The subreddit r/MapPorn has an amusing map Zero fucks given in different languages that translates into English allegedly canonical national sayings expressing utter lack of interest. The first thing that comes to mind is the oddity of the name; as Orri says in the comments:
I’ve never heard “Zero fucks given” in England, it’s normally “I don’t give a shit”.
I’m pretty sure “Zero fucks given” is a niche expression even here in the US. But never mind that, what about the other countries? Well, everynameisalreadyta writes:
I had to think for a sec what it means in Hungarian (Kutyát sem érdekel), because I “shit on it” is way more frequently used.
And I beg leave to doubt that “flowers on my dick and bees all around” is very commonly used in Greek. But what I do know is that the alleged Russian equivalent, “it’s horseradish to me,” is absurdly mealymouthed. Yes, the word хрен ‘horseradish’ is used in many expressions — хрен с ним ‘the heck with him/it,’ на хрен мне это ‘this is no damn use to me,’ etc. — but the point is that it’s always a euphemistic replacement for the Big Bad Word хуй ‘cock’ (traditionally both unprintable and unspeakable in decent company); why would you provide a euphemism to represent the most vigorously obscene language around? If you want to provide a Russian equivalent for ‘I don’t give a fuck’ it would be either мне по хуй ‘it’s along the cock for me’ or мне до пизды ‘it’s up to the cunt for me’ (those literal translations make no sense, of course; I’m just trying to give the general idea). Let mat be mat!
The google books ngram viewer indicates that at all potentially relevant times “don’t give a fuck” has been less frequent than “don’t give a shit,” which in turn has been less frequent than “don’t give a damn.” Of course, differential taboo-strength could make the ratios in that corpus different than what they might be in speech. No difference in the rank ordering between the “American English” and “British English” subcorpora, although in the “English Fiction” one the “shit” variant has gotten tantalizingly close to overtaking the “damn” variant.
Have I previously mentioned this interesting item from the world of Seventies-to-Nineties popular song? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Don%27t_Give_a_Fuck
And scroll down for a mention of the (supposed?*) Welsh proverb “Stwffiwch y dolig ddim y twrci.”
*Most/all members of the band are Welsh-speakers and they’ve occasionally recorded stuff in Welsh, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of an inside joke.
Also “it does not fuck me” (I don’t care)
Not to be confused with “I don’t fuck it” (I dunno). And “In my soul I don’t fuck it” (I absolutely don’t know).
In Hebrew, in addition to “X interests my grandmother”, there’s “X interests my ass” (or other nether bits), but above all, “I put a dick on X”, “I don’t put a dick on X”, the euphemistic but quite strong “I (don’t) put a chopped one on X” (meaning, I think, “half a dick”, not a reference to circumcision), or “I don’t put on X”, with the object omitted (cf. English “sucks”).
one mild yiddish version is “es makht nisht oys”, which is less “i don’t care” than “it doesn’t make a difference” – but can also be seen as a euphemism for “it doesn’t shit”.
—
and in recent english developments (like “zero fucks given”, first emerging online):
“don’t fuck with” in the sense of “don’t try to harm, anger, or otherwise provoke” (typically but not invariably in the imperative: “don’t fuck with [name or pronoun]”) has been joined by “don’t fuck with” meaning “not interacting warmly / sociably with; not having anything to do with” (almost always: “i don’t fuck with [name or pronoun]”).
The normal German expression of not caring es / das ist mir egal can be intensified by using scheißegal, in line with German generally preferring scatological swearing. If you really don’t care you can say Ich scheiß drauf / auf X “I shit on it / X”, which besides total indifference can also mean giving up on X or rejecting X.
I’m pretty sure “Zero fucks given” is a niche expression even here in the US.
There’s a retail site (seems to be U.S.-based) you can get a T-shirt/merchandise with that phrase.
That surprises me you regard it as “a niche expression”. I hear it or some variant quite often (well, how do measure that?), and usually … mmm? Maybe more on a Youtube site ‘Ozzy Man’. [_very_ strong language warning]
Ugh. Now my Google search history is screwed.
That surprises me you regard it as “a niche expression”.
It’s certainly very new. In 2015:–
* Strong Language reported the emergence of “Zero Fucks Given” on social media
* “zero fucks given, ZFG: indication of supreme indifference” came third in the “Most useful” class in the American Dialect Society Word of the Year (behind singular they and microaggression).
Stwffiwch y dolig ddim y twrci.
I am (naturally) not sympathetic to this sentiment. (“Proverb” hardly seems the right term …)
The Kusaal for “I don’t care” is Mam ba’a kae. (“My concern does not exist.”)
That surprises me you regard it as “a niche expression”. I hear it or some variant quite often (well, how do measure that?), and usually … mmm? Maybe more on a Youtube site ‘Ozzy Man’.
The fact that it is used in your circle does not negate its being a niche expression; furthermore, I was talking about the US, within the borders of which (if I remember rightly) you are not to be found. I am positive that if one could somehow do a count of all such expressions currently being spoken in the Anglophone world, that particular one would be way down the list. (I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually heard it, though of course I’ve seen it.)
For Georgian, I’m not aware of hanging anything on one’s balls, but ყლეზე მკიდია (I hung (it) on (my) cock) is the vulgar one. Even ქინძზე მკიდია (I hung (it) on coriander) is also considered vulgar by some. ფეხებზე მკიდია (I hung (it) on (my) feet) is probably in the same vulgarity category as coriander. If you’ve simply hung something (მკიდია), then it’s neutral.
(Barring a correcting from someone more knowledgeable than me,) these are all in the imperfective perfect/evidential. So something more like “Prior to you asking me, I hung it, it is still being hung, (and I will continue hanging it, thank you very much),” which I feel may get the point of indifference across better.
Even ქინძზე მკიდია (I hung (it) on coriander) is also considered vulgar by some.
The same is true of the horseradish expressions in Russian, which initially surprised me, but I guess the initial kh- carries a whiff of the unspeakable. And thanks for the Georgian; you don’t find that kind of thing in textbooks!
The “ZFG” phrasing may be an innovation and a niche expression in terms of how many AmEng speakers actively use it, but it’s a sufficiently transparent, if playful, recasting of “I don’t give a fuck” ( from which it follows logically that “the total/aggregate number of fucks given by me is therefore zero …”) that I tend to think it would be easily understood by a broad range of speakers who don’t themselves actively us it.
Sure. That doesn’t make it a common expression.
Sure right back to you. But I think there’s a meaningful difference between an expression that is not all that common in terms of use but is transparent and understood when it is used, on the one hand, and an expression that is completely baffling to those not in the know, on the other. And of course sometimes novel in-group slang is motivated in part by viewing such bafflement as a feature rather than a bug. See, e.g., https://www.theonion.com/boomers-try-to-define-the-word-rizz-1851088201
I at least have always considered it an obstacle in communication.
That is, the concept of youth or youth subculture members taking pleasure at not being understood by outsiders is what I never observed in the wild among my friends.
I think calling it “common in the US” is a category mistake; it’s common in certain online subcultures. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of the people who write it daily never say it.
Anyway. Google has a search suggestion behold the field in which i grow my. It leads to this picture.
“Rizz is someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or homeownership.”
Seems sound.
In Vienna at least, there’s das geht mir am Arsch vorbei “that goes past my ass” – as in “it doesn’t touch me”.
Especially for things that are going to be used in conversation rather than published/edited prose, I’m not sure how capable we are of assessing relative frequency. How many Americans have said or written in the last year something like (in haec verba not required for this one) “my doctor prescribed me a statin to try to reduce my cholesterol levels” versus the number have said or written “zero fucks given”? I have no idea how to come up with a likely-to-be-empirically-accurate answer to that question. In both instances, the expression is likely to be more common in some demographic groups than others, of course, which means finding the ratio of use in a given individual isn’t going to helpfully generalize very well.
I think of “zero fucks given” as Millennial-esque, which of course has not meant youth slang for a while now, and as a phrase possibly used more often by women. It’s the sort of thing that would turn up a lot on the now-defunct Jezebel site (which I would call pretty mainstream) and in Facebook posts from my slightly younger contacts. Not a subculture unless you consider anything generational and somewhat gendered to be a subculture, but hard to quantify because it’s part of a general riff on the idea of specifying the paucity of fucks.
In Vienna at least, there’s das geht mir am Arsch vorbei
That can be found outside of Austria as well. Although I have seen that more frequently applied to the attitudes of others (das geht ihm / ihr am Arsch vorbei; ihm / ihr geht alles etc.) than to one’s own attitude.
It’s true that most vigorous Russian expression include variations of the 5 most basic vocabulary words, but most interesting expressions are perfectly polite (though, of course, informal) — “до лампочки” (to a lightbulb), “по барабану” (on a drum), “не колышет” (doesn’t wave/shake, this one is sort of making sense). And, I think, the Ukrainian expression is wrong. I never heard it and suspect that they mistaken it with “I am sneezing on it”, which honestly is not only Ukrainian and expresses contempt beyond indifference.
In my cohort, det kan ikke bringe mit pis i kog was cromulent.
In Norwegian it can really only be faen “the devil” (or conventional euphemisms). Jeg gir faen “I don’t give a fuck/shit”, samma faen (for meg) “makes no fucking difference (to me)” samma faen kan det være “to hell with it”.
I suspect Biscia is right about it being basically generational. It’s definitely not entirely national, since I’ve heard it from Brits, though of course there might be some overall regional trends. “Niche” is probably the wrong descriptor (the circles thing works both ways, of course: just because it’s not common in one’s particular circle, doesn’t mean it’s niche), though some actual data would be nice. At any rate, I think it’s probably wrong to think it’s associated with some particularly narrow subculture.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of the people who write it daily never say it.”
Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ve certainly heard this spoken fairly often, and I probably even use it myself sometimes (I’m usually relatively slow to use internet-speak offline, relative to my age and level of internet use).
OK, I’m willing to buy that it’s more common than I had thought, and that “niche” may be too narrow a description, but it’s certainly not widely enough used to be the one and only idiom provided for English. On the other hand, maybe I should think of the map as “some interesting/amusing expressions used in these countries” rather than “the canonical expressions used in these countries.”
That’s what I meant in any case.
The good old Viennese practice of nicht einmal ignorieren “not even ignoring”.
Also: “I fart in your general direction!”
(a minor rant, more or less elaborating on drasvi – i’m not implying that anyone here is promoting the idea that’s gored my domestic commensal peeve)
i think the idea that lects with smaller numbers of speakers or socially marginalized speakers create innovations for the purpose of not being understood is basically a fantasy of outsiders to those speech communities (6 parts sour grapes to 1 part vermouth). even most cant terms incomprehensible to outsiders are simply technical jargon, and no more invented for obfuscation than other similarly opaque technical terms, like “ontology”, “hamiltonians”*, or “swazzle”. there are exceptions, for sure**: part of the point of klezmer-loshn in yiddish is to be able to talk about the people at the event you’re playing without them understanding you, whether you’re commenting on who’s unlikely to pay well for a song or who you’d like to make out with after the ritualizing. but those deliberately cryptolexical fields are, i think, exceptional cases.
the impenetrability of small/marginalized lects is just a product of them being distinct lects, within which – like any lect – meaning accretes around new phrases and words, nonce creations solidify, and existing phrases are transfigured into distinctive forms. widespread “i don’t give a fuck” spawns, in various registers and modes of online communication, “i have no more fucks to give”, “zero fucks given”, “behold the field in which i grow my fucks”, “idgaf”. iykyk, and if you don’t, it’s because you’re not part of the relevant speech community. it’s sick [laudatory].
.
* in any of the three or four possible senses.
** on the technical term side too. “merge” may have been deliberately coined to sow confusion.
I apologize for any goring of rozele’s domestic commensal etc etc. It may be useful to distinguish between several different situations, all of which I think are real things w/o getting into just how common or uncommon any of them are.
1. Genuine cryptolects devised by those who are communicating with each other for the purpose of planning/coordinating illegal or taboo activity who have a genuine motivation to not be understood too well by eavesdroppers and by-standers. That’s sometimes a thing, although it may be difficult to gauge how much of a thing. And of course, sometimes cryptic lingo can calcify into jargon – the prostitute and customer may continue to use forms of words, in their initial interaction, that were originally designed to provide some mystery and/or plausible deniability about what was going on but by now everyone (including the vice squad) knows exactly what they mean but they still use the same form of words because it has become the convention.
2. Slang innovated in groups where part of their group identity is explicitly contrastive: teenagers who specifically *want* to sound different from grown-ups; beatniks who specifically *want* to sound different from squares, etc. The incomprehension of the grown-ups/squares is kind of a side effect of the desideratum rather than the prime desideratum but it’s not an unwelcome side effect. Obviously it’s easy to mischaracterize a group not pursuing this strategy as if it is, but I think sometimes it’s a thing.
3. Complex/opaque in-group jargon that serves a cultural-capital and commitment-signalling function. It requires time and commitment to master and is thus a good proxy for determining how committed people really are to being part of the group. It’s not so much to mystify outsiders as to be able to use the cluelessness of outsiders as a heuristic that they lack the commitment to invest the time and energy that being an insider requires.
4. And then of course there is in-group jargon/slang that mystifies the outsiders because it was deliberately fabricated for that purpose as a hoax, as in the case back in the day of Gen X heroine Megan Jasper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak
Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian (2024-04-02):
I used to be terribly self-conscious and, in my 20s, I would rarely leave the house without makeup. Now, I no longer have any proverbial ducks to give, and run errands looking like a scarecrow.
Today’s Language Log promotes a monologue in verse by Elle Cordova. At 0:31 she says “ducks to give”, according to the subtitles anyway.
Now I’m envisioning walking around with a supply of ducks to hand out to deserving people.
A mother duiker.
Yer welcome.
ZFG is normal in Australia.
“I used to be terribly self-conscious and, in my 20s, I would rarely leave the house without makeup. Now, I no longer have any proverbial ducks to give, and run errands looking like a scarecrow.”
Could be bucks…if anyone cared to preserve the labial articulation.
“Obviously it’s easy to mischaracterize a group not pursuing this strategy as if it is, but I think sometimes it’s a thing.”
@JWB, perhaps. I commented on the situation two.
But I can imagine how Soviet/Russian “youth” can be different from Iranian “youth” etc.
“cultural-capital and commitment-signalling function”
Well, the fact is, a person who is/isn’t fluent in your jargon can be perceived as an insider/outsider. Also true for accents. Perhaps some people even actually rationalise it in terms of “commitment”. It can be an effect, it can (with rationalisation) maybe become a “function” but it is still not the purpose I think (usually).
I don’t think it’s niche anymore and I definitely wouldn’t think of it as canonical, but I’m 99% sure I first heard either Zero fucks were given or its hitherto unmentioned variant Not a single fuck was given first in Melbourne, Australia, in the later ’80s. I’m pretty sure by a Maltese-Aussie friend half a generation older than me in my car club, who was the type to tell funny stories in creatively sweary ways. The juxtaposition of the hack journalistic passive voice style with the colloquial sweary just made it funny.
All the noncreative swearers I knew never ventured beyond “Couldn’t give a flying fuck”, which I spose I could consider the Aussie canonical version. I didn’t read the link yet…
I don’t think he used it as a catchphrase, but he was the type to always swear creatively. Anyway, I next came across it around 2010-2011 when I was living as a backpacker in Tbilisi and all my friends were half a generation younger than me, and heavily soaked in what I now know as Internet meme culture. My friend Badri really took to it and used it all the time. I think the Georgians appreciate a bit of sweary wordplay.
I don’t think I’ve heard it said by a woman yet and I didn’t come across ZFG until this article, but it doubtless flew under my radar.
Just to be clear, by “niche” I don’t mean “so few people use it that it can be utterly ignored” but “sufficiently uncommon that you’re not likely to hear it very often.” For every “Zero fucks given” you’re going to hear a hundred “I don’t give a fuck”s and a thousand “I don’t give a damn”s.
“Frankly, my dear, zero fucks given.”
Has anyone here actually read Gone With The Wind ? I can’t remember if I did, so that doesn’t count.
No plans to …
Hated the movie when I was younger, on account of Scarlett’s terminally annoying personality, but I saw the point of her (and the film) better when I saw it again in my embittered old age.
Many of us live in the Age of Scarlett.
My experience is a bit different: it’s more of a pre-teen thing, and the idea is to sound “normal” as opposed to the supposedly higher-register forms the grown-ups use. Dysphemisms and other innovations, including loans from English, result accidentally.
That seems to include every one of Langenscheidt’s youth words of the year: hapless lexicographers venture into schools, and the teenagers play elaborate pranks on them.
I think it started as a typo (D and F are next to each other) and was then taken up as a euphemism.
My sister has. Actually, I don’t know if she made it all the way through; judging from what she read aloud to us, the racism is so over the top…
hapless lexicographers venture into schools
This does not happen. Candidate words are submitted over the ‘net by anybody. Scientists need not rise from their fauteuils.
and the teenagers play elaborate pranks on them.
Apparently pranking does happen. There may be some teenagers involved. One criticism is that Langenscheidt runs this thing as a publicity stunt.
Das Voting zum Jugendwort 2023.
WiPe on the subject.
TIL that PONS took over Langenscheidt in 2019.
Has anyone here actually read Gone With The Wind ?
Yes, a couple of decades before I saw the movie. I was about eleven and working my way down that shelf of the school library. It was horribly cringey even at that age and with little grasp of the various reasons why, but it must have been engaging if I made it all the way through. It’s ridiculously long, and the eye dialect was almost unintelligible to me.
If memory serves, GWTW was the first “grown-up” book my late first wife ever read, when I think she was maybe 9 or 10 years old, so that would have been the late 1970’s in the San Fernando Valley.
I haven’t, but I remember my mother reading it in English paperback sometime in the mid-eighties. I have also a vague memory of my youngest brother picking up that copy much later, maybe in the early nineties.
I remember “zero fucks given”, spoken, from the early ’00s and I don’t remember it being associated with female people. I guess it’s a generational thing, and with adult millenials specifically. Biscia’s theory seems most unerstandable — It arose with mostly female people in the late 90’s in certain places and by the early ’00s it was normal.
There’s “не ме ебе” — it does not / I do not / fuck with it. As in there is no fucking occuring, in Bulgarian. It’s very Zen. And probably as common the “zero fucks given”, but still common.
languagehat: I think you underestimate the the commonality of “zero fucks given” : it’s a common phrase among people in their thirties, regardless of gender, I suspect.
“but it’s certainly not widely enough used to be the one and only idiom provided for English”
Certainly agreed!
“For every “Zero fucks given” you’re going to hear a hundred “I don’t give a fuck”s and a thousand “I don’t give a damn”s.”
But unagreed here. “I don’t give a damn” sounds almost absurdly quaint, or else euphemistically neutral (the kind of thing you’d say in a context where you want to avoid the word “fuck”). “I don’t give a fuck” sounds much more normal (in England, “I don’t give a toss” also seemed routine), and I probably do actually hear that much more often than “zero fucks given” — but these aren’t really equivalent statements. “Zero fucks given” strikes me as more emphatic, and is certainly less likely to be followed by an explanatory phrase. “I don’t give a fuck about his degree”, but ˣ”Zero fucks given about his degree” (for me; maybe this does happen sometimes?). “Zero fucks given” has a note of finality to it, and in general just seems a bit different pragmatically. It’s got connotations almost of aggressive liberation: in what I’d think of its prototypical usage, there’s a situation that should be bothersome or oppressive, but you’re not letting it get to you.
but these aren’t really equivalent statements. “Zero fucks given” strikes me as more emphatic, and is certainly less likely to be followed by an explanatory phrase.
In the passive/participle. Agent deleted. “More emphatic” in the sense less emphatic/maximally understated: I can’t even be bothered to insert myself into the evaluation. Further explanation would be giving it far more attention than it deserves. I can’t even be bothered to count out how many fucks I don’t give.
(“I don’t give a damn” is totally skunked isn’t it? With or without that idiosyncratic stress-placement.)
As I noted upthread, there is in fact corpus data out there on the relative prevalence of e.g. “don’t give a damn” v. “don’t give a fuck.” There are all the usual caveats about whether a particular corpus actually captures a representative sample of the full range of everyday language use, but claims based on ones own impressionistic experience (based on social interaction with a subset of speakers that may not be a perfect statistical sample of all speakers) that are contradicted by corpus data should be advanced with caution.
Quite.
I propose to introduce an essay grading scheme based on the number of fucks given. This is for the F grade, of course,
F0 = didn’t read and ain’t going to
F1 = WTF, tried to read it, complete garbage
F2 = read it, cannot make heads or tails (or other body parts, more suitable for F grade)
F3 = and you are out.
@JWB
“impressionistic experience” means:
(a) you know for sure how it was obtained – and often understand it more or less well when it was obtained by others (b) still can be skewed because you don’t actually count
“corpus” means:
(a) sometimes you know how it was obtained, but not in this case. (b) counting
And both times we have a problem: when we’re discussing “frequencies” we haven’t defined among what exact speakers in what situations. If the implication is “all” then
– “impressionistic experience”
(a) access to precisely all situations (b) also a tiny but known group of speakers in known situations (c) we understand that, and we don’t tend to generalise
– “corpus”
(a) access to a specific situation, known or not (b) a larger but unknown group of speakers (c) some temptation to think of it as “data” and generalise.
In other words, neither “corpus” not “impressionistic experience” give us the answer.
I also looked at the ngram viewer, but I didn’t think it’s very useful here. There’s surely still a much greater resistance to printing “fuck” relative to its actual spoken frequency than there is for “damn”. In the ngram viewer, the “fuck” version is about half as frequent as the “damn” version, which is not particularly overwhelming given the potential confounds. Of course, some of those pressures affect speech too, and I wouldn’t mind some actual good data on all this, but it’s not going to come from the ngram viewer.
The one thing that I thought maybe is a bit interesting here is that while all three show a downturn since about 2013, this has been much more dramatic for “damn”. If you go to ‘English fiction’, the downturn for “damn” begins earlier, in the late 1980s, and it’s now barely more common than “shit” in that corpus. “Shit” and “fuck” have very small downturns in the last year or two of data, though nothing that couldn’t be an ordinary wobble in a rise. Make of that what you will.
I take the point about the impact of differential taboo levels, but is “shit” as of recent years sufficiently less taboo than “fuck” that the shit-variant:fuck-variant ratio in a corpus of written works is an unreliable proxy for what the ratio is in common speech? I’m not entirely confident the answer is “no” but I’m not thinking the default answer is “yes,” either. FWIW, for those who like to quantify, “not give two shits” is notably more common in the ngram viewer than “not give two fucks.” I’m actually surprised the latter has as many hits as it does since it sounds borderline unidiomatic to my ear (whereas “not give two shits” is a well-established fixed phrase), but maybe my ear just needs to get out and about in different sociolinguistic circles.
I’m not sure what the relative strength of the taboo-effect for “shit” in writing might be either — I could easily believe that it’s a lot more common than “fuck” in speech as well as writing. It’s more “damn” that I’m suspicious of.
Zero fucks given
In the Kurmanji of Amed (Diyarbakir), you might say Ne xema kîrê min e, literally ‘It’s no grief/worry/concern of my dick’. (Kurmanji xem ‘sorrow, grief, worry, pain, concern, etc.’.) Kurmanji profanity is very dick-centered, like Russian is хуй-centric. (Kurmanji kîr ‘dick’, like Persian کیر.)
To illustrate, I once heard a middle-aged mother speak to her adult son using the following expression of commiseration tinged with disparagement, in very colloquial Amed Kurmanji: Tu qalibê kîrxwara yî, roughly ‘You are the mould for crooked dicks’ (that is, ‘Your ass is the mould that everyone with a crooked dick fucks to get his dick straightened out’), meaning that everyone comes to him to have their problems solved for them and he never gets any thanks in return.
A colorful and frequently heard way of saying ‘I don’t give two fucks’ in Turkish is Sikimden aşağı Kasımpaşa, literally ‘Down from my dick is Kasımpaşa’ (with sik ‘dick’, -im ‘my’, -den, ablative case ending). Kasımpaşa is a working-class neighborhood on the Golden Horn in Istanbul. It a long walk down the hill from the center of Beyoğlu or Taksim Square. (Kasımpaşa is named after Güzelce Kasım Paşa, an Ottoman statesman who served Selim the Grim and Suleiman the Magnificent and who was apparently resident in the area at some time.) Obviously the name Kasımpaşa in this expression was chosen for the rhyme with aşağı ‘down, downwards’, colloquially pronounced /aʃaː/ and /aʃːaː/. I suppose it somehow developed from the most common expression for ‘I don’t give a fuck’, Sikime takmıyorum, literally, ‘I don’t put it on my dick’, ‘I don’t attach it to my dick’ (-e, dative case ending).
Στον πούτσο μου λουλούδια και γύρω γύρω μέλισσες
A Turkish translation(?) of this found on Reddit sounds really nice: Sikimde çiçekler, çevresinde böcekler ‘Flowers on my dick, bugs all around’, with an easy rhyme. But I couldn’t find any evidence that the Greek expression originated, or developed in tandem with, a putative Turkish form.
(Kurmanji kîr ‘dick’, like Persian کیر.)
Surely unrelated to Russian Kir “Cyrus the Great”, who once got a certain Iranian lady banned on a language-exchange forum.
She avoided politics, religion and so on especially carefully, so they banned her once in two months (and not twice a month as other Iranians) and when she complained they reinstated her account.
After a year and a half like this oeither they decided to finally get rid of her, or some member who pays enough money asked them. So this time they responded: we are not interested in your participation, you talked about politics (a quotation from her post where she mentions Cyrus), religon (a quotation from a thread where someone asked if women have “equal voice” in Iran and she said depends on family – and also her answer in a thread about headscarves) and there should also be “sex” but I don’t remember what she wrote about sex.
Presumably that she’s a woman:)
Iranians say, same things happen on other language sites, so I guess someone is running a troll farm.
On top of this, if you are a middle eastern male and don’t look rich and educated western women expect harassment and when you say “dear” they believe it is harassment.
drasvi: Surely unrelated to Russian Kir “Cyrus the Great”, who once got a certain Iranian lady banned on a language-exchange forum.
Cyrus the Petty.
Well, perhaps I incorrectly used English “get”.
The idea is “mentioning him led to the ban” (but this is not true: of course no one cared what Iranian kings she mentioned. The administration of the site is just shameless).
BTW, I just checked the map and it gives “It hurts me in the lighthouse” for Bulgaria. I’m guessing that’s “боли ме фара” and it is indeed reasonably common. Фар (lighthouse) is an euphemism for vulva.
On top of this, if you are a middle eastern male and don’t look rich and educated western women expect harassment and when you say “dear” they believe it is harassment.
If you’re implying that this is sheer prejudice and that such men are no more likely to harass women in public than, say, Englishmen, you’re utterly wrong and you might want to consult some women about it. There is a wide band around the Mediterranean where public harassment of women is an accepted sport called by various cute names (Spanish piropo is one). Yes, of course women get catcalled in London and New York, but what women experience in Italy, Turkey, the Levant (to use a good old term), and nearby regions is of an entirely different order. Ask my ex-wife about Istanbul and Aleppo if you want examples.
In addition to the threatening overtone of unwanted familiarity, I believe some women blame themselves (or other women) for having invited it (by dress, laughing too loud, or some other unintended signal).
Me: In Norwegian it can really only be faen “the devil” (or conventional euphemisms).
No, that’s not right. At least there used to be other alternatives. My grandmother — who was often accused by my mother of having a foul mouth — might have said det bryr meg midt i ræva “it concerns me in the middle of my ass”. Even more vulgar (and beyond my grandmother, at least when grandkids were around) would be det bryr meg (midt) i rasshølet “it concerns me in (the middle of) my asshole”.
@LH, I did not exaggerate the situation on this specific site. It is actually “twice a month” and if it is similar on other language sites, the only reasonably explanation I have is a troll farm whose employees are hunting down Iranians online.
So what I mean about women is that the situation of middle eastern males is very difficult.
Yes, you are right.
@LH, if from that I’m inclined to put myself in an uneducated middle-eastern man’s shoes on a language learning site you conclude – you do – that I’m not inclined to put myself in the shoes of a young lady in a middle-eastern city, you are wrong.
It’s a moral obligation. So speaking of prejudice, when your prejudice tells you that you shouldn’t do that, this prejudice becomes immoral.
I see where you’re coming from, but you’re falling into the all-too-common trap of both-sidesism. If they’re attacking X, I will defend X, but I also defend Y when they’re attacking Y, so it’s OK! But there are actually differences between sides, and sometimes it’s not OK. Just because people attack Nazis doesn’t mean Nazis need defending, and neither do people who harass women. It’s one thing to say “uneducated men in these societies don’t know any better so we should be understanding,” but that’s not what you did — you mocked the women. Reread the comment I was responding to and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.
@LH, but Ali harasses Fatima in Tunis and Mary who has never been to Tunis is rude to Abdollah on a language learning site. How these events are related?
By this I don’t mean that the phenomenon does not exist in Tehran, it does and I know this exactly from local women which you advised me to consult.
I think men who harass women don’t see a problem when those expect this behaviour.
….and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.
Yes, now I understand you better. I was perplexed.
drasvi seems to be working rather on the Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner principle, which does him credit.
It occurred to me to wonder who first perpetrated this line: I discover that nobody knows, but Mme de Staël is wrongly blamed for it (she never seems to have said anything quite so silly, though she is on record as saying “Car tout comprendre rend très indulgent, et sentir profondément inspire une grande bontée.”)
This is really just a pretext for mentioning the site where I found this out:
https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/to-understand-everything-is-to-forgive-everything/
I mean, gotta love a site called “Fake Buddha Quotes” with the byline “I can’t believe it’s not Buddha.”
Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner
Over the years, when I have remembered to, I have noted down variations on “familiarity breeds contempt”:
Dunno if the attribution to War and Peace is reliable. I lent my French edition to the maid.
In my experience, to understand almost everything (about a person) is to be overwhelmed by disgust. For that reason I try to keep my nose out of other people’s business.
@DE, then maybe you can explain what an entirely random Muslim man on a language learning site has to do with another random Muslim man in Tunis?
He is not LH’s enemy:/ What you two are going to forgive him for if all you know is that he is from the ME and looks uneducated (usually because he does not speak English well)?
looks uneducated (usually because he does not speak English well)
Non sequitur ! How someone “looks” has nothing to do with their command of a language.
I know quite a few educated Germans who speak atrocious English. I think Sloterdijk is one of them. All that means is that I prefer to speak German with them.
@LH, but Ali harasses Fatima in Tunis and Mary who has never been to Tunis is rude to Abdollah on a language learning site. How these events are related?
Sure, but that has nothing to do with the issue of sexism in particular — that’s just basic human behavior. We overgeneralize from birth, which has obvious evolutionary advantages (“that herb made me sick, I won’t eat anything that looks like it again”) but also causes lots of problems. There’s nothing to be done except keep reminding people not to stereotype other people. But at least women being afraid of random men is more grounded in reality than, say, gentiles being afraid of Jews.
I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying Abdollah (or any random male) “deserves it,” just that women’s caution is understandable (though they shouldn’t cross the line into preemptive insults).
I for one am glad that in these days of ubiquitous moral relativism, hat is sufficiently confident that the seemingly-contingent mores of post-Puritan Western Massachusetts are objective universal truths that enable one to righteously condemn e.g. those low-class greasy Italians and their obnoxious sexist ass-pinching behavior. Although there is the puzzlement of why well-bred American young ladies (e.g. my own eldest daughter, who spent much of the spring of 2022 studying in Rome) keep insisting on doing the “junior year abroad” part of their college education in these Mediterranean environments full of chauvinist pigs rather than someplace safe like Helsinki where the local menfolk would respectfully stare at their own shoes rather than try to make unwelcome conversation.
Also, this thread reminded me that I had unforgivably forgotten the awesome 1984 tune “Young, Fast, Iranians” by the F.U.’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owOJZYiz3B4
@LH, now it is clear (AbdOllah was choosen as Iranian pronunsiation of the name, Ali and Fatima appear in old English – or maybe it is Arab own invention? – storeis about Arabs).
But when you were comparing him (that is again: absolutely randomn ME guys on a random forum) to Nazi – you did, you said that by taking his side (which I actually did not do, I just understand that he’s in a difficult situation) when he’s the target I fall into a moral trap, because Nazi – and DE was speaking about understasndin (? Did I speak about his feelings? I spoke aout the situation) and forgiving (?) him….
Moral relativism is the enemy of actual tolerance.
If no moral view has any objective value, tolerance becomes a non-concept. It’s basically just generalising one’s disdain of the opinion of others to include disdain of the one’s own opinion too. This is neither intellectual nor moral progress.
I can (and do) respect Islam because I am an orthodox Christian (which entails believing that Islam is fundamentally in error about the nature of God.) I would not expect a similarly orthodox Muslim to feel any better-disposed to my opinion about their faith if I held that neither of us was doing anything more than going along with the cultural norms of our own societies. We agree with we disagree about something real, whatever else. Anything less would be highly disrespectful of a great world religion.
I once met a nice young British aid worker in Ghana who was so taken with the country (and disdainful of his own) that he wanted to give up UK citizenship and become a Ghanaian (few Ghanaians would agree that this was rational.) I think this is somewhere between starry-eyed idealism and outright pathology. If you can’t love your own country (even) despite its manifest faults, you are simply deluding yourself if you think you can really love another country (about which you are in plain fact much less well-informed.)
It’s easy to be fond of Ghana, sure. But I practiced beforehand, to the point where I can even see the virtues of the English.
If I respect you, I will do you the honour of thinking that you can be wrong about significant things. If I do not think you can be even wrong, then what I am pleased to call “respect” is in fact merely condescension.
I for one am glad that in these days of ubiquitous moral relativism, hat is sufficiently confident that the seemingly-contingent mores of post-Puritan Western Massachusetts are objective universal truths that enable one to righteously condemn e.g. those low-class greasy Italians and their obnoxious sexist ass-pinching behavior.
Oh, spare me. We’re not college freshmen, you don’t have to impress me with your cooler-than-thou attitude. I trust you’re simply operating out of rote lawyerly contrarianism, but if you seriously think it’s merely parochial puritanism that condemns misogynistic behavior and that Real Women don’t mind having their asses pinched by Real Men, well, all I can say is that you have plenty of company.
Upping the stakes: I am often disturbed by Western rhetoric about FGM.
It’s characteristic of the way this is discussed that I feel the immediate necessity to say that I myself think it is Wrong (with a capital W) and should indeed be illegal everywhere. More to the point, I have met many Africans from cultures where it is/has been traditional who also hold that it is always wrong and should always be illegal.
What bothers me is the frequent statement that is it simply criminal behaviour and that those who perform it are, straightforwardly, criminals; and that it invariably reflects institutional cultural misogyny.
All these statements are false. Asserting that they are true is just to dismiss as intrinsically worthless all cultures other than our own whenever their values cannot be regarded as quaintly folkloric. Heaven forbid that lesser cultures should disagree with Us about anything important. There are limits!
J.W. Brewer’s view of Italy is about 60 years out of date. Young Italian men, if you can actually find any who haven’t emigrated in search of better jobs, are well aware that ass pinching strangers is unacceptable in the modern EU. The Republic is even run by a woman at the moment, even if she’s not a feminist ideal.
My sense is that most young American women choose the Mediterranean over Helsinki for the sun, food, art and instagrammable scenery. These days you are more likely to meet sexually aggressive Mediterranean men in Malmö or Berlin than in Florence or Rome, yet I don’t think that‘s changed the flow of American women north.
JWB responded to LH who mentioned Italy.
P.S. and piching asses is by no means “misogyny”.
There is such a thing as misogyny and it has absolutely nothing in common with pinching asses:(
You’re wrong, but I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine, so we’ll agree to disagree. (But surely you don’t think pinching asses is a sign of true love and respect for women.)
Perhaps I was misled by a euphemistic usage of “Mediterranean”? The possible parallel is that if you see a restaurant in the U.S. offering “Mediterranean” food, it’s certainly not specializing in Italian food, nor in dishes associated with Provence or Catalunya, but most likely Turkish or Lebanese or something like that. Conceivably Croatian, though?
I am often disturbed by Western rhetoric about FGM.
You and me both. Too many smug Western “liberals” (not to mention the other guys) use it as a convenient stick to beat the “primitives” with.
What bothers me is the frequent statement that […] it invariably reflects institutional cultural misogyny.
OK, here we part company. How could it not? Unless you believe that a society of women left to their own devices without any form of male domination would decide to perform painful surgery on themselves and their daughters in order to deprive themselves of sexual pleasure, it has to reflect institutional cultural misogyny. That is not to say, of course, that everyone who performs or consents to the practice is a misogynist; that’s why it’s institutional cultural misogyny and not individual misogyny. But it has to be based in misogyny, so I’m curious to learn how you interpret your statement.
LH, I tend to agree with you. But fair to say many male dominated societies have decided that painfully and dangerously amputating the foreskin is a good idea, and I don’t think misandry is at play. Controlling sexual urges in general seems to be an obsession with some societies.
What bothers me is the frequent statement that is it [FGM] simply criminal behaviour and that those who perform it are, straightforwardly, criminals
Criminal in my book means “contrary to the criminal law”. In places where it is outlawed, it is criminal behavior, even if culturally sanctioned. Just like illegal gambling, prostitution, street drugs, honor killings and all the other traditional behaviors that government decided should be suppressed. More nuanced view depends on whether you believe in objective (or at least universal) morality or not.
LH, I tend to agree with you. But fair to say many male dominated societies have decided that painfully and dangerously amputating the foreskin is a good idea, and I don’t think misandry is at play. Controlling sexual urges in general seems to be an obsession with some societies.
Yeah, all of this is difficult stuff. My tentative conclusion, after many years of obsessing about it, is that misogyny is at the root of pretty much all the other bad stuff (including war and autocracy), and that if men didn’t feel the need to keep women down they wouldn’t feel the need to keep each other (and often themselves) down, but obviously there’s no way to prove it. It’s just, like, my opinion, man.
My tentative conclusion, after many years of obsessing about it, is that misogyny is at the root of pretty much all the other bad stuff (including war and autocracy)
That’s an odd conclusion, however tentative. It amounts to cherchez la femme when looking for someone to blame. But not everything is about women, ya know. As the archbishop says in the 120 Journées (I quote from memory): “I can go for three or four days at a time without having to see a cunt.”
@hat
Re war and autocracy, the need to control women (except in the character of tribal goods or workforce) seems like an unnecessarily sophisticated explanation. For most of human existence, war and autocracy played out in the context of tribal survival/expansion and resource allocation. Or do you mean that war and autocracy in modern nation-states is a separate problem requiring a separate explanation? The question also seems to be framed in a way which excludes women from promoting war and autocracy for reasons which make sense to them in particular contexts, e.g , in order to control other men and women.
But not everything is about women, ya know.
No, actually I don’t know that. But don’t worry, I don’t expect anyone to agree with me. That’s one of the nice things about having developed an extremely specialized personal philosophy/ideology/politics — no one’s going to agree with you, so you can relax and forget about it. (You must feel that to some extent yourself.)
“You’re wrong, but I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine, so we’ll agree to disagree”
LH, could you please explain WHERE we disagree?
(1) that primary meaning of misogyny is hatred of women (or maybe a number of feelings weaker than exactly “hatred” – but still hostile).
(2) that extending it to any behaviour harmful to women and inventing a new word for hostility to women (which exists) is a bad idea?
(3) that asses are pinched not because the man holds any hostile sentiment to women?
(3) and the claim that hostility to women as such exists are a matter of objective reality. It is not a matter of beliefs. And for me it is important to at least try to determine the actual source of this behaviour.
I don’t understand “LH believes that apples grow on baobabs and drasvi believe they grow in the grass and we both are working in the same orchard but LH is not going to change drasvi’s mind and drasvi is not going to change his”.
Handaxes.
I don’t understand “LH believes that apples grow on baobabs and drasvi believe they grow in the grass and we both are working in the same orchard but LH is not going to change drasvi’s mind and drasvi is not going to change his”.
Understanding your own words – the ones I quote – is your job, not his. Making yourself understandable is primarily your job as well.
You report a “thought experiment” with orchards and apples that makes you seem eminently reasonable. Less contrived would be: “LH believes one thing, drasvi believes another, but neither is going to change the other’s mind”.
What right do you have to change my mind?
From MMcM’s link: Why were handaxes made and why was their shape symmetrical and regular?
Efficiency, maybe ? Were all of them symmetrical and regular ? Even the ones that have not survived the millenia ?
These and many other questions are considered here, in a paper tackling hominid social behaviour and sexual selection.
ZFG.
Stu,
I think LH is of a certain opinion of people who “believe” in things which are a part of the objective reality and are not going to let anything change their beliefs. Especially when it’s the part of reality they are interested in.
Let’s call those people “idiots.”
So in this case either LH believes he is an idiot, or he believes I am and idiot either he believes we both are idiots.
No, there is no such dichotomy.
Belief that “the truth is out there” does not entail that any single individual or any single culture has uniquely privileged access to it.
In fact, we wholly lack the ability to achieve such access from a single viewpoint: it is like trying to see in depth with only one eye. It is a fact of our nature that we can only approach the truth by a kind of triangulation, in which other people are indispensable.
However, this does not mean that the truth is actually constructed by our various viewpoints; nor does it mean that all viewpoints provide an equally clear view.
If the truth is out there, none of us sees it perfectly; but some of us will see it less clearly than others, even so. Sometimes the ones who see it less clearly will be ourselves. There is no infallible algorithm that can settle the matter (but there sure are some useful heuristics.)
What DE said.
It may help to think of my statement not as “I know the TRUTH and anyone who disagrees is a fool” but as “I find misogyny a useful and productive tool through which to view history and society; if you don’t, use your own tools and more power to you.”
What right do you have to change my mind?
None whatever!
(Sorry for tardiness; I’ve been distracted by the eclipse. Only 95% here, but still impressive.)
drasvi: I actually don’t think we disagree on much of substance; you’re using “misogyny” in the etymological sense (miso- = hatred) and I’m using it in an extended sense (drive, often unconscious, toward suppression of women).
@DE, and how we arrive from there to “not going to let anything change their beliefs”?
That’s one of the less useful heuristics …
LH
“extended sense” thank you. I sincerely misunderstood you.
It is not just “etymological” sense. There is a plenty of people who are hostile to other people based on gender.
The word suits well and I have always understood and used this word in this sense, and since very recently I hear people – in Russian – calling any sexism (and there is a plenty of weird things men and women say and think about each other) towards women “misogyny”.
For me such a dscussion immediately start looking like a swamp.
Some men treat women like children and it is not always nice… and many adults have wrong ideas about children, so should the latter be called “hatred of children”? And now I saw misogyny applied to pinching asses.
if I was not accustomed to this word in the sense “hatred of women” – I would not have objected.
PS. you basically said that you are NOT going to explain how your tool works, that I won’t be able to understand it and that you have no interest in my tools.
Of course I “treatment of women in the ME” is an issue I think about often: some of those women are my freinds! They do speak about it, they do want to change certain things. And you’re concerned with the same. So what? “We’re too different, let’s talk to truly like-minded people instead!”? In linguistics that would mean Chomskyites and others should not read each other’s works.
PS. you basically said that you are NOT going to explain how your tool works, that I won’t be able to understand it and that you have no interest in my tools.
No, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m always curious to understand other people’s views and am perfectly willing to explain mine if they want. I just thought we had reached an impasse, when actually it was just that we hadn’t understood what each other meant by the words being used (a common problem, of course).
“How someone “looks” has nothing to do with their command of a language.”
@Stu, on a language learning site? People who spoke bad English there were treated markedly worse.
I think it may have to do with idea of “educatedness”, I mean, you know those stupid villagers who speak like villagers unless they’re from a village that speaks something else.
The discussion of my moral trap and forgiveness above reminded me how some man insulted me in the following way: “Muslim! Jew! Jesus Christ!”
Poor Buddah:(
Ha!
What happened to the perfectly mundane “Who cares?”
Italy really isn’t what it used to be. First I learned the stereotype that men will shout “ciao, bella!” at women from the other side of the street, then I went there and saw a man drive by a young woman; he honked, but didn’t even slow down.
I haven’t witnessed catcalling, or heard of incidents, in the last 30 years or more, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kids Today don’t even know it. Misogyny has moved online.
Huh. Thanks for the update! I guess people don’t live in what used to be called “real life” anymore.
Well, apparently, I won’t be able to accept this use of misoginy. I’m too used to “hatred of women” and there is “misanthropy” which clearly does not mean shouting “bella!” to every anthropos from the other side of the street.
Miso- is simply a part of my Russian.
Add here женоненавистничество, normally used to translate misogyny.
Each time I see it used this way, I jump.
This said, such behaviour can contain an element of hostility:
This is why in one of my examples it was Tunis – the paper is about Tunis.
I haven’t witnessed catcalling, or heard of incidents, in the last 30 years or more
Hélas! Où sont les stéréotypes d’antan?
I’ve been thinking about “misogyny.” I think my use of it is conditioned by the fact that the obvious alternative, “sexism,” has been rendered pretty much useless by overuse (much like “fascism”). We’re all sexist, we all fight sexism, bla bla bla… It basically means nothing. For me, “misogyny” covers the entire complex of social and historical conditions that keep women down all over the world; I can understand why others might not want to use it that way, but it works for me.
@hat
You are deliberately excluding biological conditions, e.g., (1) smaller average body size (leading crucially to lower muscle mass)
(2) extra investment in procreation (leading to diminished freedom to pursue individual objectives)
I would stress the relevance of (1) to interpersonal conflict (women and “weaker/older” men expend a lot of effort in developing compensatory advantages). Likewise I would stress the relevance of (2) to life trajectories. I suppose what you could be saying is that societies should eliminate the current “waste” in unexploited female potential to pursue individual or societal objectives by creating “enabling” structures that would address defects in historical or social conditions, but I do not believe this would work well without considering other factors like (1) and (2). You would also have to “sell” the new structures to those (including women) who would not be convinced that the new structures could be made to work better than the old ones.
The great variation in the power of women between different societies surely shows that physical differences need not determine life choices, at least not to anything like the degree that many men would, well, prefer.
Certainly there is no point in simply exhorting women to exercise more autonomy without committing actual resources to it – especially your point (2.)
This may well be what you actually mean, of course. But it is not a hopeless endeavour at all. Progress has been made. It’s not enough: but it shows that significant progress is perfectly possible. There’s nothing contrary to human nature about it.
You are deliberately excluding biological conditions
I have no idea what you mean. I don’t care about biological conditions (are you implying that big guys have a god-given right to beat up on smaller guys?), I care about half the human race living under conditions of oppression — greater or lesser depending on the society they live in, but never equal. If that doesn’t bother you, I don’t know what to say. The women I have known have been every bit as smart and capable as the men, and frequently nicer; it appalls me that they have to deal with obstacles every day that men, by and large, never give a thought to. I want a better world, and as DE says it’s not a hopeless wish. It’s perfectly possible (look at the progress that has been made in the last century or so) — it just takes work, and the willingness of men to stop being oppressors.
@hat
You wrote “the entire complex of social and historical conditions that keep women down”–this meant to me that you consider only “mutable” social and historical conditions, but not “immutable” biological factors, addressable only by compensatory measures independent of those measures required to address the defects caused by social and historical conditions. I think if the objective is to avoid “keeping women down”, these other factors (e.g., (1) and (2) from my earlier comment) need to be taken into account. I would agree with DE that it is possible, assuming sufficient goodwill/buy in. Anyway, it is your party and I do not expect significant improvement of society in my lifetime (the opposite would seem to be at least equally likely).
I do not expect significant improvement of society in my lifetime (the opposite would seem to be at least equally likely).
Neither do I; did I give the impression I did? Consider living a couple of thousand years ago and being against slavery — there would have been no hope for improvement in the foreseeable future, but that didn’t make slavery right.
Anyway, it is your party
I also hope I didn’t give the impression I expected anyone to agree with me. I’ve long been accustomed to being the only person of my acquaintance to hold my peculiar complex of views, and I don’t expect that to change. I expect and enjoy the vigorous exchange of differing opinions here, but I’m not going to keep silent about my own, which are mine.