The Art of Profanity -Part Two: The Roots of Sexuality in Profanity

Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I shall continue.

So as far as we know, there's a cross-cultural trait of sexuality built into the language of profanity, but the question is, where is root of this phenomenon? As usual, I have a hypothesis: the "Holy" Bible.

As dirty as the "Holy" Bible could get, it recorded a large number of events of
1. "using physical force to have sexual intercourse" AKA rape
2. "sexual intercourse between closely related persons" AKA incest
3. "sexual activities between people of the same sex" AKA homosexuality

These incidences have creeped into our modern language (including, but not limited to, English)
I'll give a few English examples here:
1. "Fuck you!" could simply be translated to "I'm going to 'invade' you whether you like it your not". (Rape is the most badass thing one can do, of which could never be justified in front of law. This makes "Fuck you" the most badass personal insult).
2. "You motherfucker."....clearly incest.
3. "You're gay!" ... oh them teenagers' favourite insult.

So what's with all the "sex" in our profanity? Follow this logic:

IF to "insult" is to rob away, as much as possible, the dignity and freedom of another individual
Some sexual activities mentioned above completely robs away the dignity and freedom of another individual
THEN there's not a more insulting way to insult a person by using profanity derived from some of the sexual acts mentioned above.

In hypothesizing that the roots of sexuality in profanity come from Religion, one may notice a certain contradiction. You could challenge "But no Peter, the French culture is highly influenced by Catholicism, and we all know the Catholic church condemns the sexual acts listed above, how could profanity in the French culture be so sexual?"

At first the highly-sexual French culture that's 'very Catholic' seems counter-intuitive, but on a further level of analysis, there is no contradiction; the explanation is found in history. The Reformation in the 16th century Europe gave rise to new institutions such as the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Protestant church. There has been some tolerance of the religions other than Catholicism as mandated by Henri IV through the Edict of Nantes in 1598. However, this edict, or proclamation was revoked by Louis XIV, le roi du solei, who, a devoted Catholic himself, made Catholicism the official religion of France less than a century later. Because the Catholic Church extremely frown upon some of the sexual acts, insulting someone using sexual-related remarks bring an externality of condemnation from the all-power church, and furtherly, the Almighty God.

We examined the roots of sexuality in profanity in this blog, but could the same principle be applied to other cultures? We shall see in the next and last part of this series... The Oriental Perspective.