What’s more important: the words or the message?
Daigle wrote a piece the other day. It had a lot of swear words.
Judging from some people’s reactions, it seemed the world was ending, or at least in real trouble. See, the problem many of them had was with his fucking language, not with what he said. Some people didn’t like swear words (or use of absurd imagery).
Seriously. They were more upset with how he said something, than with what he said. They were so bothered by the form of a message that they missed the message itself: that all women are beautiful and that those who would seek to make them feel like lesser beings, are lesser beings themselves.
What a wonderful message from a man in American society. We all should have applauded his defense of women — and how silly that people instead focused on the fact that some words had four letters in them.
The whiners used arguments like “My kids read this page/site.” Oh, boo hoo. If your kids are old enough to have their own computer or Facebook account, I’m guessing that they’ve already heard worse language at school, on their X-Box games, and at the movies, unless you’ve swaddled them in cotton and blocked their ears since birth. And if you’ve done that, then they probably look pretty funny at school already.
Now, I’m a mom, and sometimes I use swear words. These are not mutually exclusive positions. Do I usually swear in front of my kids? Fuck no. They’re teenagers now, but I raised them to be multi-syllabic, articulate debaters who understand the importance of selecting the right words. This will serve them well in college, work, and life.
But I’ve also raised them to understand that what people say can be more important than how they say it. Some things may not be as pleasant when said roughly, but that’s just what happens sometimes. And you would think, of all the exercise programs in the world, that we CrossFitters would innately understand this fundamental lesson. None of us we got into CrossFit because we wanted all the sharp edges taken off of life. We came here because there was a grittiness, a roughness, a realness to this workout, this movement, this way of life. It was like we lived in a windowless, closed-door world before and then someone opened the door to this big, fresh, beautiful world outside and we drank in the cold, almost painful air. It hurt our lungs, but damn it felt great at the same time.
So, let’s keep that door open. F bombs aren’t going to hurt more than your ears. But hostility towards each other (and the devaluation of women) most certainly will.
