What we judge says more about us than the thing being judged.

Two scenes. No swearing in one, plenty in the other. Which one makes you uncomfortable?

Scene one. Jane gets called into her manager’s office. He leans forward. ‘Hi, sweetie, we really love your performance here. The other day I was thinking that, with such a pretty face like yours, if you’d like to step up in this business, there are some things that you could do for me that might improve your chances of a promotion.’

Scene two. Bob’s friend is going through a break-up. He shows up at his friend’s apartment and bangs on the door. ‘F*ck me, you’re still on the sofa?! Get your fat arse off the f*cking couch. We’re going to training, get in the shower, and I am going to open some windows.’

Unlike the other, one of these scenes has no profanity and perfectly polished language, not a swearword in sight.

One of these scenes is the beginning of sexual manipulation. The other is an act of love.

Words are a tool, like a hammer. The hammer doesn’t decide what gets built. The person holding it does. What you say matters far less than why you’re saying it.

 

So why the f*ck does profanity make people so uncomfortable?

That’s actually the more interesting question.

It’s not about the words, but what these signal to you. That signal is entirely constructed by the context you grew up in: the family dinner table where swearing meant disrespect; the school that treated profanity as proof of a limited vocabulary; or the religion that assumes using clean language equates to being a decent human being.

None of that is necessarily wrong. But none of it is objective either.

Collectively, we’ve agreed that certain syllables carry some sort of contamination. Touch them, and something about you is revealed – something crude, something less than.

But Bob’s crude vocabulary got his mate off the couch, feeling better about himself. The manager’s polished words left Jane feeling like she needed a shower.

 

Why the book swears (and why I’m not apologising for it)

Profanity does something clean language can’t: it disrupts. It snaps you out of autopilot for a half-second. And that half-second is exactly when something real can get through.

We live inside continuous stimulation. Every platform, every feed, every notification is fighting for the same thing. Your emotional investment. A sentence that hits like a wet towel won’t land. It just slides off.

My book and brand deal with genuinely difficult topics: addiction, grief, identity, the masks we wear for so long we forget they’re not our face. I needed a voice that could hold all of that without sounding like a therapy handout.

Swearing makes it honest. It makes it mine. And more than anything else, it makes it relatable – not just for academics who’ve fawned over the theory, but for anyone who’s sat alone at 2 am wondering what the f*ck any of this is for.

That person deserves the same conversation. Maybe even more.

 

The honest version

I can beat around the bush and throw every justification at you I want. Emotional resonance. Pattern disruption. Authentic communication.

But honestly? I swear like a f*cking sailor, and I always have. And I am not willing to be someone I’m not. If I am to be loved or hated, I want it to be as myself, not a façade that I pretend to be.

That would have been its own kind of façade. And the whole point is to tear those façades down.

 

One thing before you go

If reading ‘f*ck’ in a sentence made you flinch, even slightly, sit with that for a moment, because it’s worth knowing why it’s there and not whether the flinch is wrong.

What does the discomfort actually belong to? The word, or the thing the word was taught to mean?

The book has plenty more of those questions. Are you ready to face them?