A Loser's Thoughts on Life

'Bad' Words

Bad words/swear words have always been something that has confused me. From a young age we are taught that certain words are 'bad' and we shouldn't say them. Usually those words are ones like stupid or shut up, and then as we age we learn about the REALLY bad ones.

It might seem pretty straight forward: our teacher and parents say they are bad, so we shouldn't say them. But really it's much more complicated than that.

You would not believe how many times people look at me in complete shock when I swear. And that's mostly because I don't do it often. I just don't see the need for it. At the same time, I don't look down on people who do swear a lot because I couldn't care less. Do your own thing.

My question is just: how did these certain words become 'bad'? Who just sat down and was like "that word! I don't like it. It is BAD!"

It just seems so silly to me. You know why? Because words only have as much power as we give them. A word is just a word, it can't do anything on it's own. It's how you use the word that determines it's meaning and power.

To me, any word could become "bad" if you use it in a negative way. I'm being serious. I think you could take any word and say it in a derogatory way.

Okay maybe not any word. But you get my point. There are a lot of words that can be used in a negative way, not just these swear words.

So do I think there's something wrong with these swear words? Yeah. We have freedom of speech as long as we don't use our words to hurt others. So as long as we aren't using these swear words in a derogatory way (or any words in general) we should be able to say whatever we want.

Bad words just shouldn't exist. I don't understand how they exist. But they do, so I'll guess we'll just have to learn to deal with it.

xoxo Emmalynn