Language,

No, this is not going to be one of my lengthy diatribes about how the English language fails us on a daily basis, making it more difficult than it should be to express a point of view for no obvious reasons, but something of an apology, but also not. 

I've oscillated between swearing and not swearing on this blog, and it can be tedious trying to keep up with the should I, shouldn't I argument of it. I tend to try and either switch words out for something else that makes it obvious what the intended word was, or remove letters and put in *s in their place, but sometimes, I don't want to do that. And for anyone who has met me in person, particularly lately, I am a bit of a Sweary Mary. 

Over Christmas, this has been a point of contention. One of my parents says (or yells) Stop f***ing swearing, and I say no. It's either an instruction or sometimes a question (can you stop, will you stop) and the answer is still no. It was a topic of conversation that an elderly relative doesn't like it when I swear, but they let the men in the family swear like sailors (and blames it on a lifestyle - I can't help but roll my eyes). I was told they think 'it's not lady like' to which I replied, 'have they met me?' The times where I act like a lady are few and far between and I will also add that one of my favourite memes (and occasionally sayings when people get on my nerves about it too much) is 'I do not spit profanity, I enunciate it, like a f***ing lady.' 

Firstly, I'm not actually sitting (or standing or lying or anything else) calculating what I'm going to say and then peppering it with swear words for good measure - what comes out of my mouth is the way I have thought it. I'm mostly not offended by swear words though there are some I try and use more sparingly, though lately with more limited success. I try and be a little more contained around aforementioned relative but that's less to not offend their (quite frankly ridiculous) sensibilities and more because I do not have the energy for the argument, nor do I fancy the headache from the nagging. The excuse that they don't want to hear it often gets trotted out, but I don't want to hear a lot of the things that they say either because of the nature of what it is, however arguing on that one is also always my fault. (And sadly - I'm not sad about it - I'm not very good at just saying nothing and lettig it all go.) 

But the more important thing for me is this. Language is a personal thing. There are plenty of things which make me uncomfortable about the way that people use language - particularly when it changes so fast I have no idea what the young people I work with are talking about - but that's life. As long as people aren't swearing at each other, being racist or sexist or anything else of that ilk, trying to police the way that other people express themselves really p*sses me off. I've been in a situation where people have tried to tell me that I shouldn't swear because they don't like it, and a lot of the time, I want to response by just saying, I don't care. I'm not generally a person who wants to make other people uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean I will willingly let other people police my behaviour when it's not actually harming people. 

(When I'm in charge of children, I obviously behave differently, though sometimes that means walking away, and making sure people know if I'm walking away, not to follow me, unless they want to deal with an angry me, which is likely to include me swearing. The children just know not to follow me and are looked after by someone else whilst I work whatever it is that's winding me up out of my system.)