Effin' n' Jeffin'

I say we remove all censorship from swears, sexual phrases, and racial slurs.This would remove the concept of such things within a couple of generations, as if no words are prohibited, then none are stigmatised.

For instance, the word f--k. It is one of the most versatile words in the English language, for frak's sake - it can be used as a verb, a noun, an adverb and an adjective - yet we either bleep of blank it out when it appears in songs or on television before 9 O'clock (a purely arbitrary time, surely, in this age of on-demand viewing and 'plus' boxes), all because it's a "dirty" word. When censored in such a way, the quality of these media are very noticeably reduced - who hasn't been annoyed when listening to a song containing expletives that has all these gaps in the vocals, upsetting the vocal rhythm? Or been watching a program that, when a character says the frankly weak, "ass," has short periods of total silence - silence that one would normally associate with a fault in broadcast?

Words that describe the anatomy, such as "ass" (corrupted from arse, but the more commonly heard of the two in television), c--k, or t--t, when censored, surely show a childlike embarrassment in regards to such things? A censor would not censor "penis" or "vagina", as these are medical terms - why is the distinction made for slang?
When one removes the stigma and the shame from these words, these words lose their power. I'll explain my meaning: say a man A is angry with man B. A says of B, "You're such a penis". It seems childish, amusing, and without any real power as an insult. Consider, however, A caling B a pr--k, a c--k, or a d--k - this is clearly an insult, as man A is using a "bad word". Therefore, if we remove the stigma from the latter three words - bringing them into true equation with the former- they lose their power as insults.

The area of racial slurs is not such a simple one. If we allow musicians to use them in their work unrestricted, then, yes, as the words enter the day-to-day lexicon, they will eventually be seen as synonyms. On the flip-side, however, if we cease punishment of aggressive use of these terms, then those who would use them to cause harm would be free to do so. I say this, however: this does not matter. I'm not saying that using such a word aggressively is without moral negativity, but this use would only last a generation or two - again, if no stigma is placed on a word, it loses its power. After all, racial slurs can lose their meaning in less than a generation - the word "black" was once considered offensive, the word "coloured" acceptable, and now the reverse is true; who's to say what will and will not be acceptable in 50 years time?

This last point, "who's to say..." can be said of all such words - s--t was a perfectly acceptable word in this country 1000 years ago - why shouldn't any word become stigmatised? Why shouldn't any word have it's stigma removed?

SF