Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

152 Forbidden Words
But I, the most forlorn, lost man alive,
To show my wished obedience vainly strive:
I sigh, alas! and kiss, but cannot swive.
Eager desires confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame does more success prevent,
And rage at last confirms me impotent.
Ev’n her fair hand, which might bid heat return
To frozen age, and make cold hermits burn,
Applied to my dead cinder, warms no more
Than fire to ashes could past flames restore.
Trembling, confused, despairing, limber, dry,
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love . . .
Now languid lies in this unhappy hour,
Shrunk up, and sapless like a withered flower.
[He continues by cursing ‘the base deserter of my flame’]
(Rochester 1968, The Imperfect Enjoyment, lines 19–45)
Some of the poetic figures Rochester uses would be found in the language of
almost anyone who set about describing the situation.
Insults concerning orgasm typically refer to premature ejaculation by the
male and frigidity on the part of the female partner.
Homosexuality and other queer behaviour
In the Bible, God decrees to Moses that for adultery, cross-generational incest
and bestiality, the penalty was death. So too for male homosexuality:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed
an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
(Leviticus 20: 13; see also Leviticus 18: 22)
Though female bestiality is damned in Leviticus 20: 16, female homosexuality
is overlooked in the Old Testament, 20 but condemned along with male
homosexuality by St Paul in verse 26 of Romans 1:
24 Wherefore God also gave them [Gentiles] up to uncleanness through the lusts of
their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed
the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the
Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile
affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against
nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in
their lust toward one another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and
receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. (Romans 1:
24–6)