Thread by @JuliusGoat

PROFANITY AND OBSCENITY

Those who desire obscenity also engage in profanity, of course. They do so for many reasons, but one of the strategic ones is to muddy the difference between fractious language and deliberate harm and abuse.

getrevue.co/profile/julius…

Perhaps we’d do well to make a contrast between “profanity” and “obscenity."

Let me suggest “profanity” as language that breaks agreed social rules of propriety. Some people call them “curses.” It’s fractious language.

Meanwhile, let me suggest “obscenity” as something that violates fundamental standards of decent human behavior. Some people call this “abuse.” When made systemic, it’s injustice.

There’s enough adjacency to cause confusion, I know. In both cases some generally accepted rules have been violated. And curse words are also often called “obscenities,” so unless we’re thoughtful about it, we might understand the two terms to be completely fungible.

An example:

George Carlin’s “seven words you can’t say on television” is a hilarious example of profanity.

Using the power of television to disseminate misinformation about vaccines during a deadly global pandemic is an obscenity.

You see?

It’s never the words used. It’s what you use them for.

In this culture we all understand this, I think. Most of us aren’t offended by curse words just as curse words.

Some pretend otherwise, to gain their advantage.

We know by now they’re just pretending.

Trump’s supporters can pretend it offends them to hear a president curse, but we’ve seen them cheering in his crowds and we’ve heard what they cheer for.
We knew they can tolerate cursing.
We know they aren’t concerned about attacks on journalism.
And we know they want obscenity.

This illustrates the reason it’s so important to distinguish between profanity and obscenity: our culture has been historically defined by abuse by the powerful against those without power, and by a systemic enablement of that abuse.

There are abusive families out there. If you want to understand the nature of the abuse, you discover which topics can’t be spoken.

As with families, so with countries.

Abuse relies on enablement. Enablement relies on silence—and powerful abusers know this.

And it’s true that people within the regressive political ideology to which these book banners belong have spent the past years complaining about the fact that there are things that “can’t be spoken” anymore.

But it's also well-documented that an abusive person strategically accuses others of their own intended abusive behavior, to insulate themselves from the report of their abuse.

And now, as we can clearly see, it is they who are engaging in the systemic, organized, strategic legal codification of silencing voices they find offensive, with the presence of profanity one of their favorite pretexts.

If you’re confused about who is being abusive, ask: who is, right now systematically, strategically, for the accommodation of their own psychological and political comfort, banning books that expose real present obscenities or expose the ugly truth about historical ones?

Don’t get confused. Don’t agree to false framing presented in bad faith.

Don't listen to the whines of book banners who feel "silenced" by the convicting presence of a marginalized voice.

Always fight the obscenity, fight the injustice, fight the abuse. getrevue.co/profile/julius…