Sunday, May 2, 2010

On punctuation, sort of..

The other day while (sort of) chatting with Myrtus I wrote F**k like that, omitting the U and C. I didn't think much about it but since she was talking about censorship it got thinking why did I do that, If I was censoring myself and why would I or should I do that? Re-reading myself it's quite stupid of me to do so because there was no one to censor me or blame me for writing Fuck and not F**k...
But again that got me thinking and I realised that I never ever swear. Not in Darija, not in French nor in English. So it's logical that a word that I won't say aloud, is a word I won't write down. So it's a reflection of my auto-censoring. I realised too that actually I don't "think" profanity spontaneously even when I'm angry, that I have to think about summoning these neurones for them to start working...so I'm I just a well spoken guy or is there a censoring routine deeply implemented inside my head? Then I went to sleep -__-
This topic kept recurring to me since then, so I paid a little bit more attention to the behaviour to the people around me and my own. I got pretty much to the conclusion that every single one around my age uses anatomical descriptions for punctuation, including girls. I discovered it's actually quite fashionable for a girl to be bad mouthed, something I don't really find attractive, at all. Also that it's a must for a man as a display of masculinity. All that during an interesting discussion with a group of female co-workers, although heavily bruising for my self esteem, where I found I wasn't loud enough, bad behaved enough, even dark enough (among other things) to be attractive. Even the fact that I didn't storm out or in or up or down (I don't know what exactly was expected of me!) when told all this was used against me.
Do women always get that abrasive when they get together? Some hyena mob behaviour that surfaces only occasionally? *sight*
If that wasn't enough, It's also true that when people speak around me they tend to lessen their punctuation, let off entirely when speaking only to me, and from time to time it happens that the speaker will interrupt him/herself, single me with an apology or a "7ashak" then continue... which is frustrating because I don't object in any way and now that I am aware of the fact I feel embarrassed and excluded..
I'm confused!

1 comment:

  1. All this says about you Xoussef, is that you're one top notch classy kind of guy. Bravo! :)
    Growing up I was taught to mind my language/behavior and use l'adab at all times. So you won't hear me swear either...well, except when I'm conducting an experiment on (self)censorship (like the other day) or on a rare occasion when I'm absolutely furious about something. And I don't get mad that easy.
    Sounds like we're pretty similar in our quiet, gentle demeanor.
    I certainly don't enjoy upsetting people, so I really apologize for upsetting you.
    Big hug!
    Najia

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