SEXUAL PROFANITY TABOO: A VICTORIAN INVENTION

Today I was thinking about why so much foul language has to do with sex.

Swedish maledictologist Magnus Ljung distinguishes between the Genital Motif, könsorgansmotivet ("dick," "cock," "cunt," "tits," "coño", "polla", "cipote", etc.) and the Coital Motif, samlagsmotivet ("fuck," "bugger," "shag," "knulla," "joder", "foutre", etc.), but both have to do with SEX.

My puritanical maternal granny told me these are Very Ugly Words, and I should avoid them like the plague. I have followed her words to the T until NOW.

I was curious: why is sex ugly/disgusting? why does so much foul language have to do with it? And why did Renaissance and Baroque literati have no qualms about it? Where did the sex taboo come from?

At last I have sated my curiosity! And all my qualms are GONE, fwoosh!

Let's discuss Renaissance and Baroque literature and start with the GOAT of it, the One and Only Bard of Avon. As I read Othello and the Henriad I am surprised that Shakespeare has no qualms. The Moor calls Desdemona a strumpet, Iago has quite the potty mouth (no surprise given that he is a non-commissioned officer), as has Mercutio, Hamlet, though well-read, asks Ophelia about country matters (he also tells Ophelia to get herself to a nunnery -as in, a brothel- and calls Polonius a fishmonger -ie a pimp- and this prince has a university education!), and even the prim and proper French Princess Catherine de Valois gets shocked during her English lessons that the very Saxon word FOOT sounds just like the French F-word.

Moving to Spain and to the king of conceptismo, Quevedo also throws sex words left, right, and centre with carefree abandon in his satirical verses:

los mando degollar, y no jodellos, (he had them slit their throats, and not fuck / shag them)

[...]

di: «Requiescat in culo, mas no in pace.» [Say "rest in the arse, but not in peace"]

Jane Austen, during the Regency or Napoleonic era, has her notorious "Rears and Vices" blue joke, about the keisters and queer immoralities of old Royal Naval admirals, and it has aged like a fine sherry.

But the biggest surprise came from my dad's country. Nowadays all Swedish profanity is infernal, and Swedes are so cowardly that they use euphemisms like "jäklar," "farao," and "Hälsingland" (poor Hälsinglanders!) instead of the real infernal profanities. Swedes never swear about sex in the present day. Even Fredrik Lindström gets in on the act, he says: "why do we Swedes swear like chickens?" Is this a Protestant thing? It isn't. Let's go back to the Baroque period... 

...when the Court Bard of Queen Christina herself, George Stiernhielm, wrote an ode to the Peace of Westphalia and one of its major causes, the marriage of a Spanish Habsburg queen to a French Bourbon king (something unheard of until then!) The title? Kungens basse och drottningens mus, The King's Dick and the Queen's Beaver! Here are the main verses, translated from the Swedish:

The King's dick must be praised,

for it brought us peace and joy!

The Queen's beaver must also be honoured,

for it brought us dear peace!

If kings had no balls,

we would still be firing cannons...

[...]

A French dick and a Spanish beaver

taught us how to find peace:

may they by the LORD's grace, all days,

shag as much as they please!

With poems like these at a Protestant court, it can't be a Reformation thing! What is this taboo then?

A Victorian bourgeois thing...

The Wikipedia article on "Profanity" talks about:

a dichotomy between the use of highbrow religious swears and lowbrow anatomical swears.

So, sex words are "lowbrow" (lower-class, working-class). Is it a bourgeois prejudice? This YouTube video confirmed my suspicions: 

The Victorian bourgeoisie saw sexual profanity as a class marker, and they avoided and loathed it to distinguish themselves from the working class! There's the rub!

I was not only raised by a Catholic granny, but I also pride myself on being "highbrow / high culture," on liking Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, Giuseppe Verdi, fantasy set in the UK (or counterpart UKs like Westeros), cultured Disney villains (like Scar who says "quid pro quo," for example), Dark Academia, etc. But the literati of the ancien régime didn't have such qualms about sex words... Neither did, in 20th century Spain, Camilo José Cela, one more of my favourite authors!

So yes, I can be highbrow AND NOT squeamish about sex words. As I will be from now on...

PS. The Puritans also played a key role in the sex word taboo. Cromwell and his cronies thought that people saying, hearing, reading, or writing words like "cunt" or "fuck" would awaken forbidden, indecent lusts!

A PRIVILEGED CHRISTMAS - THE MIDNIGHT ARCHIVE

Excerpts from the Little Matchgirl retelling by The Midnight Archive - describing the Christmas of the privileged: 

The table was covered with white linen that gleamed like fresh fallen snow. Fine china plates edged in gold sat at each place setting with crystal glasses that sparkled in the candlelight. Silver cutlery flanked each plate, knives and forks and spoons of every size, more utensils than... A Christmas tree. It reached nearly to the ceiling, decorated with candles and glass ornaments and strings of gold beads. A family was gathered around it. Parents and children, grandparents, a baby in someone's arms. They were laughing at something the youngest child had said. The mother reached out to adjust an ornament. The father lifted a toddler to see the star at the top. They looked happy. They looked like they had never known a moment of want in their lives. Families were sitting down to their Christmas Eve dinners. The smells reached her even in the empty street. Roasting meat, baking bread, spices and sweetness, and everything rich.

 ... when the flowers were beginning to bloom in the gardens of the wealthy. These houses were tall and solid, built of good red brick, with large windows that glowed with candlelight. Iron gates guarded small front gardens. Brass knockers gleamed on painted doors. Everything spoke of money, of security, of a world where winter was an inconvenience rather than a death sentence. Through the windows, one could see glimpses of another existence entirely. A parlour with velvet furniture and paintings on the walls. A dining room where a table was set for twelve. Crystal glasses catching the light. A sitting room where a fire blazed in an enormous hearth, its flames dancing, its heat radiating into every corner of the room. 

A Christmas tree. It was enormous, taller than any other tree ever seen, taller than the ceilings of any room she had ever entered. Its trunk was thick and strong, its branches spreading wide in every direction, laden with ornaments and treasures beyond counting. Candles flickered among the needles. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, each flame steady and bright, each one casting its own small circle of golden light. The effect was dazzling, overwhelming, like looking at a constellation that had descended from heaven and taken root in the earth. Glass balls hung from every bow. Red ones and gold ones and silver ones painted with delicate patterns catching the light and throwing it back in sparks of colour. Some were shaped like pinecones, others like icicles, others like tiny houses with windows that seemed to glow from within. Ribbons wound through the branches. Silk and satin, crimson and emerald and royal blue. Strings of gold beads draped from tear to tear, glittering whenever you moved your head. Carved wooden angels hung at intervals. Their painted faces serene, their gilded wings outstretched. At the very top, a star glittered with what looked like real diamonds. 

Beneath the tree, presents were piled in drifts. Boxes wrapped in colored paper. Red and green and silver tied with silk ribbons tagged with names. Dolls with porcelain faces and silk dresses, their painted eyes staring up at the branches above them. Drums painted in bright reds and blues with real drumsticks tied to their sides. Wooden horses with real horsehair manes and tails mounted on rockers or wheels. Picture books with gilded covers and beautiful illustrations inside. Glimpses of castles and dragons and princesses and all the things that existed in stories and nowhere else. Tin soldiers standing at attention in neat rows, their uniforms bright, their rifles at the ready. Music boxes with delicate mechanisms that would play when opened. All the gifts that children in wealthy households would find in the morning. All the joy that would be theirs. While other children unwrap treasures, then... Here in this vision, all the presents seemed to be waiting. Every ribbon, every bow, every carefully wrapped package...

The gentleman who was reaching into his pocket until his adult daughter appeared and led him away, (to take him home with the wife and mother for supper.) 

The families gathered around their Christmas trees, their tables laden with food, their fires burning in their hearths. 

The woman in the fur trimmed coat who glanced and looked away. 

The woman was well-dressed, a fur-trimmed coat, leather gloves, a hat with a feather. She was examining vegetables at a market stall, selecting the finest ones for her holiday table. The woman glanced. Just a glance, a quick flick of the eyes ... and then looked away. She didn't speak. She didn't shake her head. She simply continued examining vegetables as if the match girl hadn't spoken, as if she wasn't there at all. looking back. It was as if ... was invisible, as if she existed in a different world that occasionally overlapped with this one, but could be ignored if you tried hard enough. 

Late in the afternoon, a man actually stopped. He was elderly with white whiskers and a kind face, wearing a heavy wool coat and sturdy boots. He looked at the match girl. Really looked at her. And something like pity crossed his features. 

"Matches, young lady." "Yes, sir."

He was reaching into his pocket. He was going to buy. 

"Father." A young woman appeared at the man's elbow, taking his arm. "We'll be late for dinner. Mother is expecting us." 

The man hesitated. He looked at the match girl, then at his daughter, then at the match girl again. 

"I'm sorry, he said. I haven't any change." He let his adult daughter lead him away. If his daughter had arrived 30 seconds later, everything would be different. But 30 seconds was too long...

A night of celebration, a night of abundance and gratitude and hope for the future. A night when families gather, when champagne corks pop, when church bells ring, and everyone makes resolutions they won't keep. The contrast is the point. While the feasts are being served.. While the fires are blazing... While the families are embracing... 

The wealthy families in this story aren't villains. They're not actively malicious. They're simply living their lives, enjoying their holidays, loving their children. They don't see ... because they've learned not to see, because seeing that would be uncomfortable, would demand something of them, would interrupt their joy with someone else's sorrow. 

That learned blindness is what Andersen is writing about. Not cruelty, but indifference. Not hatred, but the simple failure to notice.

We recognize ourselves in the people who walked past. We see ourselves in the families gathered around their trees celebrating...

All these descriptions make me long for a Victorian Christmas among the upper class. Only comforts and pleasure, and the best of everything. Now we have plastic glasses, plastic ornaments, lifeless fashion dolls, AI-illustrated, soulless picture books, and Spotify instead of music boxes. It was definitely more artistic, had more soul back then.

Instead of china plates edged in gold, plastic or ceramic plates.

Instead of crystal glasses that sparkle, plastic glasses that don't sparkle.

Instead of sterling silver cutlery, stainless steel cutlery.

Instead of hand-blown glass ornaments, plastic ornaments.

Instead of porcelain dolls with painted eyes and silk dresses, plastic fashion dolls.

Instead of picture books with gilt covers and beautiful Victorian illustrations, AI-illustrated, soulless picture books.

And instead of music boxes with delicate mechanisms, apps like Spotify...

Perhaps that is why I love fairytales so much, because they offer us glimpses into a world where all of this was lovingly crafted, and thus beautiful and pleasant.