Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

86 Forbidden Words
ing, joining, ranking, ribbing, serving, signifying, slipping, sounding and
snapping. Essentially, flyting and the dozens are (at best) a confrontation
of wit, insight and upmanship, in which people try to outdo each other in the
richness of their rhetorical scorn by taunting another person with insults
about them or their family in front of an audience. For instance in Lokasenna,
as they sit at a feast, Loki accuses the gods variously of being lazy, cowardly,
a weakling, effeminate, homosexual, and one as being an incestuous pervert
who likes ‘golden showers’. Goddesses are drab and dirty, or whores, or
nymphomaniacs who stoop to sleeping with servants, or they are incestuous.
Such ritual insults for men and women sound familiar today; the difference
from the dozens is that insults are basically restricted to the addressee, rather
than being directed at the addressee’s (presumed) loved ones. Here are some
of the dozens: 66
You were so ugly at birth, your parents named you Shit Happens.
You’re so dumb, if you spoke your mind you’d be speechless.
Your breath smells so bad, people on the phone hang up.
I heard you were getting sex all the time until your wrist got arthritis.
Your girlfriend is so stupid, the first time she used a vibrator she cracked her
two front teeth.
The only difference between your girlfriend and a subway is that everybody
hasn’t ridden a subway.
Your sister is so stupid, she went to the baker for a yeast infection.
Your father is like cement – it takes him two days to get hard.
Your mother is so old, she was a waitress at the Last Supper.
Your mother has so many crabs she walks sideways.
Willie mother stink; she be over here on 128th Street between Seventh ’n’
Eighth, waving her white handkerchief: [falsetto] ‘C’mon, baby, only
a nickel.’
Iron is iron, and steel don’t rust, but your mama got a pussy like a
Greyhound bus.
I hate to talk about your mother, she’s a good old soul; she got a ten-ton
pussy and a rubber asshole.
How widespread ritual insults are in gay communities, we don’t know. The
only celebrated example is the following, which ‘took place at a large
Thanksgiving dinner in a Canadian city’:
B: Your ass is so stretched you should put in a draw-string.
A: Word is you’ve had your dirt-shute mack-tacked.
B: And you wall-papered your womb.
A: Where do you find tricks who’ll rim your colostomy?
B: You douche with Janitor in a Drum.
A: Slam your clam.
B: Slam it, cram it, ram it, oooo, but don’t jam it [demonstrating].
A: Cross your legs, you’re showing your hemorrhoids.