but I usually manage to keep the discussion moving anyway.

_I notice that nobody’s commented on Berlin’s calling Rousseau his ‘froggy friend’._

Oi! He wasn’t a frog, he was from the land of cuckoo clocks.

The g-word has me puzzled too.

“Girl”?

“Golfer”.

The standard Dutch, mild swear for women is “mens”, which means “human”. To add to the problem, the swear is of neuter declension, while the word for human is of female declension.

sg, if you were being bullied then people were possibly unlikely to be showing you with terms of affection! and the point is that this word ISN’T swearing in this context…

But yes, I will ask her.

y81 @ 62: I might refer in the office or at a party to “slut-0-ween” or skanky clothing

Indeed. In describing your daughter’s friends, I suppose.

Goulash?

The video actually makes an interesting comment on the dominance of secondary readings over primary texts, paradoxically undercut by giving the sock puppets the same names as their real-life avatars, as well as by switching the expected gender of the proponents.

Isn’t Beauregard a new pseudonym for a previously-banned commenter? Doesn’t CT have a policy about that?

I object to the words “divided self,” you shits.

As a rough and ready way of measuring it:

“He is a cunt” gets 3 million hits on google.co.uk

“She is a cunt” gets 124 thousand.

Which I think means Roberto wins (you ignorant piece of shit, etc, etc).

It’s also worth pointing out that presenting respected old white men (in this case philosophers) as toilet-mouthed squabbling kids is a pretty standard British comic trope (it’s done in Derek and Clive, Monty Python, Beyond the Fringe, Spitting Image, etc, etc), which is probably where the swearing comes from rather than the rather fevered gender/race paranoia of some of the posters here. And less of the prudery about the swearing. Vulgarity is funny. Euripedes and Shakespeare both knew that.

Knowing the kids in question, I can also say for a fact that there are more black women in that class than any philosophy seminar I’ve ever been to. So they know exactly what a ‘black women’s name’ is, Salient. And that Isaiah Berlin is from Latvia. Because whilst they may be children, they aren’t thick.

Thinking about it, I think in the US c*** may be a word that isn’t normally used in mixed company, but that some men may use in front of women who they think don’t mind swearing, until they realize it’s in its own category. I can only think of one time I heard it, in a situation where everyone present was within a few months of their college graduations, other than in the movies.

Speaking as a wowser of longstanding, I have to say, this has been a cool thread; interesting how much you can arguably discern about a society, its recent history, and its current trajectory considering which words are taboo and under which circumstances. I seem to recall Christopher Lasch making a relevant point along these lines with “motherfucker”–once an extremely harsh (and indirectly racialized) insult which shocked the (white) bourgeoisie, but by the Eddie Murphy 80s, just another bit of harmless macho slang. (Lasch didn’t live long enough to see it become a post-feminist gag on 30 Rock.)

A few points on the use of the T and C words in British English. T*** is a lot milder than C***. David Cameron used T*** in a radio interview without apparently realising the actual meaning of the word. C*** is generally the strongest swear word (all words have meaning in context etc.). It doesn’t have the same meaning as pussy and I would say refers to a man who is uncaring, devious, untrustworthy, underhand. Thinking about it I’m not sure that there is not a link between the gendered nature of the word and the inference of untrustworthiness. There are lots of regional variations. Where I live daft c*** is a common collocation and I think the word said in a cockney accent sounds more venomous than said in a northern accent. It is hardly ever used towards women and I felt it was unnecessary and unfortunate at the end of the video, though I don’t really know how teenagers use the word now.

I remember and an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David calls a man a c***, I assumed this had the same meaning as pussy but stronger and with misogynistic overtones, would that be right?

Gash is still used though more commonly as an adjective meaning not very good than as a noun, at least up here.

Extra context for the Will Jones list of “respectable adults with potty mouths” in British humour would be Newman & Baddiel’s “History Today” sketch, but perhaps that exclusion was on quality control grounds

FWIW – which may be little – I once heard in a mixed quasi-public forum (the annual banquet of the St. David’s Society of Bangkok, and no, I’m not making this up) the UK ambassador tell a joke [sic] the punchline of which consisted of Richard Burton calling an annoying woman a c***. Seemed odd to me then; still does.

Harry, you’re friends with Taylor Swift’s dad??? OMG! Wait till I tell my daughter!!!

Gone again. Stroll on.

(Sorry about this. I tried to end #103 with a string of three exclamation marks, but the software ate them. Same thing happened when I tried to append them in #104. And if I type them in here – !!! – I’m guessing it’ll happen again.)

Here in oz you might well describe a man as ” a bit of a c**t” – meaning a bit of a bast*rd

“A real c**t = meaning bad /evil nasty or a “likable c**t” = meaning a nice bast*rd or an ok person.

“‘ow yer goin’ ye old bastard” is a term of affectionate greeting. In fact theres a famous TV news bit with the then Prime Minister “Hawkie” , who himself was a popular bast*rd call one old aged guy who fronted him in a walk about ” a silly old bast*rd” and essentially get away with it.

The great giggle we all have is American using “fanny”. In Oz fanny is, with no ambiguity, the normal family slang word for vagina. Little girls at kindagarten use it, grannies use it etc.

So you can imagine the fun we have when middle aged American tourists, get on a crowded tram and loudly proclaim ” My fanny hurts and needs a rub” or ” I must sit down and rest my fanny” or “It’s in my fanny pack – just put your hand in and grab it”. I’ve seen whole trams full of people nearly wet their pants .

I would never use many of the common swearey words we use here at home and work in USA – its a whole different world.

So they know exactly what a ‘black women’s name’ is, Salient.

Ok, ok, in that very comment I was expressing acknowledgment of that and relief. I suppose I will go check program defaults of programs I’ve never used or known about before commenting on choice of avatars in the future. Or at least I’ll reserve judgment.

The various responses from outside the American south have been heartening, in their confirmation that these words have in most places taken on a mildness appropriate to them, and I’ll happily take the advice to lighten up and shut the fuck up about it. ;-) Though not much adjustment should be necessary, “I wanted to talk to you about your theory on X” / pause for acknowledgement / “It’s shite.” cracked me up, and in exactly that tone of voice is top-quality meme material if I’ve ever seen it.

Salient @86: it’s Adam Swift, not Adam Smith, and I think it might not be a sock puppet but the real Adam Swift, having some fun with his avatar. He’s Harry’s friend and frequent co-author and has posted here before.

Cool. But now I’m embarrassed. Serves me right for not being more attentive.

Adam, a sockpuppet (when used in the nonnegative sense I’d intended) is someone who types out a playful or enjoyable comment while pretending to be someone more famous than themselves; my odd assumption that you were someone posing as you aside, I was just remarking that your comment was delightful.

Funny the difference the Atlantic Ocean makes to how we hear the word c***t. It did surprise me to hear it directed against a woman, which is hardly ever the case in the UK. I think it gets used as a form of blokeish endearment quite widely across the UK and not just in Scotland: ‘what are you c***ts drinking?’ etc.

The discussion reminds me of the famous, possibly apocryphal, story of the English cricket captain who complained to his Australian counterpart that a member of the Aussie fielding side had called him a c***t behind his back. The Aussie captain in fury rounded on his team and shouted: ‘Listen here you c***ts, whichever c***t called this c***t a c***t had better come over here right now and apologise.

I had thought the word was bad because it had “fuck” in it, and maybe the “mother” was just an intensifier, or provided assonance. But to him, it was the literal deadly insult, “You fuck your mother.”

That’s what it meant on the almost entirely white elementary school playgrounds of Washington state when I was growing up in the 1970s, and hence was an enormity, something to be reserved or whispered or mouthed rather spoken out loud. Times change. I hadn’t realized there were parts of the world where “cunt” had gone through a similar transformation.

“I hadn’t realized there were parts of the world where “cunt” had gone through a similar transformation.”

Actually, I think the prudishness about words like c***t is the novelty, at least in the UK. Allan Bennet has written about how it was ubiquitous in the 60s, especially among the old queens and dipsos of Soho but hardly heard any more (when he was writing). So its probably just a reversion to the mean after a weird period of prissiness.

I wrote a little while a go on C***, In Defence of C***. Basically it is part of British (English-speaking?) culture and should be celebrated. /shamelessplug

“youze” is largely a northern thing, particularly Merseyside. In the south, “you” predominates.

It’s hardly a Robert Browning-level misapprehension of the word, after all.

Is this not a case of the kids metaspoofing the whole argument by spoofing the philosophers themselves? Letting it devolve into name calling is a statement itself, and if you are going to devolve at all, then it should be a NASTY devolution. All the better to make the irony point.

34: “if it really was the students’ own distillation, then bravo.”

Did you try googling those lines?

@Salient: while we’re on the subject of cross-Altantic cultural differences, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a “black woman’s name” in the UK (I mean as distinct from any other woman’s name).

John Meredith: The offensiveness of “c**t” is not recent. Partridge & Beale’s Dictionary of slang says:

[…] the term has, since C.15, been avoided in written and in polite spoken English […] and since ca. 1700 it has, except in the reprinting of old classics, been held to be obscene, i.e. a legal offence, to print it in full […]

Fletcher, in The Spanish Curate of 1622, put only “They write Sunt with a C, which is abominable”, and Murray left it out of the OED.

And “cunt” is too in the OED, where it is defined as “The female external genital organs.”

People who are afraid of language taboos are people who are afraid.

QED, cunt.

Did you try googling those lines?

Nah; [a] it’s not my responsibility to check and [b] the video would be equally funny/informative regardless.

The person who writes “c**t” instead of “cunt” accomplishes nothing other than flaunting their supercilious priggishness.

(shrug) Personally I think the asterisks are funny; perhaps it’s true t**t John Meredith is anti-c***ting. And they’re not always even as unambiguous as t**t; you might think t**t you could tell the difference between c**t and the contraction c**t, but the fact is, you c**t. ;-)

making them watch that Being John Malkovich scene

The horror! My word, how could you! It’s B***g J**n M*******h in polite company, thank you. F*r shame.

I don’t think t**t too many folks (er, excuse me, I meant f***s) were against the word in some universal sense. I’ve realized it was watching a black female get accosted up and down by a white male (with barely any c***backs, and no good ones) t**t triggered my squickiness, and t**t’s [a] definitely a very geographically localized reaction and [b] sure as h**l not the kids’ fault. If I’d known t**t the script was written for generic interlocutors and the avatars t**t they used were coincidental, it wouldn’t have bugged me, you can c****t on t**t; but given those avatars, whether a use of different words alone would’ve made the difference, I c**t tell.

“Nah; [a] it’s not my responsibility to check and [b] the video would be equally funny/informative regardless.”

Maybe but just to let you know, these lines are verbatim quotes.

“Cunt” is “gendered” in the sense that only women have cunts. But is it necessarily sexist to use the gendered word “cunt”? Is a man being a self-hating anti-male sexist when he calls another guy a “dick”? Is a person, male or female, being anti-human when they call someone else an “asshole”? I think not.

Whatever their ultimate origins, these words carry little to no literal meaning, as used, but they do carry a shitload of emotional content. You’re fucking-A right they do. And that’s exactly why they are used.

BTW: the preceding has nothing to do with excrement or sexual intercourse.

“John Meredith: The offensiveness of “c**t” is not recent.”

No, of course not, I just meant that perhaps our extreme sqeamishness towards it was. After all ‘Gropecunt’ was a fairly common name for streets or,usually, lanes in the UK until fairly recently. And it meant just what it said.

I think we all know whothe real tossers were:

I’m mildly surprised no one has mentioned what an awesome authentic assessment potential this has, and its applicability to so many different classrooms and subjects (although I totally get that it is hilarious). I must not have searched hard enough last year, because I had an idea to try using avatars in my class, and couldn’t find an easy enough program that 7th graders could use.

Oh, and, teachers are getting into to it, too…

“Yeah, if by “fairly recently” you mean the 15th century. According to Wikipedia, the name was last recorded in 1561.”

You must new one of those new worlders for whom the 15th century is like ancient history, I guess. I Anyway, I think that there was a Gropecunt under that name in London much more recently according to Ackroyd in his London book (not that I like to suggest Wikipedia might be wrong about anything!). I will have to look it up.

Good points there Salient, however, I though the video lacked resonance due to the lack of a few “go shove it up your arse” comments. I have discussed this with other Pseudo intellectuals like your good self and they told me I had relevant points and would possibly arrived at that opinion, had they removed the bugs from their arses many years previous! May I suggest therefore, you heed this warning from your peers and have the bug that is obviously lodged in your anal area, removed. This will enable you to experience humour, lighten up and who knows, you may have sex with something other than your right hand!

.

@5: OK, so I was plunged into doubt by your certainty, sg, so I went back and quizzed my friend. I did get some things wrong: she wouldn’t attest to this usage across all of Devon or Cornwall; but certainly the working-class Plymouth she grew up in. And not “me old cvnt” as I misremembered it, but “ye cvnt”, as in “Hey there ye cvnt!”, in cheerfully friendly fashion.

When I said you’d grown up being bullied in that area, she said exactly what I’d said: if you were being bullied, you wouldn’t be hearing terms of affection. When I said you said you’d never heard anyone in the West Country swear, she laughed incredulously for a long time. (Plymouth is after all a naval base, stiff with sailors.) When I said you’d said I should check her references, she grinned aggressively and said I should check YOURS. “Ask him did he ever dive into the Ho wearing his jeans — or did his friends?” If not, she said, that maybe explains the disparity. If he did, “I can’t account for it. Maybe he’s just not very observant.”