Episode Transcript
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0:03
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told
0:05
You from how Stop works dot com.
0:12
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
0:14
and I'm Kristin and Kristin. To start
0:17
off today's podcast, I have a joke. It's not really
0:19
a joke, but I'm going to set it up like a joke. Okay, ready,
0:22
um, So, a blonde and a brunette
0:24
walk into an Indian restaurant for lunch,
0:27
and the blonde says to the brunette,
0:31
you know, I'm really teaching
0:33
my daughter that it's bad to curse.
0:37
And the brunette says, why
0:39
that's I mean, that's good, but why And she's like,
0:41
The blonde says to the brunette, Well, you
0:44
know, it's just not lady
0:46
like. You know, she's not a true lady
0:48
if she curses, it's not a ladylike thing
0:50
to do. The brunette tells the blonde,
0:53
Oh, I totally agree. I
0:55
have two boys, and
0:57
I think it's way more acceptable for them
0:59
to curse, especially like on the football
1:02
field. I mean, that's totally fine.
1:04
Okay. So what I've just told you is an actual
1:07
true story that I overheard at an Indian restaurant
1:09
at lunch one day where two women were
1:11
discussing the upside and downside
1:14
of children cursing
1:16
according to their gender. Yeah,
1:18
my next question was going to be, and
1:20
so what did the redhead you say
1:23
to the blonde and brunette? Because I've
1:26
heard similar things like
1:28
that in terms of talking
1:30
about little girls and
1:32
being lady like and the lady like behavior.
1:34
And I'm pretty sure that I
1:37
was also told as
1:39
a girl to watch my
1:41
language because ladies
1:43
don't talk in X y
1:46
Z kinds of ways. So how
1:48
did you react? I shoved
1:50
some non into my face and I just
1:52
kept eating my curry. I
1:54
was not going to intervene in this situation,
1:57
like tap tap tap, excuse me, what do you
1:59
mean by a true lady? And so instead
2:02
you decided, hey, this is a great podcast
2:04
topic, which it is because
2:08
swearing, cursing, profanity,
2:10
whatever you want to call it, has so
2:12
many gendered elements to it.
2:15
It's so fascinating
2:17
once you start to unravel that ball of yarn
2:20
it is. And the more that Kristen and I read
2:22
about this topic, the more I found myself
2:24
kind of looking inwardly
2:27
because I tend to have a
2:29
sailor's mouth. I curse all the
2:31
time, I think the F word is
2:34
like one of the most satisfying words
2:36
to say. The m F word
2:39
is my my go to curse word at
2:41
work because I managed to stop myself
2:43
after the first two syllables, therefore
2:45
not actually cursing. UM,
2:48
so that that's a good route to take. But um,
2:51
Yeah, it was kind of interesting. I felt like there was a little
2:53
bit of a mirror being held up at me when I was reading
2:55
this stuff, because everything
2:57
we read is like, you know, cursing
3:00
say masculine linguistic
3:02
attribute, and women who do
3:04
it are viewed kind of
3:07
negatively. Yeah, and not only
3:09
that there's the masculine element, but there's
3:11
also this power element of
3:13
cursing that we'll get into as well.
3:15
And that's what really struck a chord with
3:18
me in thinking about my own cursing
3:20
behavior because Caroline,
3:22
like you, I don't have to tell you that I have
3:24
a salty mouth as well
3:26
and have a penchant for the F
3:29
word because there is something particularly
3:31
satisfying about saying it
3:34
and sometimes no substitute,
3:36
no euphemism, will do.
3:39
For reasons that we'll get into. Um
3:42
and don't worry, this is gonna be a clean podcast,
3:44
so for listeners out there. I
3:47
think this will be for men
3:49
and women alike something to think
3:51
about while about your own cursing behavior
3:54
too as you're listening to
3:56
this. But first, a little bit of history
3:59
in terms of how long we have
4:01
been swearing. Answer basically forever.
4:04
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there were cavemen who grunted,
4:07
you know, when they stubbed their toes things like
4:09
that. But if you look at the etymology
4:12
of the word curse, like to say
4:15
a bad word, to swear profanely, that
4:17
comes from the early thirteenth century. And
4:20
something that I didn't realize about the origin of
4:22
even talking about saying bad words,
4:25
uh, is that to curse
4:28
or to swear to you swear words.
4:30
Swearing was a huge deal
4:33
back in the day. Yeah. We're
4:35
looking at a Brief History of swearing, which
4:37
is a book by Melissa More and
4:40
she divides swearing into what she
4:43
calls two spheres of the unstayable.
4:46
And the first one that really came around were
4:48
religious swears, and this is especially
4:51
taking God's name in vain. Uh.
4:53
And then you have the sexual
4:56
or excremental types of swearing,
4:59
such as the S word. Right, And she says
5:01
that these two types are kind
5:03
of at the root of all of the bad words
5:06
that we say today. Okay,
5:08
but going back to the
5:10
religious, the holy, the swearing
5:13
that actually goes way back in
5:15
text records to ancient Latin,
5:17
and blasphemy against deities predates
5:20
cursing in reference to sexual or scatological
5:22
behaviors, because religion was
5:24
the central part of our lives, right, So
5:27
saying something like sounds, which
5:29
would be short for God's wounds or
5:31
by God's bones, would
5:33
have been horrendously profane.
5:37
Yeah, sounds sounds like something that Scooby
5:39
Doo would say, right. Yeah, today
5:41
we wouldn't think of it because think of how common it
5:43
is to just say, oh my God. Right,
5:46
that even would have been bad to say,
5:49
right. And I mean, I was telling Kristen that I did get
5:51
a bit of an education reading about this, because
5:53
you know, I was raised that saying oh
5:55
my God was so bad that you did
5:57
not say that in the house and you didn't say in front
5:59
of my dad. Um, But I didn't
6:01
understand that. You
6:04
know, things like when you talk about the Covenant,
6:06
you know, when you talk about God's
6:08
promises or swearing to God
6:11
or making an oath, that that is so serious,
6:13
and that when you take God's name in vain,
6:15
you are essentially promising something false. You're
6:18
kind of bringing God or whatever
6:20
deity into your
6:22
lie essentially. Yeah, and more
6:24
describes why the
6:26
whole emergence of
6:29
it being bad to take God's name in vain,
6:31
to make those blasphemous
6:33
slurs, was important, especially for building
6:35
the foundations of Christianity.
6:38
She writes, in the Old Testament, God is
6:40
fighting a war for supremacy with other
6:42
near Eastern gods, and he wields oath
6:44
swearing as one of his most powerful
6:47
weapons. And right there from the get go, we have
6:49
that we're powerful coming up.
6:51
Because in a way, this is one
6:54
way in which you could say
6:56
that, you know, religion is setting out a rule,
6:58
a social rule, saying hey, don't don't
7:00
do this people kind of you need to
7:02
abide by these religious rules, respect
7:05
your God, and he won't smite you. I
7:07
know I've I can't believe I've avoided being
7:09
smoked, being smoked the whole
7:11
time. Well, So as we move forward
7:14
though, into the eighteenth century, and we move
7:16
away from maybe taking
7:18
God's name in vain or or religious
7:20
swearing being the worst possible thing
7:23
you can do we get the rise of kind of body
7:25
consciousness and hating our bodies
7:27
and hating our bodily functions, and being scared of
7:29
everything that comes out of our bodies. And
7:32
so we get this rise in kind
7:34
of body shyness, but also the use of euphemisms.
7:37
Yeah, and so by the end of the
7:40
nineteenth century, More says that swearing
7:42
began to indicate not only those
7:45
religious oaths but also those
7:47
obscenities. Um. But also
7:50
by this time too, well,
7:52
by this time we have a lot of
7:55
gender specificity with swearing
7:57
behavior because earlier
8:00
injuries before in fact, it was had
8:02
been established that women,
8:04
especially who were considered
8:07
the more who
8:10
were considered the purer sex, the morally
8:12
upright, uh, you know, kind
8:14
of counterparts to men.
8:18
We're certainly not supposed to use
8:20
these words, right. In
8:23
fifteen twenty three, a piece titled
8:25
on the Instruction of a Christian Woman includes
8:28
observations about what is appropriate language
8:31
for women to use. So already,
8:33
I mean, that's coming from somewheres that didn't originate
8:35
eighty three, So obviously
8:38
it's already being laid out formally
8:41
that women are supposed to talk a certain way and
8:44
not tread into bad, scary
8:47
territory and from fifteen twenty three
8:49
all the way up to an
8:51
Indian restaurant in two
8:53
thousand and fourteen, right,
8:55
And I mean, you know that conversation
8:58
that I overheard you out,
9:01
It was like girls shouldn't curse,
9:03
and you certainly should not curse in front of girls,
9:06
but boys or
9:08
should be allowed to do whatever they want. It's way
9:10
more acceptable to curse in front of them. And
9:12
and I heard, you know, in that conversation the brunette
9:15
telling the blonde basically that
9:17
you know, well, it's just a fact of life. You know,
9:19
a boy will curse on the football field or curse
9:21
in the halls of school. Um, but if a girl
9:23
doesn't, she will be looked down upon, people will
9:25
think she's trashy. Well,
9:28
and unfortunately, there might
9:30
be some validity
9:33
to that point, although that's not to say
9:35
that that's necessarily a
9:38
good thing or a thing that we should simply
9:41
condone and say, Okay, well, yeah, the girls
9:43
just just don't do that, But guys, go ahead and do what you want
9:45
to do. But first we we got to figure
9:47
out why we do this in the first place.
9:49
Because there's a linguistic theory
9:52
that humans very first
9:55
words were swear words
9:57
because of their emotional
10:00
nature. It's interesting that there is such
10:02
a gender divide in cursing behavior
10:04
because it's such an inherently
10:07
human thing to do. It's
10:09
like in our DNA almost Yeah
10:12
and More talks about She gives some
10:14
examples of of individuals, well
10:16
known individuals who you know have experienced
10:19
whether you know, dementia or or
10:22
you know, general speech loss for whatever
10:24
reason, who still are cursing
10:26
because it's it seems to be kind of deeply
10:28
ingrained in some part of our brain that maybe
10:31
when the rest of our brain has been affected
10:33
by some disease or some injury, we
10:35
can reach down into those pits
10:37
of the brain and still managed to throw
10:40
out a well placed for a letter word. And
10:42
that's because swear words
10:44
are actually produced in different parts
10:46
of the brain compared to regular
10:49
speech. Because what you and I
10:51
are saying right now on the podcast Caroline
10:53
is being processed through the left hemispheres
10:56
of our brain, and it's known as a
10:59
higher brain function, this language
11:01
processing. But if
11:03
you and I were to start cursing
11:06
up a storm on this podcast,
11:09
we would probably be
11:11
activating the limbic system,
11:14
which is known as a
11:17
more ancient part of the human
11:19
brain. And this is where expletives
11:21
are stored, right, And it's basically
11:24
brain circuitry that is linked to
11:26
emotion and is just
11:29
as Chris and said, evolutionarily ancient.
11:31
And it's buried deep inside the right
11:33
half of our brain. And it makes
11:36
neurological sense that that's where swear words
11:38
originate from, because that's also the
11:40
part of the brain that regulates things like fear response,
11:42
fight or flight are autonomous nervous
11:45
system and for that reason. Harvard
11:47
psychologist Steven Pinker was
11:50
talking about this to Scientific American and
11:52
he essentially compared human
11:54
swearing behavior to that of
11:57
cats, saying, quote, I
11:59
suspect that swear ring taps into a defensive
12:01
reflex in which an animal that is suddenly injured
12:04
or confined erupts in a furious
12:06
struggle accompanied by an angry
12:08
vocalization to startle and intimidate
12:10
an attacker. Right, So, if you sit on a
12:12
cat accidentally and the cat gets really angry
12:15
and reaches up and swats it
12:17
you and runs away, like cat just
12:19
cursed you, Kristen, Yeah,
12:22
just Mr Whiskers, It's
12:25
set a four letter word at you. Because
12:27
it was like, dude, don't sit on me, I'm
12:30
here, and so yeah, I mean, if you think about
12:32
it, like that makes a lot of sense. When when when
12:35
certain things drive you to curse without
12:37
thinking about it, it's usually because you're
12:39
scared, you're anxious. All of a sudden
12:41
something startled you or hurt you, and so
12:43
you react by, you know, screaming a
12:45
bad word. Well, and it's also fascinating
12:48
to look at the physiological
12:51
effects of swearing because
12:53
our it's a total brain body connection
12:56
going on when we swear as opposed to
12:58
just casual, clean
13:00
conversation. Because when
13:03
we swear, for instance,
13:05
it induces greater skin conductance
13:07
than other words, which indicates
13:10
emotional arousal, and so our
13:12
heart rate also goes up and
13:15
it might have a pain mitigating
13:17
effect. Yeah, I love this study.
13:19
This was published a Nerror report back in
13:21
two thousand nine. People who held
13:24
their hands in icy water, the
13:26
people who swore held their hands
13:29
in the water for an average of forty seconds longer.
13:32
So there you go. If you unleash a string
13:34
of course words versus just chanting something
13:36
random and neutral, you can withstand
13:38
pain better. But there was one caveat
13:41
to that study finding, which was that
13:43
with repeated use, that
13:45
pain threshold actually diminishes,
13:48
which is why you might want to put
13:50
a limit on your swearing,
13:53
because if you're dropping F bombs
13:55
all the time in a
13:57
way, it do you sensitie
14:00
as you and probably your audience to
14:03
the power of that word. Now, I
14:06
yeah, this is exactly right. Uh.
14:08
You know, researcher Caroline did a little bit
14:10
of studying on this topic, and I
14:12
did. I had a day where, um,
14:15
not what you can to details, but something
14:17
was really taking me off, and
14:19
I unleashed like a string.
14:22
I think I said more F bombs than I said actual
14:24
subjects and verbs, uh in
14:26
in my sentence. And uh,
14:29
you know, the other person in the conversation was stunned,
14:32
rightly so, But I don't know, maybe
14:34
in my string of expletive use,
14:36
maybe I was trying to exercise a degree
14:39
of power over the person across the
14:41
table from me. More does call
14:43
curse words quote the most powerful
14:46
words we have with which to express extreme
14:49
emotion, whether negative or
14:51
positive. Sure, that's kind of
14:53
a no brainer to read, But
14:55
there's also linked to that this
14:57
old theory that women
15:00
swear as kind of a linguistic
15:03
power grab. That the only reason
15:06
we would really want to violate
15:08
those longstanding gender norms
15:10
that we are supposed to speak like good ladies
15:13
and and be clean and euphemistic
15:16
and no no f bombs.
15:19
The only reason we would do that is to try
15:23
to kind of exert some power flex our muscles.
15:26
Right, And but why is that equated with
15:28
power? Because I mean it's also equated with masculinity,
15:31
and so women, being the repressed,
15:34
oppressed group of people that
15:36
we are, maybe we're all just cursing up a
15:38
storm according to this theory, to uh to
15:40
boost our power seat. Yeah, I think
15:43
some of that is being said with sarcasm.
15:45
I don't know, what do you think about that? I don't
15:48
because I remember the first time I
15:50
really started cursing
15:53
was in high school. There
15:55
was one girl in my class who knew
15:57
all of the words, and yeah, I know this is high school. Hello.
15:59
I was a little bit of a late bloomer. But
16:02
I started kind of practicing cursing
16:05
under my breath and then I started staying out loud
16:07
and there was that power element to it.
16:10
But like I like, it felt
16:12
like I felt like I was rebelling in a way. Yeah,
16:14
I think, yes, I would
16:17
agree with you. Personally, I feel like it's
16:19
less to do with I'm a woman
16:22
and so I need to somehow elevate myself up
16:24
to being equal to men through the use
16:27
of the F bomb, but more
16:29
so than like, I'm just angry
16:32
and I'm conversationally
16:34
rebelling and I'm going to let
16:36
you know exactly how angry I am.
16:39
Yeah, I mean, and I don't think that you
16:41
can discount the power element. It
16:43
just might not be as gendered as
16:45
saying the only recent women are cursing
16:47
is to try to emulate male behavior,
16:50
because there's also one thing that more
16:52
another linguists point out is
16:54
the socioeconomic power element
16:56
of it too, where cursing
16:59
has generally been associated with
17:01
either lower
17:03
class people more of a blue collar
17:05
type of thing to do, or at
17:08
the very upper echelons of society
17:10
where they're standing is
17:13
so secure that they can swear
17:15
and not be looked down upon, whereas for
17:17
good middle class folk, you keep it
17:19
clean. Yeah, I mean talking about women
17:22
being the ones who supposedly use euphemism
17:25
over like an out and out curse word.
17:27
Linguists have found like they looked
17:30
at one study looked at um courtroom
17:32
transcripts and found that
17:35
social class, not gender, was actually a
17:37
greater predictor of the use of quote unquote
17:39
woman's language, which sounds horrifically
17:42
offensive to me, but it just
17:44
means that this is the language that people
17:46
typically associate with women, being
17:49
like lower on the power scale, maybe
17:51
using euphemism instead of the stronger language,
17:53
etcetera, etcetera. So why don't
17:56
we dig even deeper into this gender
17:58
issue? Because one thing I was surprised
18:00
to find in the research on cursing,
18:03
like the more scholarly research on
18:05
cursing, is how you cannot
18:08
get very far away from gender
18:10
when you start looking for academic research
18:13
on this um. And one paper that
18:15
we found was by Christie Bears
18:17
Fagerston, and it's called Who's Swearing
18:19
Now? The Social Aspects of Conversational
18:22
Swearing? And this quote immediately
18:25
jumped out, which is that quote? By
18:27
far the most thoroughly investigated aspect
18:29
of the socio linguistics of swearing is the correlation
18:32
between swearing and the gender
18:34
of the interlocutors of
18:36
social interaction. So,
18:39
in other words, it's
18:41
swearing behavior and gender are almost
18:44
always inextricably linked.
18:46
It seems like right. And one researcher,
18:49
one linguistics professor who is constantly
18:52
cited and all of these studies is Robin lake
18:54
Off, who is a professor at the University of California,
18:56
Berkeley, and she said that women
18:59
cursing had long been considered dangerous
19:02
because these words quote express anger
19:04
and act as a substitute for physical expression
19:06
of anger. So basically, whereas men
19:09
have the power to hit each other in the face
19:11
at the bar, women are just gonna
19:13
throw some nasty words at you instead.
19:16
Yeah, this also does remind me of some of
19:18
the research that we found in our episode
19:20
a while back on women and anger,
19:23
where it's not that we are
19:25
less angry than men, but we
19:29
don't express it as outwardly
19:32
sometimes as men do. And
19:34
then this also reminded me too of growing
19:37
up. My dad is a big guy,
19:39
and he's he has a loud and booming
19:41
voice, and he didn't curse all that much,
19:43
but it was like, if he was angry, you could hear it,
19:46
whereas my mom
19:49
verbally expressive, though she is
19:52
um, you knew things
19:54
were bad if you heard her curse. Even
19:57
today, I mean, we have like a very
19:59
like close adult relationship, and
20:01
I can say whatever I want for the most part
20:03
around her, but even still, I
20:06
mean, she'll like drop her voice and
20:08
say a curse word, and then it's like
20:10
that's when, you know, just immediately
20:13
everyone starts crying. Yeah, because that's
20:15
like I mean, if if she is pushed to the point of cursing,
20:18
then she is angry.
20:21
Yeah, it's kind of My mom doesn't curse much.
20:23
She Actually I think my mom is kind of entertained when I curse,
20:25
and so she kind of curses along with me, and it's like a girlfriend
20:28
activity. But yeah, my dad is
20:30
kind of the same way, Like he never gets loud,
20:32
he never yells, but he
20:35
will lower his voice to a growl. And
20:38
if he says just like
20:40
a soft so quote
20:42
unquote soft for letter word, you're
20:44
like, it's all over. It's all over, the apocalypse,
20:47
everything's crumbling. Oh my god, run for the hills.
20:49
And it's because though of that longstanding
20:52
notion of women having women
20:54
and your dad cleaner
20:57
speech, that they're often described
21:00
as the guardians of language
21:02
and propriety, the experts of
21:04
euphemism. But there's this interesting shift
21:06
that happens starting in
21:08
the nineteen seventies and eighties
21:11
where you see this correlation between
21:15
the women's lib movement and second
21:17
wave feminism picking up steam
21:20
and women cursing more
21:23
so, I mean, I can obviously see where stemming
21:25
from those studies that you would link power
21:28
grabs by women and cursing
21:31
and cursing being a masculine thing and women
21:33
trying to ever take men blah blah blah blah blah, all
21:35
that whole narratives, right, I mean, and again, like it
21:37
studies like that, there's always the
21:39
thing of hey, correlation versus
21:41
causation, Keep that in mind,
21:43
but it was nevertheless interesting to see these
21:47
studies coming out in the mid seventies
21:49
looking specifically at
21:51
that um But one thing, though, when we're
21:53
talking about men and women
21:55
in mixed company and cursing behavior, men
21:58
will curse less around women,
22:01
right, because there's that natural assumption
22:04
that like almost ingrained assumption that women
22:06
don't curse. Women have a lower what's
22:08
it called, like offensiveness threshold or
22:10
obscenity threshold, and so they
22:12
they're they're fragile brains just can't
22:14
handle it. Well, that's the outside
22:17
assumption. Whereas women really
22:20
in self reports aren't necessarily as
22:22
definitives. We tend to think they
22:24
would be, and when women are around
22:27
men, we tend to curse more.
22:29
It's like we're trying to meet in the
22:31
middle in terms of our gendered swearing
22:34
behavior. But when you think too
22:36
about swear words, swear
22:39
words to me is such a hokey phrase.
22:41
But what do you think about the list of swear
22:43
words that we have and the ones that you hear so often?
22:46
Uh. Faggerson writes that the
22:48
implication of swearing as a male domain
22:51
can also be found in the language
22:54
of swearing itself, which includes an
22:56
abundance of terms for
22:58
females and their body parts.
23:01
Right. Yeah, I thought this was interesting
23:04
to an interesting link between cursing
23:06
and gender, that there's so many
23:09
naughty quote unquote things that you can
23:11
call women in their body parts,
23:13
but maybe not as many about men
23:16
and theirs. Yeah, because even the
23:19
swear words that might be more commonly
23:22
directed to men are typically
23:24
just insulting them in
23:26
female terms, calling them
23:29
things related to women. Right
23:32
makes sense since we can't curse
23:34
on this podcast, right,
23:36
and we do as men and women tend to
23:39
insult each other and react to insults
23:41
differently. Um.
23:43
This was coming from Timothy Jay's Cursing
23:46
in America, a psycholinguistic study of
23:48
dirty language in the courts. He
23:50
talks about sexual looseness
23:53
or not being loose enough, being the crux
23:55
of the strongest female insults.
23:57
Are concerns, he writes, tend to
24:00
surround intimacy, social
24:02
desirability, and security, whereas men's
24:05
men's concerns tend to surround sex,
24:07
power and physical attractiveness. And
24:09
so Jay theorizes that the
24:12
curse words that men and women tend to rely
24:14
on more often are filtered through
24:17
those concerns, as
24:19
he calls them. But the whole sexual looseness
24:22
or not being loose enough thing in
24:25
terms of like the types of swear words or
24:27
insults that are lobbed
24:29
more often at women, is so frustrating
24:31
because it's either you are
24:34
horribly frigid or way
24:37
to promise us, you can
24:39
never really win in terms of that,
24:41
Yeah, I mean yeah and everything.
24:44
As far as men insulting each other, it seems
24:46
to be, yeah, like you said, you call them
24:48
something feminine to insult them the worst, or you
24:50
insinuate that they're gay or whatever to
24:52
be to be the most the most
24:55
insulting. And I think
24:57
that this is interesting because it ties
24:59
back to one of the sources we read talking about.
25:02
I think it was more talking about curse
25:04
words in ancient Rome. And one
25:06
of the most vulgar swear
25:09
words or curse words in ancient
25:12
Rome was the word for
25:14
performing oral sex on a woman. That
25:16
was like the most vulgar you could
25:18
not get any more vulgar. Performing
25:21
oral sex on a man was not even on the charts
25:23
compared to this. It was just because the mouth is
25:25
viewed as this clean and sacred place, and
25:28
then when you talk about performing oral sex on a woman,
25:30
that's like the worst thing. Vagina's
25:32
vagina's messing at all, watch
25:35
out. And this researcher
25:37
Karen Stapleton also found
25:39
that men found it more acceptable for
25:41
men than women to use
25:44
terms referring to female anatomy. So women
25:46
aren't even allowed to refer to our own female
25:48
anatomy in any
25:50
sort of vulgar terms if we wish. But
25:53
when you go back to looking at how we
25:55
curse as kids, you know, talk about learning how
25:57
to curse, like, I don't even remember really when I learned
26:00
curse words at all. Just sort of appeared in
26:02
my brain one day, Yeah, I I they
26:04
I just remember kind of absorbing them, and then a
26:07
couple of them being there and
26:09
like testing the grounds and using them, but
26:11
having no idea what I was actually
26:14
saying. But one thing that my surprise
26:17
parents listening is that at least
26:19
according to research that Timothy J. Has
26:21
done, mean, he studied cursing for like thirty five years.
26:24
He found that we
26:27
start we as boys and girls start
26:29
picking up our first swear words by the age of
26:31
two. There's a good chance that we know
26:34
a swear word before we know the alphabet right,
26:36
and we're saying the same amount, whether we're little
26:38
boys or we're little girls. We were familiar
26:40
with the same amount. But by three
26:43
and four, girls are producing more
26:45
swear words. But after three or
26:47
four boys began to clearly
26:50
pull ahead. And this is a trend that starts
26:52
as early as five and continues
26:54
into adulthood. But this
26:57
is a good point to keep in mind that
26:59
this isn't offering
27:01
evidence that well, men are one way, they're
27:03
just cursing like sailors and ladies are,
27:06
you know, at home knitting lace doilies
27:08
and whispering euphemisms under their breath, But
27:11
simply that this is a reflection of
27:14
gender norms and expectations, because think about
27:16
it, at age five, you have your kid already
27:18
talking, you have your gender schema
27:20
already well underway of formation, and
27:23
you're probably already teaching
27:25
girls to be like little girls and boys
27:27
to be like rough and tumble boys. And you probably
27:29
have people like the ladies
27:32
you overheard at the Indian restaurant saying,
27:35
Oh, don't say little ladies don't talk like
27:37
that, right, I mean, I
27:39
mean, how many times have we already, Brenda,
27:42
how many times have we talked in the podcast
27:44
about having your gender identity
27:46
basically defined for you already
27:48
at such a young age. And so it's not that
27:50
cursing is outside of that. I mean, I think
27:52
the way you speak is very much tied into
27:55
how you're instructed to behave
27:57
to act, to own that gender. Yeah,
28:00
I clearly remember being
28:04
talked to. I don't know, I wouldn't call it punished
28:06
necessarily, but my
28:08
mom caught me or I was tattled
28:10
on. I'm not sure for saying
28:12
a curse word that I had no idea what it really
28:14
meant, and I just thought it was funny.
28:17
And but I don't
28:19
think she ever told me to not say because
28:21
I was a girl. But at the same time,
28:23
though I had no clue what was going on, she was like,
28:26
I knew I had done something wrong, and
28:28
she clearly was uncomfortable that I had said
28:31
this F word. But
28:34
I mean, I guess, you know, she didn't really want to
28:36
explain to me poll helve you
28:38
you know, the Human Anatomy book and
28:40
go into an in depth lesson.
28:42
But I do think that we need to be
28:45
I don't know, more accepting of the fact that kids
28:48
pick up curse words and not be so terrified
28:50
of it. Yeah. I mean, I have friends
28:53
with kids who basically tell their kids,
28:55
these are grown up words. And when you're
28:57
around your your dad and me, you can
28:59
say them at home because you've heard us
29:01
say them, but you can't say them outside of home.
29:04
So yeah, I mean, because
29:06
there's really, at some point there's
29:09
going to be no controlling that
29:11
language. Um. But let's
29:13
next look at whether or
29:15
not this swearing gender gap is closing today,
29:17
because Caroline, you and I have admitted
29:20
now that we off
29:23
Mike on the podcast, we
29:25
curse a lot quite a bit, and my girlfriend's
29:28
curse a lot as well, and when we are around each
29:30
other we are certainly
29:32
cursing not all the time, but you know it happens a
29:34
lot. So let's
29:36
let's figure out whether or not this
29:39
whole antiquated idea of women
29:41
being the experts of euphemism has
29:43
really gone by the wayside. And we're
29:45
going to do that when we come right back from
29:47
a quick break and now back to the
29:49
podcast. So we've looked at
29:52
gender and swearing behavior
29:54
in the past, but what about the
29:57
present. Are we cursing more as women
29:59
in our data day conversation? And also
30:02
are we cursing more in the
30:04
workplace? I
30:07
try not to, Hi, I
30:10
try not to as I don't try that hard
30:12
actually either actually to be honest.
30:15
But anyway, we found this study that
30:17
when I when I first looked at it, I thought there's
30:19
no way this could be relevant or
30:21
interesting. It's called f K. Yeah,
30:24
I swear cursing in gender
30:26
in my space my space,
30:29
my space, and I just had a little moment of like
30:31
remembering college the sound
30:33
of a dial tone, a dial up modem, right
30:36
it was. It was very very warm and fuzzy
30:38
feelings about my space, except for when it won't
30:40
load at all. Um. But anyway, researcher
30:43
Mike Fellwall found no significant
30:46
gender differences in the swearing on my
30:48
Space for male and female users
30:50
in the UK between the ages of sixteen
30:53
and nineteen. Yeah. And while
30:55
you might be thinking to yourself, why are they
30:57
quoting a study about my
31:00
base, Well, this is why, because fell
31:02
Wall concluded that quote this is perhaps
31:04
the first significant evidence of
31:06
gender equality in strong swearing
31:08
frequency in any informal
31:11
English language context,
31:13
because social media has presented
31:16
a new and unique database,
31:19
essentially for academics looking
31:21
into swearing behavior, because otherwise they
31:24
had to rely on people's self reported
31:26
swearing behavior or had to
31:28
essentially creep up on conversation like
31:31
I did, yeah, and and overhear people
31:34
and keep tallies of how much they
31:36
curse. So this is pretty relevant
31:38
data. But the thing is
31:41
I specified that this was u K teens.
31:44
This is not US teens.
31:46
They're still was a cursing
31:48
gender gap on my Space for teens in the US.
31:51
I wonder too, though, and I want to hear from listeners
31:53
in the UK about this whether
31:55
this is any reflection of differences
31:58
in culture in terms of censorship
32:00
broadcast censorship, because
32:03
the rules in the UK are way
32:06
less strict about the kinds of things that you will see
32:08
in here on TV versus the
32:11
FCC in the U S which is, you
32:13
know, you still can't say the F word
32:15
the S word UM on broadcast
32:19
networks. So I wonder if it
32:21
is maybe part of that could
32:23
be UM. But yeah, I guess.
32:25
And also just maybe it's a reflection of American
32:27
prudery. I that's what I would
32:30
link. But I mean, but it's one and the same. I
32:32
mean, the FCC being is reactionary
32:34
and you know, heavy handed as they are. It's
32:36
kind of one and the same. UM.
32:38
But as of two thousand thirteen,
32:40
moving away from the MySpace era now
32:43
into the age of Facebook,
32:45
American men still do
32:47
it more Overall, there was
32:50
a study conducted on Facebook linguistics
32:53
out of the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge,
32:55
and it found that women use more of what
32:57
they call emotion words like
32:59
it cited, love you, et
33:02
cetera, whereas men use more
33:04
swear words and object references,
33:07
so things like I blank love
33:09
my or not love my
33:11
Nintendo is blanking awesome. And
33:14
similarly, a study from thirteen
33:17
by to Lunar Quick Surveys found
33:20
that millennials are the
33:22
likeliest to swear repeatedly throughout the
33:24
day. I fall squarely
33:27
into that category. But of all
33:29
age groups, it's still men at
33:31
least, we were into this survey who are
33:34
cursing more in the US. But I think that
33:36
millennial um finding
33:38
is significant because I do think there
33:40
is a distinct generational
33:43
difference with our swearing
33:45
behavior. Yeah, I mean, this
33:47
is common sense to say, but I mean, you know,
33:50
with every successive generation, things
33:53
get more permissive. Things that you
33:55
know, our grandparents found to be completely
33:58
obscene, uh, you know, aren't
34:00
so bad anymore, and we hear them on television shows.
34:02
So yeah, I mean the fact that there
34:05
was a New York Times article from a
34:07
few years back, but nevertheless, it was talking about
34:10
the rise of hearing the word douche on
34:12
TV because it's
34:14
just another like funny but slightly
34:17
taboo word that you can
34:19
say. And also the B word it's said all
34:22
the time. And that's on broadcast networks as
34:24
well. Well. It's almost like shows like that on those
34:26
networks find the safe curse words
34:28
that they can say and then just say them to death, and
34:30
so that almost has an effect itself.
34:33
I would think that like, okay, well,
34:35
you know, this four letter word isn't
34:37
nearly as offensive. It's more much more, you
34:39
know, soft and everything. So we can say this a hundred
34:41
times per episode. Well, and one thing
34:43
that might be becoming more publicized
34:46
through TV shows and what we're seeing reflected
34:50
on screen is the fact that a
34:52
lot of studies have found that
34:54
when women are talking to each other casually,
34:58
we curse more and we're filthy.
35:00
Yeah, we're totally healthy. And
35:02
we found a study called get this
35:05
Taboo, Language and Sex in the City.
35:07
Yes, there have been a number of studies
35:09
actually conducted on sex in the City, but
35:11
it found the most swearing when the
35:14
main characters Carrie, Samantha,
35:16
Charlotte, and Miranda, we're talking to each
35:19
other. But it was interesting that when they were
35:21
talking to male characters on the
35:23
show, the amount
35:25
of swearing went down and the euphemism use
35:27
went up. But male characters when they were talking
35:29
still to the to the gal pals,
35:33
we're cursing more directly.
35:37
Aren't imitating life? Sort of Yeah,
35:40
yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm I know that I'm like completely
35:43
disgusting and open with my girlfriends when we're
35:45
having a conversation about whatever, you know, I mean,
35:48
but I not wouldn't necessarily say the
35:50
same things to guy friends exactly.
35:53
Well, and I think that we're seeing too
35:56
that girlfriend type
35:58
of language being
36:00
reflected in publications
36:02
specifically targeting us
36:04
as millennial women. I mean, there was an entire
36:07
New York Times trend piece that came out in January
36:11
about the rise of profanity
36:13
in women's media. I mean, if you go, if
36:16
you look on any lady blog like
36:18
Jezebel or The Gloss or the
36:20
Hairpin, you're gonna see cursing
36:23
even in headlines. Yeah,
36:25
and you have my attitude, but as
36:27
someone who curses all the time, my
36:30
attitude about that is kind of like, that's
36:32
a little forced. Yeah, I feel like it can be
36:34
forced. I think that you have to keep in mind,
36:37
especially and this is just getting nerdy about
36:39
writing in literary preference, I do
36:41
think you have to keep in mind the power
36:43
element of cursing and the desensitizing
36:47
effect that it can have, to where it's like, don't
36:49
you want to save powerful
36:51
words for making
36:54
powerful statements? Yeah? And then it kind
36:56
of makes me look at what at the point they're
36:58
making overall and being like, what is
37:01
that? Why is that even needed? Right? You're not enhancing
37:04
it? And I mean I'm I am the last
37:06
person to make the claim about well, people
37:08
who use vulgar terms just obviously
37:11
have a poor vocabulary, because hello, let
37:13
me just read you my resume real quick. I have
37:15
a fine vocabulary, but I understand
37:18
the power of a well placed curse word, even
37:20
when I do fly off the handle and use them too much.
37:22
That being said, I think in in the
37:24
written word, in the world of the written
37:26
word, I
37:29
think it's okay to pull back a little. I don't think
37:31
we need to unleash the hounds, like every time
37:33
we write a blog about you know, cellulite,
37:35
right, I mean? And I can see how with
37:38
blogging in particular, there is a particularly
37:40
conversational voice that you're often
37:42
going for, where it's it's almost as
37:44
though the writer is speaking directly to you.
37:47
And I think there is some shock value
37:49
that some people try to employ.
37:52
By what I what we might think of
37:54
is overusing curse words. But even in
37:57
more mainstream publications like Cosmopolitan
37:59
Maggazine Marie Claire, you are
38:02
way likelier to see
38:05
curse words, not only within
38:07
the pages, but even on the cover. Yeah,
38:10
they might have a well placed asterisk or something,
38:12
but it's still I think they're pursuing. They
38:14
want to talk to their audience the same way
38:16
that their audience talks to one another. Yeah,
38:19
it was funny though. That New York Times piece was
38:22
called fifty Shades of Vulgarity,
38:24
to which some women our age wrote
38:26
response pieces being like New York
38:29
Times, of course we're cursing. But when
38:31
you as two people who went
38:33
to journalism school as we did, and
38:35
also reading the responses of editors
38:38
at these magazines, yet
38:40
it's kind of a big deal that they
38:42
are employing more profanity
38:45
because you wouldn't do that. They're letting their hair down
38:47
in the New York Times is just clutching its pearls.
38:50
It's right, I haven't New
38:52
York Times reaching for a scrunchee to put that
38:54
hair back up really quickly.
38:57
Um. But in our day to day conversation
38:59
too, there is still,
39:02
anecdotally at least this
39:05
debate over whether, if
39:08
you are at least a
39:11
straight woman, okay, whether
39:13
or not cursing all the time. It's gonna be a turn off
39:15
for guys. Yeah,
39:17
there was a lot of debate. One of the first UH
39:20
websites I stumbled across when I was searching for
39:22
just you know, gender women cursing all that stuff
39:24
was like this whole message board.
39:27
I don't even know what it was on, but this whole message board
39:29
where men were like, yeah, bro, you
39:31
know, like I'm a like a woman and she's
39:33
hot and then she's like curses all the time, and I'm just
39:35
like, oh, I don't have any respect for you to
39:38
which, yeah, I mean, I think I think that was
39:40
an AskMen dot com message
39:42
board, which there you go. Um,
39:46
But I was thinking about
39:48
this, and in
39:52
my previous dating
39:55
life, I did pay attention
39:57
to how much the guy
39:59
curse on dates and how comfortable
40:02
he was if I curse. And
40:05
I think honestly that if you
40:07
are a woman concerned about
40:09
your cursing behavior, kind of like take the power.
40:12
Because for me, if a guy flinched
40:14
when I dropped an F bomb, listen, I'm
40:16
not no, it wasn't a deal breaker,
40:18
but it usually was
40:21
indicative of maybe the fact that we were
40:23
in a match because I'm not gonna have to do
40:25
I don't want to have to watch my language right
40:27
around you. Now. I I dated a guy years ago
40:29
who was like, wow, you
40:33
kind of curse a lot, and I was like, Okay,
40:36
alright, sorry, a little sensitive guy. Don't
40:39
mean to insult your ears. See you later,
40:41
Yeah, I mean, and we're not trying
40:44
to, you know, blast men
40:46
for wanting ladylike language.
40:48
I don't think that this is, you know, something
40:51
that applies to all guys, but it is
40:53
something that still crops up
40:56
in at least heterosexual
40:58
dating dynamic. Yeah. I mean,
41:00
it's the conversation about gender and
41:03
and cursing. I mean, it's framed in so many
41:05
conversations, whether it's about dating or
41:08
like about work, which we've we've touched on. I
41:10
mean, like the question is still
41:12
being asked over and over again about
41:14
like is it okay for women to
41:16
curse ladies? We shouldn't curse. We
41:18
don't want to put man off. We don't want to anger our bosses
41:21
and the men in our labs. Yeah, I mean, and and
41:24
say over and over again that this is we're talking
41:26
about, like straight dating dynamics, because
41:28
I have a feeling that, as with other
41:31
issues like this where it's
41:33
a lot of gender norms and
41:35
scripts that are coming into play, that it might
41:37
not be as pertinent of an issue refreshingly
41:40
for LGBT dating. And
41:42
I would love to know if it is, And in that case
41:45
it probably is simply a matter of oh,
41:48
I don't curse a lot, you don't curse a lot,
41:50
cool, you know, like, rather than being a thing.
41:52
Well, but
41:55
in a more formal setting of
41:57
a workplace, this is where cursing
42:00
behavior gets a little dicier. Yeah.
42:03
I mean a lot of people, as
42:05
you would expect, argue that cursing in the workplace
42:08
is bad. It's wrong. It makes you
42:10
appear immature and hot headed.
42:13
Um that it can damage morale, damp
42:15
and respect um
42:18
even coaches. There was a study looking at coaches
42:20
talking to their teams, and
42:23
they were rated less effective by their
42:25
players if they cursed, particularly if those
42:27
players were girls. There's
42:29
just all of this talk about how cursing is the worst
42:32
thing you could possibly do, especially if you're a lady.
42:34
Yeah, because the workplace too. If
42:37
you want to put gender and
42:39
power dynamics under the microscope,
42:41
just walk into the office. Because
42:44
you know, while there are those assumptions
42:46
that maybe cursing might be bad, they're
42:48
also conflicting studies that have
42:50
found that cursing makes bosses
42:53
in particular more relatable,
42:55
it builds employee solidarity. Hey,
42:58
we can all blow off steam together by talking
43:00
about how this meeting is blanking
43:02
terrible. You know, it
43:05
probably was a terrible meeting. It probably was,
43:07
and even some speeches were
43:10
were rated to be more effective when the speaker
43:12
delivered a well placed or well timed
43:15
curse word. But again,
43:18
especially if you are in a leadership position
43:20
at work, your
43:22
amount of cursing and or the
43:24
acceptability of your cursing is gonna
43:27
be seen probably through a gendered lens,
43:29
where in, if you're
43:31
a woman, the penalty for cursing,
43:33
the negative penalty is probably gonna be stronger than if
43:35
you are a male boss. Right,
43:38
or in the case of former Yahoo CEO
43:40
Carol Bart's, the
43:43
use your use of a curse word could shape
43:45
how the entire world sees you, and in
43:47
an instant, Yeah, when she was
43:50
fired from her position as CEO,
43:53
she essentially made an F bomb
43:56
laced exit speech, which I remember hearing
43:58
about this on the news and I
44:00
thought it was kind of amazing. I
44:02
totally think it's amazing. When I was revisiting
44:05
all of that too for this episode, I was
44:07
like, God, I just want to give her
44:09
such a big high five, because
44:11
yeah, because she was now great, I can understand
44:13
why. Some people say, well, if you're overseeing a
44:15
company, you don't need to publicly be saying all
44:18
of these horrible words. But
44:21
yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think
44:24
this is a terrible comparison. But if it had been like
44:26
Donald Trump or somebody, everybody would have just rolled
44:28
their eyes and been like, there's that old man ranting
44:30
again. But instead it was like, she's
44:33
a woman and she's at the head of a company and she's saying
44:35
all this stuff. Obviously she's a B word. Well,
44:38
and she's angry. Yeah, scary,
44:40
Yeah, it's that danger element that who
44:43
was it? The loft Key brought
44:45
up um in terms of how
44:48
swearing for women has always been perceived
44:50
as dangerous because we're being
44:52
angry, right, women are not
44:54
allowed to express that. Men
44:56
can yell and they can throw their fists, but women
44:59
just have to, you know, you
45:01
cut their eyes over to you and roll their eyes.
45:03
We're not allowed to say anything. You can throw shade,
45:06
we just can't say it out loud. But
45:08
I mean, obviously, for any
45:10
cursing, no matter where you are, there's a time and a place,
45:13
um, And I think that should be it. I
45:15
don't think that it should be determined
45:18
by virtue of you being a man or
45:21
a woman. Yeah, I mean
45:24
it's it's it's
45:26
unfair if women are put at a
45:28
disadvantage for cursing over men, But
45:31
it is what it is, And so I guess it's helpful
45:33
to be aware. Well, it's always helpful
45:36
to be aware of how people perceive you. Yeah. So
45:38
with all of this research on
45:41
gender and power and swearing in history
45:43
and our brains in your
45:45
brain, Caroline, that has
45:47
this given you any pause at all about
45:50
your own cursing behavior?
45:53
Um it? Well, I
45:57
want to say that I'm going to try to
46:00
clean up my act a little, but
46:04
it's not going to be for fear
46:06
of like scaring someone.
46:09
I mean, I think it's worth it to pull back at work
46:11
a little, you know, when we're at
46:13
work, Um but
46:15
because I mean, you know, you don't really know who's around.
46:18
You don't know every single coworker,
46:20
and I mean the general you you don't know every single
46:22
coworker exceptionally well to
46:24
know whether or not you're offending that person. But
46:27
I mean, I just still it's like God,
46:29
when I'm in my car in Atlanta traffic
46:32
and I'm just screaming something, it just feels
46:34
right. Yeah. Yeah. I think
46:36
the one area where
46:38
I consistently want to do better
46:40
in terms of not cursing is
46:43
talking to my parents, because
46:45
by this point I have I
46:47
really enjoy the fact that we have an
46:49
open, you know, honest relationship.
46:53
But when I
46:55
go over there, maybe I've had a rough day. We're having dinner,
46:57
and I go off on a rant, and
47:00
it feels really good to say exactly what I'm
47:02
thinking. But then later I'm thinking, oh, they
47:04
must be horrified by their
47:06
dear daughter dropping
47:08
those heinous
47:10
phrases. And I will all get into
47:12
a stretch of like getting really stressed out and calling
47:15
my mother and she's like, oh, honey, what's going
47:17
on? And I will just unleash
47:20
like verbal, angry,
47:22
curse word laden vomit all over
47:24
her and be like, Okay, well I gotta go. I love
47:26
you back. It's like we just leave them with the mess,
47:29
like, okay, you clean it up. I feel so much better, thanks,
47:32
Oh Heaven, love you well.
47:35
Now I want to hear though from listeners
47:38
about this. What is your
47:40
stance on cursing? Do you are
47:42
you a woman who curses and and
47:45
doesn't see any problem with it? Guys, you
47:47
find it a turn off for
47:49
other women to curse. What
47:52
are your thoughts? Let us know them. Mom
47:54
Stuff discovery dot com is where you can send
47:56
your letters. And by the way, if you do use profanity
47:58
in the subject line, it will get
48:00
spam filtered out, and just keep that
48:02
in mind you might want to keep your letters clean. So
48:05
mom stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
48:07
email us. You can also tweet us
48:09
your thoughts at mom stuff podcast or send
48:11
us a Facebook message, and we have a couple
48:14
of messages to share with you right
48:16
now. Well,
48:20
I've gotta let her here. From Jessica about
48:22
our gender reveal party episode,
48:24
She writes, Hey, ladies,
48:26
I really liked your podcasts on gender revealed
48:28
parties. We had a reveal party in July for
48:31
our baby. We saw it as a fun way to
48:33
announce what we were having, but we also
48:35
had other motives. Throughout my pregnancy,
48:37
my mom and my mother in law have been strangely
48:39
competitive and jealous of one another. The
48:41
party was a way to ensure that everyone found out
48:43
the sex together in an attempt to be fair.
48:46
The things you hit on were definite concerns when planning
48:49
our party. The invitation said no gifts,
48:51
so no one felt they had to bring us a present.
48:54
I know the difference between sex and gender
48:56
being a graduate of a liberal women's
48:58
college. Sex or old party just
49:00
doesn't have the same ring to it. We
49:02
didn't have a cake, but instead we picked out two
49:04
outfits and had the store rapid correct one.
49:07
I'm glad we had everyone together because it was a special
49:09
moment, this baby being highly anticipated
49:11
as the first grandchild. That being said,
49:14
it did stress me out and make me wonder if it was really
49:16
worth all the trouble. I think it was, but probably
49:18
wouldn't have another party with future pregnancies.
49:20
Oh another interesting fact, my nine
49:23
pound one ounce baby girls movements
49:25
could never be described
49:27
as a delicate ballet, so that study
49:30
completely cracked me up. He's
49:33
Jessica, I know, I love that nine
49:35
pounds and I had a friend who just
49:37
gave birth to a ten pound baby. He looks
49:39
I mean, he looks like a toddler who just walked out of her
49:42
But anyway, um, okay, I have
49:44
a hilarious email from Jennifer
49:47
Um. Her seject line is very
49:49
straightforward. It is gender
49:51
revealed parties equal sign stupid.
49:54
So here we go. Jennifer. She says,
49:57
I'm a mom. Most of my friends are
50:00
ms. I love babies, my own,
50:02
my friends, nieces and nephews. I
50:04
love the baby who was gurgling at me in the grocery
50:06
store yesterday. He was really cute. I
50:09
have traveled long distances to
50:11
attend baby showers or visit new babies.
50:13
I bring food to new parents and lend my support
50:15
in any way I can. I use social media.
50:18
Gender reveal parties are
50:21
stupid. George Packer was right. They
50:23
reflected creeping narcissism in our society.
50:26
At the end of the day, no one outside of the immediate
50:28
family cares boy, girl, whatever. It's
50:30
just another excuse to be the center of attention.
50:33
Come to my house and cheer for me. I procreated
50:36
calm down people. And then Jennifer
50:38
has a smiley face. So thank
50:40
you for writing in and telling us just
50:43
what you think, Jennifer. We appreciate it, and
50:45
thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff
50:47
at Discovery dot com is where you can send all
50:49
of your emails and if you want to find out all
50:51
of our other social media properties and
50:53
check out all of our podcast, blogs and
50:56
videos, there's one place to go. It's
50:58
stuff Mom never told you dot com
51:04
For more on this and thousands of other topics.
51:06
Isn't how stuff works dot com
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