I'm very anti-profanity. I think that it harms our children, to teach them that certain words are "bad" and that they should feel hurt or upset whenever someone uses them.
I think it just teaches them to accept unreason. The lesson is that a word isn't bad because of what it means, but because of this impossible-to-justify, superstitious reverence for the quasi-magical power of the “bad word.”
It's silly on the face of it! There's a "clean" synonym for every dirty word, and the only difference in meaning is the arbitrary fact that we call one word wrong, bad, hurtful, dirty, and the other word clean. "This word means the same as the other, except that when someone uses this word on you - you have to be insulted by it, you might even cry or be hurt."
I respect the proprieties and all. I'm a part of society, and its rules apply to me just fine! And I recognize that many good people are firmly in the spell, the fascination with bad language. They believe in its power, and so I don't go around cussing - not so much to humor them, as because they are mostly nice people. I don't like to hurt or offend nice people.
But at the same time, it cheeses me off that they choose to hurt themselves, by fostering such a ridiculous and indefensible weakness. It's hard to sympathize with anyone who chooses to hand the whole world an easy weapon against them. Hey world, hey any moron out there - you have free and easy power over me! You can hurt and insult me any time, and you don't even have to put the slightest thought into it! Just use one of these magical "bad words" on me. There's a whole assortment - collect them all!
It really is like a magic spell, like an incantation. It's not the meaning that's bad, it's these particular syllables that have the power. How Dumbledore is that? Let's not fill our children's minds with that garbage. Very harmful to them in the long run - not just the vulnerability it builds into them, but as I said, the lesson that is being taught along with it.
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