Re: Insulting someone's mother


croot wrote:
> I'm Australian, nearing 50.
>
> When I was young, the practice of insulting someone by denigrating his
> mother had fallen into disuse. "***" was a term of abuse, but had no
> specific meaning. "Son of a bitch" was so alien that when it was beeped out
> of the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue", I was perplexed about why it was
> considered so nasty.
>
> If someone had tried to insult me by saying my mother was ugly or a whore I
> would have been less offended than puzzled.

That does make you seem very broadminded. Mainstream mores place a high
value in the sexual fidelity of women in general and mothers in
particular. In the popular imagination, a woman whose sexual services
are for hire waives large parts of her claim to femininity, autonomy,
and personal integrity. Moreover, prostitution has been seen as a
feature of lower working class life and as associated with broader
criminal activity. Those who see matters this way tend to assert that
the worthiness of the child of such a person is accordingly diminished,
or that some shame should attach to the child possessed of such a
"mother".

To resist such inferences requires either some sort of cognitive
dissonance or a robust assertion that such mores are pure cant, and
that one's humanity can't be measured in that way. That's unusual for a
child. For me, it was tough enough having an Italian father.


> To the best of my memory,
> no-one ever insulted me in this fashion (and I was bullied as badly as the
> next guy, I know).
>
> Then, in the 80s and 90s, the practice seemed to enjoy something of a
> revival. "Your mum", with no further elaboration was a sufficient
> provocation for a fist fight among the adolescents I knew then. (Yes, I'm a
> teacher)
>
> Now, it seems to have died off again.


I believe it was more popular in the 1990s than now, but I still heard
it just the other day. It does seem to be something of an NESB thing
however. That may simply reflect the fact that I was teaching in
Sydney's south-west then however.

TOF

.