Society has every right to establish standards of behavior, and doing so, no matter how much you might hate it, does not violate your right to free speech.

Bullshit. (Just exercising my right to free speech).

I'm not joking here, I have the opinion that ideas like the one I quote hurt society - they are the first step to an absolute form of government. One should be extremely careful when preventing form of speech. Regardless whether you call it "standards of behaviour", "national security", "terrorism" or "unpattriotic" - just don't prevent people from using certain words.

But this has nothing to do with Perl anymore, so let's stop here or continue on a more appropriate forum.

Abigail

I do have to note though that you made the classic mistake of thinking profanity is protected under "freedom of speech". It most certainly is not.

The comment I made did not limit itself to profanity per se. There are lots of folks out there who would love to tell me what I an and cannot say in general. That more than limiting my "right" to use profanity is what I object to. In "polite society" use of profanity is considered at best crude. Certainly the day there was an irate customer at a McDonalds using language in fromt of children that burned the ears of this sailor I objected to the use of that sort of language. My solution was to politely ask the individual to tone it down and reminded him there were children present. Did I violate his freedom of speech? No. I gave him the option. Had he persisted I'm not 100% sure what I would have done since this event occured when I was much younger and more brash.

An example of someone violationg my freedom of expression? How about the day that I had a supervisor yell at me for using the title "girl" when talking to one of my female co-workers. Out of context I know there is a concept that she is a "woman" and not a girl and some ladies take offense to being called a girl just as some men would take offense to being called a boy. In fact the term "boy" can be construed as someting even more offensive than "pre adult male".

Putting my remark to my coworker in cntext the phrase I used was something on the order of "you go girl!" (not the exact phrase... I don't remember but that was the order of the phrase.) Now keep in mind two things:

1. She had no objection to being called "girl" in that particular context
2. Where we are both from originally there is a cultural use of the word "girl" that is used amongst peers like the word "buddy" is used.

Society has every right to establish standards of behavior, and doing so, no matter how much you might hate it, does not violate your right to free speech.

Classic "war story" here. A certain large telecommunications firm that I worked for decided to have mandatory use of proxies for all web browsing. The proxies were set up to block sites that had "objectionable content." If a page had certain keywords in the content the page would be blocked. One day there was a special on-line forum concerning women's issues going on and the proxies blocked people from participating. Why? Because the page had the word "breast" in it as in breast cancer. I am not exagerating. You can't make stuff like that up.

When was the last time you saw "society" take action against the use of foul language in music, TV programming or for that matter the movies? In fact I have heard mainstream commentators applaud young artists for song lyrics that were nothing short of being gutter talk. Watch "The Soparnos" sometime and try counting the number of times "The F-Word" is used in one episode. You won't be able to keep up. Commedias these days seem to think they aren't funny unless they spice up their language. My favorite comedian, Red Skelton, I don't think every cussed but he could get even the raciest concept across by leading your imagination to it.

I say all that to say this: objectionability of word useage varies with context, the audience and environment. There is the "N-Word" which I personally don't use but in certain contexts is not objectionable. Between African Americans it is used all the time. Don't use it if you aren't African American on someone who is unless you want a fight on your hands (and in my opinion rightfully so.)

Someone uses speech that is objectionable? Ask them to stop. If they persist ignore them and remove yourself from the situation.

I worked for a Chief Petty Officer when I was in the US Navy who had a penchant for chewing someone out to the point they felt small enough to walk out the door without opening it. The felt like they fit right under it. The Chief never raised his voice and never used language that you couldn't use in church yet his command of language and vocabulary was just that good. My favorite boss in the Navy...

I'll quit ranting now...