A few days ago while I was sitting in a hair salon, I saw three friends hurling swears at each other. No one was hurt or bullied by their words, it was a jolly environment.
At that moment I thought what would happen if instead of three male friends there were three female friends doing the same. Would the reaction be the same? Definitely not. Such women would be considered to be of “loose character” and maybe even told to leave the establishment.
In our society, good little girls are taught to be silent, polite and docile. Respectable women are expected to refrain from doing or saying things that would question the ideals of femininity. “Good” women are not supposed to swear, say vulgar things, dress improperly or do anything that would deem them to be unworthy of patriarchal protection.
Women voices have to pass through multiple filters of patriarchy, class, caste, race, sexuality, religion, etc. The social construction of gender moulds women and girls into perfect receptive beings who have no thoughts of their own.
Alison Jaggar, a socialist feminist in her book Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1985) pointed out how women are alienated from their intellectuality. She says:
“Many women feel so unsure of themselves that they hesitate to express their ideas in public, for fear their thoughts are not worth expressing; they remain silent when they should loudly voice their opinion. Worse, when women do express their thoughts forcefully and with passion, their ideas are often rejected as irrational or the product of mere emotion.”
Imagine what would happen if women are not just voicing their opinions or thoughts but started actively swearing. Like men, if women started swearing and make it a part of “women’s language” it would not only take away power from words and slangs that degrade women sexually but it would challenge the patriarchal construction of respectable women.
Words like bitch, slut, whore which are used to control the expression of women’s sexuality, if co-opted by women as signifiers of empowerment, would lose their power.
Mary Daly in her book, Gyn/Ecology (1978), challenged the western dichotomy of what is good and bad and redefine their meaning. She used terms like witch, ugly, lust for women and reclaimed them from the patriarchal structure by redefining their meaning.
The respectability of women is not only constructed through the patriarchal lens but by a combination of multiple hegemonic identities.
In India, Brahminical patriarchy categorises women belonging to Dalit, tribal, lower class and minorities (particularly Muslim) communities as outside the ambit of respectable women. It is the agency of Dalit women which gets most curtailed by the construct of respectability as they are seen as vulgar and obscene with a foul mouth.
Similarly, white supremacy constructs African-American women as loud and angry all the time. To be gentle and polite are considered to be the prerequisite of femininity. However, civility is used as a mechanism to curtail the voices of women and maintain the inequalities in society.
Mona Eltahaway, an Egyptian-American feminist, in her book The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (2019) ask women to be profane, vulgar and disruptive of this patriarchal construct which forces women to be civil and polite on all accounts even when they are being abused by men and hegemonic structures.
In her book, she speaks of Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan scholar and feminist. According to her, Nyanzi understands the power of words and their ability to subvert the structures of wealth and privilege. She points out how Nyanzi violates patriarchy by explicitly talking about taboo subjects—be they the president’s buttocks, sex, sexuality, queerness.
To be profane is a feminist method to subvert patriarchy, casteism, racism and religious fundamentalism.
In a patriarchal society where graciousness and chastity are considered to be the highest virtue of women, embracing vulgarity and obscenity would not only dismantle the structures of patriarchy but would also liberate women from the constructs of respectability and honour which is an ultimate parameter for determining a women’s social positioning in the society.