Being Clean
I know there are a lot of people who are extremely interested in cleanliness, and I get it. Wash your hands, scrub your pots and pans, pick up all the crumbs from the couch in the family room or the specks gathering in your car seats. Some people obsessively wash their vehicles. I have had neighbors who do this. My parents were pretty clean; we always kept things pretty spick and span, and most of my life we had a cleaning lady named Katie clean our house every other Friday.
I have worked in food industries for shorter or longer terms. We clean up, every day, and we scrub and scrape, wash and re-wash. I know some people who are more thorough than others in keeping things clean. Then there are all the hospitals and clinics, with the rest of us would-be patients, always watching and checking for germs and awful viruses, how to wash our hands, mask up, sneeze properly, not touch the hands or fingers to the face or eyes or nose. Sterilize and evade deadly infections.
We get it. Some folk are obsessively clean, even compulsive and annoying, but we know that dirtiness and germs can potentially kill. Or at least get us really ill. Food, botulism, poisoning, we have all had stomach bugs and ills. And it does kill.
What about language?
Does dirty vocabulary have an effect on our thoughts and actions?
With the #MeToo movement the last five years, we know more than ever that verbal and sexual harassment is a real thing. It is not appropriate to share or force words of dirty or sexual natures in many environments, especially when not invited, or if it is coerced. Harvey Weinstein? Beyond the physical overtures of sexual intent and conduct, there were also verbal attempts at forcing himself on others.
Dirty. Dirty mouth, not appropriate.
The F word. The F bomb. So ugly and potent it has multiple nicknames. It, this word from Germanic, I think it means skewering a calf in the mother's womb, has strong sexual connotations. Yet, some use this dirty word as if it were not dirty. People use it casually, refer to it in the same breath with their mothers or themselves, or worse, metaphorically "messed up", or in a bad way, but with this sexual word. Not dirty?
Some people eat food out of dirty containers, off of dirty tables, or dishes that are unwashed or not clean. We understand why people eat sloppily and like dirty grub. It can be fun, and not always dangerous. Dirty victuals can be delicious. We get careless with contents, we love the worst of the less than healthy ingredients.
To each his or her own. And everything in moderation, is usually the best practice.
My thing is, why do we accept dirty words if we find dirty things in the physical sense offensive, even dangerous?
Words have no impact?
Of course they do!
Clean up your language, people. Let us be less dirty and sexually overt or offensive in how we speak.
Wash your hands, and avoid dirtying up the air and our thoughts with filthy words and thoughts.
It is not cool to be dirty. Or is it? Some comedians get tons of mileage from being dirty and irreverent. Shock value is often considered funny, even clever and witty.
Matt Parker and Tre Stone? Puerile fools. And rich off of our naiveté.
You guys are dirty. And most of the time it is not funny to me, and it is offensive. They are quite racist, I find, too.
Clean it up, and try to be creatively funny. I dare you.
Clean up our society, one mind at a time, one sentence at a time. Racist terms are not cool, right? Sexual references and insults are not cool either.
Don't sexualize everything, you morons. Did Lopez and his wife get dirty in their "award-winning songs", too, in the multiple Tony winner now 10 years on? Do better, be better. Keep art cleaner, and we will not muck with the pigs and we will not continue to empower sexual attackers, assaulters, and addicts. We talk low, we think low, we act low.
#MeToo no more. Stop the sexualization of all our communications.
Okay, I got some things off my chest.
Thanks.
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