# Do women curse as much as men, when writing dialogue? (THREAD CONTAINS SWEARING)



## ironpony (Jan 29, 2019)

If I wanted to write women having dialogue but have them be on the same type of extreme playing field as men I thought I would write it so they talk quite crass as men do, but do they, or would that come off as unconvincing?

For example, here is a scene from a movie, where men are cursing in conversation in the workplace.  I feel I have to give a warning for foul language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGICutL_4os

But if that scene were written for women in the first place talking like that making wise cracks about how they "bleeped" each others spouses and all that, would that come off as could happen, or unconvincing?  Or maybe a lot of writers just don't like to write women talking like which is why you never see it, but it does happen in real life?


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## luckyscars (Jan 29, 2019)

...Do you imagine a female chef or factory foreman curses more than a male Evangelical pastor? Probably so. Do you imagine the Queen of England curses as frequently as President Trump? Probably not. 

Language, including swearing, is a product of many factors: Education level, occupation, socio-economic status, parenting values, religion/culture in which one grew up, etc. Gender itself has nothing to do with it. A specific gender role might - I doubt many conservative Muslim women are screaming "go to hell cocksucker!" at their husbands - but not _gender itself._

If there seems like a difference in some contexts and between some character types, it's probably down to the more complex social stigmas concerning women speaking openly about sex (as the vast majority of profanity is sexual and male-centric at that) and the more traditional idea that use of profanity is not 'ladylike', which is a whole other can of stuff. 

Take into account your character's individual personality and background when writing their dialogue, not whether they have a vagina, and you will do just fine.


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## ironpony (Jan 29, 2019)

Okay thanks, that makes sense for sure.  What if it's a setting similar to the posted movie clip where it's women working in a police station, would the cursing and sexual vulgarity, be very high then in regular job conversation?


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## Bayview (Jan 29, 2019)

Write YOUR CHARACTERS, not some generic, crowd-sourced amalgamation of stereotypes.


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## Guard Dog (Jan 29, 2019)

I've never noticed any real difference between men and women in that regard, if both were in the same situation/environment.

It does seem that if they have a rebellious, uncompliant personality, they do tend to be more likely to say what's on their minds, however. That includes telling a person to get the hell out of their face, get their head outta their ass, etc., regardless of gender.


G.D.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jan 29, 2019)

Every character would be different. Women are not manufactured from a cookie-cutter; each is unique.
So, yes, it would be okay to have a woman who cusses more than the men (and I have met a few), but I would not have ALL of the women in your story talk that way because it would not be accurate.

Build characters individually.


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## ironpony (Jan 29, 2019)

Ralph Rotten said:


> Every character would be different. Women are not manufactured from a cookie-cutter; each is unique.
> So, yes, it would be okay to have a woman who cusses more than the men (and I have met a few), but I would not have ALL of the women in your story talk that way because it would not be accurate.
> 
> Build characters individually.



Okay thanks.  I use to work in a factory and I would ask male boss's how long they would want the diameter of the product to be for the customer, and they would say that they want it the length of a woman's pubic hair.  They wouldn't use those exact words but I didn't want to post the words they used on here, just in case.  But I never had a female manager say to me the same thing, where they would want it the length of such a hair.  So I thought maybe men talked like that more than women in certain types of work environments, perhaps.


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## Tim (Jan 29, 2019)

I knew a woman who told me that women can be downright vulgar in the company of other women. This all changes when there is a male presence. I've had the 'swearing problem' in the book I'm writing and I agonized over it for hours. My heroin goes through an enormous ordeal, half way through the novel and her boyfriend is present. At this point she has not said the 'F' word. I tried many softer words and it wasn't working. People don't say 'Oh, gosh!" when the roof caves in or loose an arm in an industrial auger. They say, "F!$# that hurt!" It has to suit the character and the situation. I hope my two cents helps.


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## luckyscars (Jan 29, 2019)

Tim said:


> I knew a woman who told me that women can be downright vulgar in the company of other women. This all changes when there is a male presence. I've had the 'swearing problem' in the book I'm writing and I agonized over it for hours. My heroin goes through an enormous ordeal, half way through the novel and her boyfriend is present. At this point she has not said the 'F' word. I tried many softer words and it wasn't working. People don't say 'Oh, gosh!" when the roof caves in or loose an arm in an industrial auger. They say, "F!$# that hurt!" It has to suit the character and the situation. I hope my two cents helps.



I think a more relevant area of discussion on this regards use of profanity in general, regardless of the character(s) gender.

Writers often use profanity, it seems, as a way to inject 'grittiness' to the work. I see this all the time in crime and anything involving the military. 

It's especially prevalent on TV, especially in programming for adult-oriented material like HBO series (Deadwood, The Wire) and a lot of that, it seems, has infected books. 

It's fine when it works. Actually when it works you don't even notice it much because it fits the character, right? Like if you're depicting some 19 year old hoodlum of course it's going to be swearing left and right. So its a fine line. 

It annoys me only when I feel like the language in question is only there to create this image of hard-assery rather than a natural symptom of who the character is. Otherwise it seems to me exceptionally unimaginative. 

Like, why does a platoon of soldiers or a gang of thieves have to be like this without exception? What happened to variation? Different viewpoints and personalities? Different ways of talking? Why not be different?


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## Guard Dog (Jan 29, 2019)

'Scars... one of the things I remember from my first day of being in the army, was a sergeant at the reception station saying "Yer in the Army now! Ya wanna cuss, cuss! Ya wanna drink, when yer not on duty, drink! Ya ain't kids anymore and yer mamas ain't here!"

Maybe he was just being overly-enthusiastic, I dunno... But what I _can_ tell ya, is that soldiers cuss. A lot. 
( The female ones at the time seemed worse than the males... Maybe to 'prove' they were indeed equal? )

...as a matter of fact, it's probably where I really picked it up. And may very well be partially responsible for me retaining the... habit? Trait?

But that does bring up the point that some people, in some lines of work, are more inclined to such than others...
( Cops cuss a lot too... male and female alike. I suspect it's a form of stress relief. )



G.D.


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## luckyscars (Jan 29, 2019)

Guard Dog said:


> 'Scars... one of the things I remember from my first day of being in the army, was a sergeant at the reception station saying "Yer in the Army now! Ya wanna cuss, cuss! Ya wanna drink, when yer not on duty, drink! Ya ain't kids anymore and yer mamas ain't here!"
> 
> Maybe he was just being overly-enthusiastic, I dunno... But what I _can_ tell ya, is that soldiers cuss. A lot.
> ( The female ones at the time seemed worse than the males... Maybe to 'prove' they were indeed equal? )
> ...



Yeah, agreed. I sure don't doubt for a moment that is the prevailing culture and that plenty if not most soldiers do cuss a lot. Same with many high-stress or macho jobs whether its cops, firefighters, chefs, whatever. Certainly more than a bunch of library workers. No argument.

What I am saying is that to constantly reinforce the idea that every cop or military guy talks that way, especially in a fictional context where it is so important to avoid stereotypes and cliches, may not serve much of a purpose. That it may actually just end up being annoying or distracting. The Drill Sergeant screaming at the recruit has been done, I reckon. At this point you're not going to add much to this type of character by injecting 'fuck' into every other word. So, like, why bother? 

I think keep the cussing if you need, keep whatever serves a purpose, but on the understanding that nobody is really getting off on those words' shock value anymore. Nobody who is over the age of ten (and probably not even most ten year olds) because it's everywhere. 'Fuck', 'shit', etc are no more meaningful or interesting additions to most characters' parlance in most situations than 'uh' or 'hmm'.

 So much like 'uh' or 'hmm' they should be used sparingly and in situations where they make sense. A burning house is a good example for sure. In casual conversation, maybe not.


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## Tim (Jan 29, 2019)

Now that i think about it, the only people I know that never swear, are religious. Even my eighty-five year old Mom swears, infrequently. It does seem to go with certain professions. Swears like a trooper and swears like a wharfie, are how some people refer to it. I think it's overuse is not elegant in a book. It could be just me though.


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## Sir-KP (Jan 29, 2019)

ironpony said:


> Okay thanks, that makes sense for sure.  What if it's a setting similar to the posted movie clip where it's women working in a police station, would the cursing and sexual vulgarity, be very high then in regular job conversation?



The question goes right back at the writer.

How is her environment?
How are her colleagues?
Is her job tense that it tend to make her venting verbally and expressing her feeling in a few words?
What is her background?
How does she cope with the situation?

All of these things affect and influence a person's personality and behavior.


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## Guard Dog (Jan 30, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> So, like, why bother?



Well... how 'bout because if it's a person that would be expected from, not adding it makes them stand out as _too_ different?

Avoiding stereotypes is fine, but what about working so hard to do it that you make a character unbelievable/unrealistic?

I'm not saying you're wrong with the idea of making a character different than most, but what about making them so much so that the average person can't accept it?

Seriously... a soldier that doesn't cuss? If he ain't a Chaplin, people may be a lot less likely to believe it... or to think he/she's just not a 'real soldier', possibly.

So I guess it comes down to 'reader expectation' again in some ways, as much as anything.

( You do mention yourself that it's 'everywhere' these days. So realistically, wouldn't it also be in any writing? )

I guess what I'm asking is, who's sensibilities should a writer be concerned with the most? Theirs, or a potential reader's?

( I'm not saying we need Jack Nicholson re-writing Shakespeare here... "Ta be, or goddamn not ta be... That is the fuckin' question..."  Only that mabe consideration may need to be given to what realistically the situation or character might call for. )

A side note:

I was present once, when a new cop came in showing off a new gun he'd bought... a .45 auto.

He was the 'Barney Fife' type... Young, bird-chested, and generally out to 'prove' himself.

One of the female dispatchers happen to walk by as he was passing this huge-ass gun around, took one look and said "Hmm... is your dick really that small?"

So women are definitely not immune to a bit of sexually-oriented smart-assery, now and then.


G.D.


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## luckyscars (Jan 30, 2019)

Guard Dog said:


> Well... how 'bout because if it's a person that would be expected from, not adding it makes them stand out as _too_ different?
> 
> Avoiding stereotypes is fine, but what about working so hard to do it that you make a character unbelievable/unrealistic?
> 
> ...



It's 100% a question of balance. 

_Of course _you're unlikely to find any group anywhere where there is no cussing, be it women or men, librarians or porn stars or sailors. Trust me, I have no problem with swearing. And you're right, it needs to feature in the language of characters for whom IRL if would be natural. I don't mind that at all.

But balance...the stories I'm talking with are ones where much of the dialogue is written like this:

_"Don't move you motherfucker," snarled Big Bad Eddie, "Else I'll put a fuckin' hole in yer head you pussy ass sonovabitch."
"Hey fuck you," snarled back Scary Stanley, "I ain't scared of you cocksucker."
"You will when I pop a cap in yo ass you little bitch!"
"I'm gonna fuck you up!" he hissed, "soon as I get out of here I'm gonna fuck you UP! And your MUM!"
"Eat shit, you cocksuckin' sonofabitch bastard. Eat. Bloody. Shit."_

^So that's obviously ludicrous, right? But it's not THAT far removed from what I used to see in my old creative writing classes. I'm not just talking about the incompetents either (although a lot of the time it IS them) but writers who aren't necessarily bad at all - often these stories are functionally quite good - but are nevertheless succumbing to the stereotypes. Perhaps because they are writing about a world they don't really know that much about - the military, the mob, the meth heads, whatever it may be.

So you get these people who want so terribly to be edgy and think that copious swearing (as well as copious sex and violence, naturally) is necessary, that injecting 'obscene' levels of vitriol and crassness makes their work sound like _Trainspotting _or a Tarantino movie or whatever. 

To me it doesn't. More than that, it makes me wish we didn't have these ideas of what such people 'sound like' to begin with. *Because as much as I'm sure the sweary sergeant major profile covers a lot of sergeant majors out there, I am equally sure it does not cover ALL of them.* And yet it covers (nearly) all of them in literature and film and so on. So then I need to know... why aren't the exceptions represented proportionally? Or at least occasionally?

As for swearing women, I'm not saying it would necessarily detract from their characterization but it sure as heck doesn't add to 'em. To me its just repetitive and as problematic as anything repetitive is bound to be: Boring.


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## Guard Dog (Jan 30, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> To me...



That's just the thing... To a lot of people, that's how it will be.

To a lot of others, it either won't, or just won't be noticed.

...all any of us can really do is look around, figure out what portion of the world we're not only wanting to describe, but what portion we're wanting to appeal to.

When it comes right down to it, I don't think balance has so much to do with it as 'audience expectation' does.

( I'm fairly well convinced that most people are 'unbalanced' in some shape, form, or fashion anyway, so why worry about it? )



G.D.


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## luckyscars (Jan 30, 2019)

Guard Dog said:


> When it comes right down to it, I don't think balance has so much to do with it as 'audience expectation' does.



But don't you think there's a certain striking correlation between effective characters (which surely form part of 'audience expectations' - audiences want good characters) and ones that challenge or defy stereotype in some curious way?

I'm not saying major characters have to be vanilla. Far from it. I'm only saying there has to be a balance struck between making them authentic (which might include being foul-mouthed) and making them unusual. So if you have a gangster who likes to curse a lot, fine, but then you can't (or shouldn't) pander to every other 'expectation' of that trope and still expect the audience to be interested in them. A pirate can have an eye patch or a parrot or a wooden leg. He cannot have all three and not be a cliche.

Tim mentioned his eighty-five year old mother swearing. That could possibly work in a character because most eighty-five year old women (at least upper-class, conservative ones) don't swear. So the idea of the Queen Of England dropping the odd f-bomb could be a source of potential amusement, because it conflicts with everything else we assume.

On the other hand it is really nice when you get a character who you expect to act/talk a certain way and they don't. Either because of some explained reason or 'just because'. That doesn't mean they have to be a boy scout or anything. I just don't want to read about another gangster who talks (or acts) like Tony Montana and I suspect a lot of readers don't either...though you're right maybe some do!


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## Theglasshouse (Jan 30, 2019)

In my view women that curse do so when angry. I think it is definitely an amalgamation of their background and upbringing.


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## Kyle R (Jan 30, 2019)

Like Bayview (and others) have already said, know your characters.

You could go around asking others, "Would women swear here?", and you'd get a lot of varied responses.

Or, you could simply ask _yourself_, "Would my characters swear here?", and you'd get _one_ answer—and that answer would be the correct one. :encouragement:


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## Megan Pearson (Jan 30, 2019)

Somehow this seems to belabor the point: character, context, genre. And genre brings to mind the audience and their expectations of what we're writing. Do you think your audience would think swearing at this or that point would be a genuine, believable response from the character, or might it detract from how the story will be received?


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## Olly Buckle (Jan 30, 2019)

These titles! There I was imagining Iron pony swearing away over his typewriter trying to write dialogue.

I would say to hell with real life, you are writing something that appears like real life, not that mimics it, in which case write it without using actual swear words, they just don't look 'real' written down, no matter how much people really use them. Might be different for a script mind when they will be spoken and some feeling put in them.


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## ironpony (Feb 3, 2019)

Okay thanks, I can just write it how I think best then and see


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 3, 2019)

ironpony said:


> Okay thanks, I can just write it how I think best then and see


That is what I usually do, sometimes it comes out right, but even when it is wrong at least you have an idea where it went wrong and have something to work on. It kind of reminds me of the famous author asked how he started writing a book, 'I put my bum on the seat in front of the keyboard'    Always a good start.


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## Tettsuo (Feb 3, 2019)

ironpony said:


> If I wanted to write women having dialogue but have them be on the same type of extreme playing field as men I thought I would write it so they talk quite crass as men do, but do they, or would that come off as unconvincing?
> 
> For example, here is a scene from a movie, where men are cursing in conversation in the workplace.  I feel I have to give a warning for foul language.
> 
> ...


To answer the question directly, no. Women in general do not swear as much as men.

BUT as others have stated, who your character is will determine how much they break from the norm.

There are social norms in all societies. If your character breaks from those norms, you'll have to understand exactly why so you can relate it to the readers.


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## CyberWar (Feb 3, 2019)

I think that the notion that women swear less than men itself a stereotype, and one that isn't necessarily true - or has ever been historically, for that matter.

While it is true that swearing has traditionally been considered un-ladylike and unacceptable for well-bred women, it must be considered that these norms also extended to men and only were ever strictly followed by the upper and middle classes who wanted to project an aura of refinement. For most of Mankind's history, literature was authored chiefly by members of the literate upper classes and meant for an upper-class audience. Consequently, most existing literary works reflect the speech patterns and norms of the upper classes rather than the majority of society, and have accordingly shaped our perceptions of what has historically been considered appropriate speech. With the proliferation of literacy and the industrialization of the press, these perceptions and speech standards also spread to the lower class somewhat, but never to the degree they had in the upper classes - even today, crude speech laden with profanities is generally perceived as a sign of low social status.

Consequently, I think that women in general do, and always have used profanities just as much as men, the only real historical difference being what the common masses of people perceived as profane. 300 years ago, many religiously-themed expletives considered mild by modern standards would have been deemed blasphemy (i.e., taking God's name in vain) by the deeply-religious populace and shunned even among the lower classes, while others, such as the widespread sexually-themed expletives rousing controversy today were used in casual conversation and not deemed profane at all.

---

As to why members of some professions are perceived to swear more often, these people as a rule work in exhausting high-stress jobs. Swearing is a way of relieving some of that stress. For military drill instructors, swearing at recruits also serves to manufacture stress as part of the training, as the aspiring soldiers must learn to operate efficiently under extreme stress if they are to be effective in combat.


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