Go On – YOU Take The High Road, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #314 | @MDWorld
Now that Mardi Gras is behind us, it’s time for me to take a break from my traditional political screes to raise a question of great timeliness and vast cultural importance, a question that has bothered me for decades but still remains unanswered.
Why is the word “tits” unacceptable in “polite” society, yet the word “boobs” is just fine?
I do not understand this. To me, the word “boob” refers to “an unintelligent person” or “an unfortunate mistake” (source: whatever dictionary Microsoft leases these days). But that’s the second definition. The first is “women’s breast.” That same dictionary defines “tit” as “same as teat” and, secondly, “an offensive term for a woman’s breast.”
This drives me nuts. Tits, or teats, supply mammals with life-sustaining nutrition. That’s a good thing. Boobs… are idiots. That’s a bad thing. But among the two, only the former is seen as offensive.
Over the years I have asked various and sundry women this very question, often over dinner. The usual response goes something like “comparing a part of my anatomy to that of a cow is offensive.” To which I respond “aaaaand boob?” This often provokes a short, nervous laugh from my companion, a laugh commonly known within the comedy business as a “titter.”
It’s very frustrating. I hate euphemisms. They are the highlight of hypocrisy. If the idea is to avoid using a word that a bunch of ancient bluenoses defined as offensive, then using another word that immediately implants the offensive word in the listener’s brainpan should be equally offensive. Circumlocution is a waste of time, and in the case of euphemistic language it’s at best insincere.
During these conversations, if I remain strong enough to avoid deflecting my own point by noting the laugh is, indeed, a titter, I ask “so why do you-all use ‘boob’ instead of ‘breast’?”
Most often, the response goes something like this: “breast makes me think of chicken.” Okay, now it’s my turn to titter. I am not strong enough to avoid the game-ending comeback “yep; finger-licking good!”
Of all the various euphemisms for the female breast, indeed, for any word that refers to a secondary sexual characteristic, tit and tit alone is a matter of constitutional law. George Carlin’s seven dirty words (shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits) led to a Supreme Court decision that established the extent to which the federal government could regulate broadcast speech. That’s some self-righteous poo-poo.
Carlin, the greatest philosopher of our time, noted “Tits doesn’t even belong on the list. It’s such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname. ‘Hey, Tits, come here. Tits, meet Toots, Toots, Tits. Tits, Toots.’ It sounds like a snack doesn’t it? Yes, I know, it is, right. But I don’t mean the sexist snack, I mean, New Nabisco Tits. The new Cheese Tits, and Corn Tits and Pizza Tits, Sesame Tits, Onion Tits, Tater Tits, Yeah. Betcha can’t eat just one.”
The older I get, the more I learn. But the more I learn, the more I realize I need to learn. This is life’s cosmic joke. And this one has been frustrating me forever.
Yeah. I’m such a boob.
Next week, I may discuss the phrase “pulling a boner.”
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check the website above for times. Gold also joins MWD’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
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February 18th, 2013 at 10:41 am
I never thought “tits” was more offensive than “boobs.” But my personal favorite is “ta-tas,” as in the classic Lenny Bruce bit about “ta-tas and nay-nays.”
February 18th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
I’ve always been amazed how many words that can be used to name parts of the human body, for both genders are used as derogatory terms when referring to individuals. Comparing someone to a man’s special purpose usually means they are acting stupidly or rudely, as in “don’t be such a”.
Comparing someone to a lady’s front-bottom can mean anything from being timid and hesitant to being an absolutely unpleasant person. One of those terms, number three on George’s famous list of seven, is universally considered the nuclear weapons of naughty words. Yet interestingly, none of the words for the male anatomy make the list, thought a word describing an act upon it does.
Proving once again that it’s not the tool that’s important, but what one does with it.
February 18th, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Hmmm. Interesting point.
About 20 years ago Dick Giordano and I had a meeting with the folks at TSR. This was during Toy Fair, and we were at a somewhat elegant and very crowned midtown Manhattan restaurant. Flint Dille, best known as a writer/producer of animated movies, television shows, and video games, decided to entertain us with his vast and, to my experience, unsurpassed knowledge of euphemisms for the word “penis.” It was truly amazing.
Afterword, Dick and I discussed the event, glossing over the actual business portions as they paled in comparison. We agreed that Flint came up with terms that were new to either or both of us, carefully reviewing each word we could recall. Dick and I both grew up in highly urban settings where we played in the streets and learned a lot of useful things along these lines. (In fact, if Dick made a slightly different career choice, he could have been the equivalent of one of the Bowery Boys; I grew up in a neighborhood that produced offbeat pop culture mavens such as Bob Gale and Stuart Gordon).
Unfortunately, we didn’t make a lot of progress on the business stuff, and among the DC executives only Dick and I felt our time was productive. And, sadly, I’ve never been able to watch “An American Tail” quite the same way since.
February 20th, 2013 at 1:17 pm
The eternal problem with political correctness: Too much worry about what is on people’s lips, too little worry about what is behind their eyes.
And it’s the same problem when the PC police turns its attention to movies and books. Too much worry about how many times such and such word appears, too little worry about what the author is actually saying with the work.
February 20th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Amen to that, Rene.
February 20th, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Yeaaah, except when what the author is actually saying is indeed being represented by his or her work.
You know…cause that’s part of what ‘art’ does as well.
And Rene, as far this part of your post is concerned…” Too much worry about what is on people’s lips, too little worry about what is behind their eyes.”…I’ve found the following nugget of wisdom to be confirmed time and time again…
“Your mouth says what comes from inside you.”
February 20th, 2013 at 9:05 pm
Reg, I think I heard Charlie McCarthy say that to Mae West.
February 21st, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Social consciousness by keyword search is the most intellectually lazy of all the kinds of social analysis.
Let’s add how many times the author uses the n-word, the k-word, the b-word, how many times a female character is killed, how many times a female character is strong, divide by some formula, and we get the author’s social worthness value or something.
Lazy. But easier than try to engage the author. Also, awfully convenient. Bad guys use certain words, good guys don’t.
Your mouth says what comes from inside you? There is a little something called lying.
I just finished THE SUN ALSO RISES, from Hemingway. Still think he was misogynist. But I discovered, browsing the Internet, that a lot of people accused Hemingway of being anti-semite too, because there is the character of Robert Cohn, that is called “that dawm Jew” at least once every chapter by the other characters.
Did they read the same book I read? Robert Cohn is the most sympathetic character in the whole novel. Perhaps the only one. He is the only one who still has ideals, and his sin is that he is earnest in his suffering, and he is not stylish. Of course everybody else in the novel loathes him, because they’re all a bunch of cynical, amoral sophisticates that hide their depression behind cheeriness and witty, while Robert Cohn is open about his suffering and ruins the party.
That lots of the characters are also anti-semites just make Cohn even MORE sympathetic.
Still, lots of lazy “scholars” have actually counted how many times Cohn is called an racist epithet in-story to “prove” that Hemingway himself is anti-semite. The novel has been published some times with an altered text to remove the remarks. I suppose that changes everything.
And then there was this Internet filter I used to have in my job. It blocked sites by keyword, so you coudn’t access a site about the X-Men, because it thought it was porno. Anyway, in the future we might consider political correct software to analyse a author’s work, to make it even easier for “scholars” to decide if the work’s offensive. They don’t even need to watch the movie or read the book.
February 21st, 2013 at 6:12 pm
Rene, you know what I call lazy? It’s people who say that they want a kinder, more respectful, peaceful, and cooperative society, but continue to feed and support the machinations (art, culture,attitudes, etc) that are inherently (and in some instances diabolically) opposed to building same.
You know, those people who decry ‘political correctness’ until a particular thing hits home. Like if your child has a learning disability and all of a sudden the casually tossed around ‘tard’ cuts like a knife, or if your wife happens to be considered over(or under) weight by your culture’s current standards and you hear the unkind descriptor tossed her way. All of a sudden, a thing that was once just a concept becomes a personal human need and desire for respect and sensitivity.
It takes effort to be considerate of a stranger’s sensibilities and choose to reflect the best of humanity rather than the base. It takes effort to put a governor on one’s natural inclination to be selfish and spew what we nonchalantly feel like expressing.
And before you raise the anticipated hew and cry against censorship, please recognize that we ALL exercise censorship every single day of our lives. It’s called personal responsibility and judgement as to what does or does not meet with a person’s internal (programmed) preferences.
Unfortunately, all too often GIGO is the result. Just think how much better society as a whole would be if individuals made the effort to responsibly tweak their personal programming so as to be in real consideration of those life factors that hurt or disparage their fellow human beings.
Imagine.