The Old Timers Club

[AKvetch]

...I've wondered for a long time why cursing so often contains derrogatory elements about women or sex. Anyone have a theory on that?

Hi Sarals, a cursory (pun not intended <g>) search on cursing took me to a Chinese web site. The word "tamade" seems to be synonymous with "curse". Given the male-dominated nature of Chinese society, and that male-dominated attitudes still exist in American society, herein may lie the answer to your question. AK

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For reference to the article [Shanghai Star June 20, 2002]:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/NM-e/36454.htm
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Swearing often reflects specific beliefs and experiences of a society.

As long as there are Chinese people, tamade will exist, as it is used as frequently as the most popular greetings in the language.

The most respected author in 20th century China, Lu Xun, once titled one of his articles with a term of abuse tamade (Fxxx his mother's ...), a very popular Chinese curse.

He humorously said that as long as there are Chinese people, tamade will exist, as it is used as frequently as the most popular greetings in the language.

Sexism and curse words

Chinese people choose a person's mother as a target for assault more often than the person they want to curse.

"The origin of this phenomenon reflects the sexism of a male-dominant society," said Hao Mingjian, a professor and editor-in-chief at Shanghai Culture Publishing House. "The person who first invented this abuse must have been a man who vented his wrath on women of a lower grade in the community."

The phrase tamade has a long history, and there is no reliable record of its origin.

Ancient books have the earliest records of ancient Chinese insults such as "you are a slave or dog", and the most serious one was "your mother is a servant".

It is estimated that the custom of attacking people's ancestors as an insult began during the Jin Dynasty (265-420) when the hereditary system prevailed.

Social stratification

Common people could never rise to a higher social strata even if they had excellent talent.

On the other hand, aristocrats led a luxurious life even if they were totally fools.

This unfair phenomenon irritated civilians, so they began to vent on their foes, that is, insult the forefathers of the noble class.

Insulting someone's forefathers was the biggest outrage to an aristocrat.

Among a person's ancestors, a person's mother was the first considered for attack.

At the very beginning, this idea was invented by learned people who used elegant words, but as the custom spread to civilians, the phrases took on graceless dirty words similar to the English "fxxx your mother's ...".

"To avoid too direct an assault on a person, people changed 'your mother' to 'his mother', and left out 'fxxx' and the rest of the dirty words to show his own grace," Hao said.
Thus, tamade took its final shape used since the early 20th century.

Men invented the abuse and they were the ones who used it the most. With a tamade, a man offended the mother of a person he hated and meanwhile seemed to become one generation older than the person.

"It's a wise tactic," Hao said.

This popular abuse has taken on different purposes, expressing surprise and even happiness.

Social contradictions

Hao believes that abuses actually reflect social contradictions. The proliferation of the term tamade may be attributed to the chaotic "culture revolution" (1966-76) when people were quick to hurl abuse at each other.

During those 10 years, trust and other niceness were destroyed. Hostility among people was accelerated and swearing became a kind of weapon.

"Everything went to extremes and people chose the worst words to attack others," Hao said.

Tamade was the most popular one.

Till the 1990s, swearing was widely advocated in literary works. People at that time thought writers should remove their masks to expose the original aspects of human beings.

"Restrictions of morality has loosen and description of human's original desire and dirty words could easily be found in literary works, which was a social tragedy," Hao said.

Tamade, of course, were used most frequently. Now, people used it on Internet with the abbreviation TMD.