discussion on profanity

During class on Friday, we decided as a class whether or not profanity would be allowed on our blog posts. Personally, I don't think there was enough deliberation on this issue. It was obvious to us that profanity might be considered offensive depending on the degree of the words used and if it is directed at certain individuals. While improperly used profanity can be of great offense to people, used properly explicit words can express strong emotion and ideas in an effective way. While any profanity, used in ones own words and opinions, in high school was strictly frowned upon, we have moved into the world of college education. If everyone in the class is 18, then that would make us all adults. Most people in class, or at least enough to carry effect, voted that profanity could be offensive to peoples' blogs. This offense would be very disrespectful to people's ideas, which goes against our golden rule. Personally, I have no problem with people using profanity to comment on my blog if it is used in proper context. 

I think there is a time and place for everything, and profanity especially has a time and place to be used. For one thing, you are quite a pottymouth to be using it in regular speech without provocation or appropriate emotion. Curse words carry strong meaning and power in speech or writing, but if you take away the meaning, then they are just offensive words that are not to be used lightly. Second, the way that a profane word is directed would greatly offend me. If I said that I am against the Iraq war because I believe that it is neo-imperialism and somebody said, "f*** you we're in Iraq for national security," I'd be real pissed. If somebody disagreed and said, "no we're protecting our f***ing country," I would disagree but I would feel where their emotional comment was coming from. In this way, the curse word is elaborating on the importance of protecting ourselves and how much we love our country. In the forbidden sense of using the word, the person is directly insulting me. Another wrong way to use profanity in our class is to use it directed at somebody's ideas. Personally, I don't mind if you use profanity on my blog as long as you follow the class rules: don't disrespect, be serious, etc.