An Immodest Proposal - Stop Using the Word "Fuck" to Condemn People

[Ocelot II]

7. But "fuck" doesn't always mean "fuck." There's an interesting discourse

on that word (and others) by the linguist John McWhorter:

When you yell “Damn!” or “Fuck!,” you are not simply uttering a word. Curses are verbal ejaculations, more squawks than labels. A word is presented; a curse is squirted. This is part of why curses can be so utterly disconnected from their technical meanings. In saying “Damn!” we are not cursing in the direction of anything as if “damning” it; “Fuck!” we say when stubbing our toe, certainly not meaning “Sexual congress!” Curses are yelps clad in the guise of words, like those little chocolate bottles filled with booze. To approach these with thoughts of Godiva and Russell Stover is to miss their point, which is what’s sloshing around inside them.

The point, then, the essence, is the squawking sense of offense, our coping with a blow via the visceral and immediate gesture of swatting back to cause a compensatory offense. You level this revenge by saying something you have been told that you should not, by breaking a rule—that is, by doing something taboo. Herein lies profanity’s punch. As Carlin deftly got it across, “These words have no power. We give them this power by refusing to be free and easy with them. We give them great power over us. They really, in themselves, have no power.” In themselves, not—but curse words are ones that, while maintaining the same outward form, long ago ceased being themselves, having been vested with the power of transgression.

More here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/what-george-carlin-got-wrong-about-profanity/618786/

That is to say, when someone writes "Fuck Mitch McConnell!" (or some other miscreant GOPer), they are not expressing even the faintest desire to get horizontal with Moscow Mitch (eww!), but yelping one of the more frowned-upon words in the English language - expressing as strongly as possible with a single word a "sense of offense." I just finished McWhorter's book Nine Nasty Words, which this article excerpts. It's a fascinating discussion of the origins and evolving meanings of various profanities.