Two things this week starts with a veritable treasure-trove of smut – the top sex blog lists. It’s that time of year when you get to nominate your favourite sex blogs, and nosily trawl through other people’s nominations to find more hot stuff to read. I also found a seriously weird and interesting piece of research on offensive British swearwords, so at the bottom of this post there’s a little analysis of which words are most likely to get you tutted at if you’re visiting the Queen for tea. Let’s go.
Top sex blogs 2016
Wherever there’s an SEO opportunity with the phrase ‘top sex blogs’, you’ll find a company or individual who wants to get in on the action. But in my opinion, you’ll only find a couple of ‘top sex blogs’ lists that really do what they need to: introduce you to a range of incredible writers.
The Kinkly sex blogging superheroes list is one of them, and nominations are open now. You can visit their site, find the profile of your fave sex blogger, and click the pink button to vote (here’s mine if you’ve a spare second and you’d like to nominate me). A note here, though: it’s always lovely to be included in round-ups, and it does send some traffic through to my site (over the course of last year I got about 3,000 visits from Kinkly’s list). But it is infinitely more valuable if someone has a low-traffic blog, or they haven’t received much ‘YAY ACE SEX BLOGGER!’ attention yet. So: please do vote for me if you’ve time, but more importantly, don’t forget to check out other bloggers on the list – click through to one of the later pages and give some love to those blogs too.
The other amazing sex blog list is the hand-picked, personally-curated Top 100 Sex Blogs over at MollysDailyKiss. This used to be run by Rori at BetweenMySheets, before she had to retire, and so Molly’s now taking on the huge task of reading through all the nominated blogs. The thing I love most about this list is that I can’t be nominated, because I was number 1 in 2014, which means each year new people get a chance to win. Like the idea? Pop over to Molly’s blog using the link above and get your nominations in.
Offensive British swearwords
I fucking love a good swear. So when I spotted that Ofcom (the UK regulator for a number of things, including television) had released some research on which British swearwords people found most offensive, naturally I got stuck right in.
There are some fairly obvious take-aways from it: ‘cunt’ is considered one of the cuntiest words to use, and ‘motherfucker’ is seen as pretty fucking awful.
Some of my favourite British swearwords appear on the ‘mild’ list – ‘git’, for instance, or ‘arse.’ And a few surprises were in store in the ‘strong’ category: ‘bellend’, which is my current favourite swearword because it can refer generically to anyone without – I think – causing specific offence on the basis of any characteristic I wouldn’t actually want to mock. A bellend is neither male nor female, young nor old, intelligent nor unintelligent, friend nor necessarily foe. They are simply a generic annoying-person-of-any-description who happens to have pissed me off.
But as I went further through the list there were some that genuinely puzzled me.
In ‘mild’ and ‘medium’ come a few words that not only do I find offensively crap as swearwords (seriously: to be a good swear it needs to sound fun when said in anger), they’re also words that I think are far more offensive than the generic swearword ‘fuck.’
- Ginger (meaning ‘someone who has ginger hair, to which I the insult-slinger want to draw attention because I have some bizarre prejudice that I have chosen not to question despite the fact it was picked up when I was five years old in the playground)
- Minger (someone who I, most likely a complete bellend of some description, consider unattractive)
- Munter (likewise)
- Cow (this word on its own is not particularly offensive – it’s just a rubbish, boring, unsatisfying swearword. But it does tend to be used most often on women, and usually means ‘woman who does not happen to meet my expectations of what a woman should be: i.e. slim, quiet, pretty, pliant, unlikely to nag me if I don’t do my share of the housework etc’)
Anywho. Swearwords are sometimes like jokes, in that if you dissect them enough they lose all their fucking power (see?). But it struck me when looking at this list that my own judgment on what counts as an offensive swearword or insult is mostly based on whether that word draws attention to an actual physical characteristic (in which case I tend to like it less), or whether it’s a generic term that could be used for anyone, and which will trip off the tongue with a satisfying kick. Yet I know that the filth which pours forth from my mouth does occasionally give some people cause for alarm: a good friend of mine flinches when I say ‘cunt’ (I try not to in front of her, it’s just it sometimes slips out), while other friends enjoy the sound and the feel of it in the same way we’d savour a particularly delicious wine.
So I just wanted to open it up to discussion, I guess: could you pinpoint what makes one swearword more offensive than another? And what, in your opinion, is the most satisfying/underrated swearword?
15 Comments
My favourite swear words appear magically when I play Mario Kart. Cuntbadger is a personal favourite.
There are few swear words that in and of themselves I find offensive. What bothers me is the intention behind the word, not the word itself.
Tending to agree with Claire – it’s the intention that counts. The venom with which it it delivered.
I think a favourite one for me is knob-jockey. It’s a versatile insult cum term of endearment.
Yes! I agree too Claire – intention when it’s personal is always worse. I think actually some of the worst things people have said to me have involved no swearwords at all, just been very cutting, personal things that pinpoint things about me that I really don’t like.
Nice to see “bloodclaat” made the cut. It’d probably be kind of wanky and cultural-appropriationny for me to use it much, but I’m a big fan. It’s both guttural and mellifluous, and if there’s a snappier way to call someone a used sanitary towel, I’d like to hear it
My favourite swearwords (and judging by the comments above, I’m not alone) are amusing portmanteaus:
“Oh, arsebiscuits.”
“What an utter shitehawk.”
“You, sir, are a douche-canoe.”
“You blithering thundercunts.”
(I may not have said those all in real life, but I would like to.)
Oh yeah, and of course: “What a clusterfuck.”
Oooh yes – thundercunts and clusterfuck both have a really satisfying syllable pattern I think. DUM-da-da. Gives me the shivers.
‘Motherfucker’! Best swear word ever. Just right for every occasion.
I particularly enjoy using it on my stepdad.
i spent a long time on b3ta and still use a range of b3ta swearwords. i was particularly pleased with myself when i got a partner to start using “fucksocks” just by me using it so much
ooh, also: twunt
Ohhhh fucksocks is LOVELY. Might start using that myself.
I had to put a sock in when my 3 year old impersonated me by slamming the kitchen cupboard door whilst saying fuck it but I do like a good arsewipe!
Big yes for thundercunt, clusterfuck, and douchecanoe. I tend to enjoy variations on twat (twat-hammock, jangle-twat, twattily), it just trips off the tongue so nicely when you’ve got a Northern accent.
Nipple variants are also good to shout if you’re going for something milder- nipple tassels, nipple fister, goddamn nipples on a horse, you get the idea :-)
Oh dear.