“Oh Fuck!” is something I hear all around me everyday, as pens drop, essay deadlines draw close or the coffee goes cold. I tried the other day, to put that phrase in other words and came up with “Oh, sexual intercourse!” Upon examining dictionaries for etymological significance, there’s “Oh, strike!” and “Oh, Copulate!” Not so sexy.
The word “fuck” has been one of the biggest taboo words in the English language. Even today, a lot of publications don’t actually print the word itself. That, of course, doesn’t mean it isn’t used. Why are we writing about it on a feminist webzine? Because the word is about as gendered and loaded with sexual stereotype as could be humanly possible.
The etymological origin of the word “Fuck” is, according to most dictionaries from a Germanic word meaning “to strike” – indicating violence. Today it generally means sexual intercourse and in common banter, specifically, the male active act of penetration – thus commonly held beliefs that “men fuck, women get fucked”. A discourse of violence is thus actively built into the social understanding of sex, along with a denial of the female right to pleasure – the one who “gets fucked” is simply the passive instrument (thus also objectifying women) of the active alpha male. The Victorian “Suffer and be still” reprehension of female orgasms seems to have triumphed and turned into an everyday joke. This general idea turns homophobic as well, effeminizing gay men and masculinising lesbian women and disempowering one partner in the process.
The other connotations of the phrase “to get fucked” are very telling on this. The phrase is never used in a positive sense. Getting messed up, being ruined, or ruining something are its usual meanings. So, I wonder, when a woman “gets fucked” by a man, are we explicitly building a discourse of rape and female disempowerment into sexual relations? Yelling “Fuck you!” at someone doesn’t exactly indicate gentle lovemaking – it’s equating sex with anger and the desire to ravage – somewhat barbaric in my opinion.
And there’s more to it – “fuck” is constructed around what appears to be a Victorian idea of heterosexual supremacy that essentially marginalizes and socially delegitimizes all other forms of pleasure. So derogatory terms include expressions like “go fuck yourself”, indicating masturbation – something that became heavily stigmatized in Victorian England with the emergence of the idea of a “spermatic economy” that would be ruined by the “wastage of energy” that masturbation entailed. “Motherfucker” is a not-so-subtle accusation of incest of the worst kind. “Fucking bugger” is also a very loaded phrase– “bugger” itself is derogatory and signifies “nothing” (“there’s bugger I can do now”) while the original meaning of the word was used to indicate homosexuality and anal intercourse between men; and men and women – an illegal act in times past.
“Fuck” is not something I expect to ever stop hearing – not because people are particularly violent or predisposed to rape and ravage, but simply because it’s now a word that signifies anger, frustration or just tiredness – something like “darn” or “damn” (themselves dangerous words in literal meaning). However, it’s important to see how gendered and androcentric our words are and how closely they shadow masculine ideas of power and sex. Catharine McKinnon talks about how all power eroticized is masculine sexual power, and all submission eroticized is female sexuality. “Fuck” is right in the middle of that discourse.
The Author Sneha Krishnan is an economics-obsessed, pasta-loving history student bound for Oxford this fall. She is usually found curled up in sofas with her ever-present macbook perched on some surface in the vicinity. Sneha first started thinking about doing Sa when she and Shweta realized that they were ranting about the day's news/ happenings practically everyday and everything they said had something to do with their feminist convictions. So they wondered how it would be to write about these things and more... and KaBoom... seven months and laborious code-learning (trial and error, the only method for us) sessions later, Sa came to be. Sneha’s favourite pastimes, besides feminism and Sa, are reading the New York Times, playing Scrabble and watching every movie that looks remotely interesting.
I have come to realize this as well. It’s a horrible thought. To fuck = to ruin, to dominate, to destroy, to humiliate, to degrade, to hurt.
The thing is, it’s not really so separate in people’s minds! People say “fuck you,” but when they feel colorful or creative, it easily turns into explicit, violent rape imagery. Have you ever heard (trigger warning), “Fuck you with a rusty chainsaw” or similar? (You can substitute in “go fuck yourself” or “get fucked” and also any manner of painful objects…)
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Anymore people who use the word and who have read this article will have good reason to ponder as to why they use the word.I never understood myself as to what is so cool about using the word…
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Am a woman who used to work for a boss who used the phrase “get fingered” at least five times a day in casual, non-angry situations :-/
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I really appreciate your courage to speak your mind on the web, especially when most of us are pretty hypocritical when it comes to expressing ourselves to a wider audience. Keep it up!
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Great write up! Certainly thought provoking!
I thought, will I stop using the word fuck?… and I simply told myself uh-uh.. not really! There is nothing in your post that I’d disagree with, but like most commonly used words even the usage and meaning of this word is very dynamic, like any other aspect of language that is constantly evolving. Slang (of any language) too, though not appreciated or liked by anyone, has its own properties which make it a kind of language of it’s own. It evolves too and is probably the least consistent of all language forms. Well, that’s what I’v understood. But I don’t really know, I have never academically studied language since high school.
All I know is, these days I hear more and more women use it like they are the ‘doer’.. as in, women say ‘I fucked that guy once’, ‘I never take calls when I fuck my husband’ (lol, sorry cudn’t come up with better examples)… or something like that, you know… I don’t know how to explain myself very well, and I will not refer to the dictionary meaning, because to me the meaning of such words are so diverse and situational that the dictionary can’t possibly mention all the definitions. All I am saying is, I have never heard any woman saying ‘I got fucked by him last night’… but I have heard quite a few say ‘I fucked that guy last night’… moreover, irrespective of its origin, now when fuck is used to say ’sexual intercourse’, it means ANY sort of sexual intercourse – gentle or wild! Also, I have personally never come across the substitution of the word rape with fuck.
Anyway, I maybe wrong because I don’t even remember using the word fuck in the sexual intercourse context. I usually use it like ‘damn’ (as said by you) and like ‘fucker’ for an idiot or something… and ofcourse ‘fucking’ is something I say most frequently, either when its a bad situation or a damn good one… like ‘fuckin gross’ or ‘fuckin awesome’! So I can’t really say if I am doing the right thing or not… but one thing I can say, sometimes this word sure does help me as a feminist, to get my point across to the other side… and in an effective way!
Again… a very interesting post… do keep it coming.
Fuck, I got to go now! 
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Fine article insofar as its etymological and cultural underpinnings go but it overreaches itself in over-generalization of the subject.
“”Today it generally means sexual intercourse and in common banter, specifically, the male active act of penetration – thus commonly held beliefs that “men fuck, women get fucked”. – This is a blanket (and rather inaccurate) generalization of the usage of the phrase.
“Fuck” doesn’t find mention in mass literature plainly because it has derogatory connotations – just as “dick” or “pussy” wouldn’t appear in a newspaper. And there are better euphemistic substitues for the same so in the common interests of the persons with the weakest sensibilities, such substitutes are employed. “Fuck” is commonly used in English literature of the day. The day that “fuck” finds acceptance in the majority, it will appear in mass media too. There was a time when “fuck” was outlawed from television screens and celluloid, but it finds ample currency today by way of the Parental Guidance imprimatur (Keep the kids away from it until they find it themselves!)
If the dictionary defines “fuck” as “to hit or strike”, I am surprised as to how it took on the rather specific connotation meaning “a man’s act of active penetration of a woman”. Sure, “fuck” may denote violence, but, to the letter, does it imply violence by man against woman? Where did this perversion of the phrase come about? And as someone has already mentioned, it is attributed to woman in the active, non-recipient sense too. Like one would never say, “A prostitute GETS fucked for money”.
And so far as motherfucker goes, it is most insulting to the person in question at whom the said abuse is hurled and it is insulting because it is incestuous and not because it involves a member of the gentler sex (I hope this turn of phrase is not taken offence at
).
It has merely fallen out that “fuck” has come to be used as a generic mnemonic to represent and express a wide range of emotions and what not in today’s times. So much so that people mutter it unconsciously. And so much so, that year after year, it is cited as the most used word in this beautiful language. Now, surely you don’t want a “top performer” like that to be shown the door??
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