I think curse words are for expressing a certain crudeness, hostility, not mean for casual use - with casual use, they'd lose their meaning and you would need new ones for that.
I came to realize that curse words are more meaningful than we realize when I looked at how there's a syndrome of a type of Tourette's where people spit out curse words.
Now, how could it be that a biological part of the brain can lead to that, when they're 'just words'? There's no Tourett's for spitting out 'colors' or 'song names'.
A disease can't know certain words; Tourette's sufferers who don't speak English don't spit out the same words. For a medical condition to cause this, there is some basic function.
I've come to appreciate that curse words are ok to leave 'not ok' to use generally, rather than being some 'freedom' to champion, any more than the right to show your genitals in public 'just to force everyone to agree with your view that they're too sensitive about it'. (That, too, seems to be a pretty basic social issue for people, despite nudists' views.)
What if I said 'peej' now meant the same as the f word - if anything, a stronger version. Now if you say it - peej. peej. Do you get the same effect as the f word?
Would you start sputtering peej if you have that version of Tourette's?
No? Perhaps because there is that basic function that a word accepted as 'cursing' has a function you don't quite appreciate.
You can take your view and fight for the freedom to curse if you like. But you might ask a harder question, why would you need to?
In my political posts, I've reserved the right to use the f word for emphasis if I think it fits the point. In tens of thousands of posts, I haven't felt I needed to. (The main time it comes up is for emphasis in criticizing something especially bad someone posts, and that can probably be done better without it. Ever hear someone who uses the f word twice a sentence then want to make a point by adding the f word? It doesn't add much for them.)
Eventually you just f'ing come f'ing off as a bit of an f'ing idiot with too much f'ing cussing.
Now, funny enough, a lot of powerful people do use it a lot (in private). JFK and Nixon wee both known for a lot of cussing in private - though there might be a relation to their navy service. Not that I think JFK would have enhanced his speeches with a lot of f words for emphasizing points. JFK's was more 'earthy', he'd use it chewing people out, Nixon used it more it seems for expressing anger about groups, 'those f'ing whoevers'.
Eventually, it's hard to see how you do yourself any good with cursing.
As for retard, you are just being childish. It's a different issue - you not understanding when a word has a history of demeaning people, and becomes rude because of it.
Any word that demeans people (who don't deserve it, like Republicans do for example), has the same issue - demeaning people is pretty much rude.
Now, you either want to be rude, or you don't want to be an ass.
Sometimes people use demeaning words not appreciating they're demeaning.
When people say 'man, that's so crappy, it's totally gay', they probably don't think about how that sounds to a gay person - but it's rude. You could ask them how they'd like a group they are in to be used to say 'crappy'. It has a history of anti-gay bigotry - where 'gay' is something to treat badly, demeaning gays - but has just become a definition of the word some people, largely kids, use carelessly. Some blacks have done something similar with the N word. They seem to mean it as a sort of joking or friendly insult.
It doesn't make it not rude for the word to be used for demeaning people or carelessly by others.
Some think it's better to 'de-sensitize' a word, which 'robs it of its power for hate' - there's a book arguing that named after the N word. Some teachers who agree will have a class say the word over and over to get them to be 'de-sensitized' - not totally unlike how nudists understand that people are quickly 'de-sensitized' to nudity surrounded by a lot of it. But you could ask, is that really a good thing? The issue is the demeaning intent with the n word, the sexual stimulation with nudity.
The bigotry will find other expressions if the N word is 'desensitized'; and do you really think it's all that helpful to 'desensitize' the sexual stimulus of nudity? It just shifts - perhaps to physical stimulation - but sexual arousal is natural. Is it all that bad for nudity to be a stimulus, by being preserved, with social conventions for clothing?
When people are just told not to say 'retard' or the N word and they don't appreciate why, it might seem like a 'freedom issue' for them to challenge. But that's an empty issue.
The thing they should learn is that it's bad to demean people like those words have a history of doing. You can still express the same thing without demeaning innocent people - if you can't find a way to say the same thing as "you did something retarded" without that word, as was said, you need a bigger vocabulary.
It might seem victimless - if you and your non-'developmentally challenged friends' throw around the words, 'retarded', non-gay friends throw around 'gay', if a group of black friends (or even non-black friends' throw around the N word meaning it as a more friendly 'insult' - who's really harmed or offended? But it keeps the words with a history in use - and they tend to slip out. Widely used words will get put into movie scripts - and a developmentally challenged person will see 'retard' thrown around.
It's better to use better words, meaning the comment without the history of demeaning.
Instead of having someone say 'the Republicans who want to not raise the debt ceiling are gay' to criticize them, say they're radical, they're ignorant, they're reckless, they're idiots, they're un-American, they're a menace to society, they're ideologues, they're jerks, whatever you like to make the same point, without reinforcing the gay bigotry.
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