rich with motion

When I first saw this post go around, I was traveling, but I had something I wanted to say and I could never find it again.

Okay, so, this post isn’t wrong, but what the original gifset doesn’t take into account (though some of the commentary touches on it) is how incredibly situational swearing was in the 1940s.

So, yes, men swore a lot – around other guys, in certain contexts. But they were very heavily conditioned not to swear around women and kids.

I think this might be one of the big reasons why a lot of people my age and younger got the idea that people didn’t swear during the 1940s. Most of us fell into the “kid” or “female” categories, or both, and guys our grandparents’ age would never, ever say “fuck” around us. And those words weren’t usually used in media of the era for similar reasons, so we got the idea that people that age were very prim and polite, when it’s more that they were prim and polite around us.

I remember as a young woman walking in on groups of old blue-collar guys talking among themselves, with profanity flying freely, and then noticing me in the room and immediately clamming up and apologizing to me for swearing around me.

There’s a bit in the Douglas Bader biography I was reading a month or so ago that demonstrates this in a WWII context. According to the book, the squadron pilots swore freely in their radio chatter to each other in the field, to the amusement of the WAAFs (female service personnel) who were listening to the radio in an ops room as they moved counters around on maps (much like we see Peggy doing in TFA) and the embarrassment of their commander:

After awhile, to the regret of the Beauty Chorus [the WAAFs], Woodhall disconnected the loud-speaker in the Ops Room, feeling that some of the battle comments were too ripe even for the most sophisticated WAAFs. (“They laugh, you know,” he said, “but dammit I get so embarrassed.”)

… so, right, even in the middle of a war, pilots saying “fuck” over the radio was something the female staff had to be insulated from.

Say what you will about the baby boomers, but they largely demolished that wall between “swearing around men” and “swearing around women”. Most guys my dad’s age don’t do it anymore, at least not to that much of an extreme. By the time you get to my generation (I’m 40), people might swear or they might not, and they usually don’t swear around young kids, but swearing around men but not around women is just not a thing anyone does anymore. At least I don’t know anyone who does it specifically and consistently who’s not elderly.

It’s not really an individual-sexism thing, more of a socialization thing – sexist on a societal level, sure, but I don’t think Steve would balk at swearing around women, kids, or in a refined or professional social setting because he’s a sexist or a prude. It’s just something you didn’t do as a polite person. Like blowing your nose on the tablecloth in a fancy restaurant. I think he could and probably would unlearn that, but it’d take time.

So, to me, about half the examples up there work just fine (“now why the fuck would I do that” to Bucky – absolutely! Or “Is everything a fucking joke to you?” to Tony) and several jar horribly, because they’re not the right context (like the “there’s only one God ma'am” bit – noooo, you aren’t going to get “fuck” and “ma'am” in the same sentence! not for a Steve fresh from the 1940s! – or “we have our fucking orders” … in a polite, professional context like that, no). Steve would never. Or, I should say, someone from Steve’s culture – who tries in general to be a polite and respectful person, as Steve does – would never. Maybe after he’s had a few years to acclimatize to the more relaxed social climate surrounding swearing in the 21st century, but I think it’d take him awhile; he would sort of instinctively jerk himself back from doing it in all but the most relaxed sort of “palling around with your teammates” environment.

(Headcanon-wise, I could see Steve very quickly incorporating someone like Natasha into his mental schemata as “one of the guys” – not consciously, but on a subconscious level: like, he doesn’t hold back from swearing around her pretty quickly – but taking a LOT longer with someone like Wanda or Pepper.)

Kirsten Valentine, Boxers, c. 2018