Notes
Honest and Dishonest Swearing
In 1969, Joanna Russ spoke to the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention about taboo words, their honest and dishonest uses and the unearned thrill: “I want to be able to use dirty wordies without shocking anybody. I want to write about the subjects they refer to without shocking anybody. And if there’s nothing else, losing the taboo completely would have one great advantage: I would no longer have to listen to student poetry that begins — well, you know how it begins.”
Categories: Notes
Tagged as: 1960s, Chaucer, disappointment, fear and loathing, feminism, gender, Joanna Russ, language, obscenity, poetry, science fiction, sex, sexism, speech, swearing, the ladies, Virginia Woolf, writing, zines
Published by Carol
Carol Borden was editor of and a writer for the Toronto International Film Festival’s official Midnight Madness and Vanguard program blogs. She is currently an editor at and evil overlord for The Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful writing about disreputable art. She has written for Mezzanotte, Teleport City, Die Danger Die Die Kill, Popshifter and she has a bunch of short stories published by Fox Spirit Books including: Godzilla detective fiction, femme fatale mermaids, an adventurous translator/poet, and an x-ray tech having a bad day. Read and listen to her other shenanigans at Monstrous Industry. For her particular take on gutter culture, check out, “In the Sewer with the Alligators.”
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The Cultural Gutter 
As an author, I have to walk a balance between using too many cuss words and too few. Too many and the impact they might have had is gone. Too few and my characters don’t sound like real people.
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