Why something that sucks shouldn’t be a bad thing.
First things first, let’s make sure everyone is on the same page: vulgarity can be a lot of fun.
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit I love it. I belch out foul language with such frequency that if I stand outside and talk with someone longer than 20 minutes, the trees start to puke up piles of dead brown leaves because of my rancid talk bubbles. And no, I don’t do this because I’m a poorly read louse or lack cosmopolitan ways of expressing myself. The reason I cuss so much is far more simple-minded, really: each time I say a word like “shit” or “fuck,” it’s is like a soma bath for my frontal lobe.
Of course, there are times when saying a swear word or two is very deliberate, like when it’s the only way I feel I can truly express myself on a subject. More often than not, though, I’m just tossing out those stink-lined morsels like I’m the Willy Wonka of the blue circuit and so I end up belying my efforts to occasionally sound serious.
While my cussing capabilities have rightfully earned me a desk at the front of the crass, I’d be kidding myself if I said I was the only permanent resident on Carlin’s Isle of Seven Dirty Words.
As we go on speaking with a foul tongue more and more, it’s not hard to become desensitized to the so-called graphic language we hold near and dear to our putrid little hearts. Over time, such language becomes little more than throw-away words and phrases we say mindlessly without reflecting on what we’re actually saying when we say them. We may try to abandon the meaning of this blue language, but that doesn’t cause the meaning of words to abandon the language.
If you’re lucky, such careless deployment of this sort of slang will only confuse the people listening to you. At it’s worst, though, there might be some reprehensible connotations to what you just said.
Like … whenever you dislike something and you say it sucks dick.
This is a handy little Swiss army knife of a phrase because we like to use it on everything: people, dogs, doors, lame parties, pens that run out of ink, etc. As for the person-to-person use, saying someone sucks dick or, more commonly, calling them a cocksucker is generally not something you say as a result of that person causing a warm fuzzy feeling to appear in your chest. Quite the opposite, really.
For one, saying this about someone enacts a brutal power dynamic fierce with sexual aggression. Attempting to demean someone with this phrase assumes that the person of whom you’re speaking wouldn’t want or enjoy a penis being in their mouth, so the phrase becomes pejorative. More, saying that someone sucks dick with the assumption that the person wouldn’t like to be in that position adds a layer of submission and violence to the phrase. Depending on the sexual orientation of whomever you’re speaking, the phrase is thus construed either as misogynistic or homophobic.
In spite of how truly awful this phrase is when you spend a second thinking about it, people seem to like insulting other people by calling them a cocksucker (or some other variant thereof). However, we’re equally if not more likely to hear the phrase affixed to events or inanimate objects. Similar to how the phrase is used on people, here it is generally reserved for situations in which we’re not too happy with how things turned out.
Your car gets broken into. “God, that sucks dick.”
You find out you’re getting laid off. “This really sucks a dick.”
You stub your toe. “Cocksucker!”
Ironically, I’d make a high wager that many of the people who say things like, “Geez, this sucks dick,” or, “So-and-so is a cocksucker,” have never in fact fellated a single penis in their life. In other words, lots of people who use this expression have no earthly idea if performing oral sex on a man is the heinous and terrible act they conjecture it to be.
Putting aside the remonstrance of this phrase for a moment, the fact that it’s universally reserved for people or situations that make life less fun exemplifies how our modern language is really, really stupid.
Perhaps I’ve been instructed incorrectly on how this whole thing works, but typically I’ve always understood that the intimate act of someone putting their mouth around someone else’s penis is a pretty good thing (assuming here that everybody involved has consented to this mouth-on-peen sex). Gay or straight, if a man is interested in a potential sex partner then he possibly has a fantasy that somewhere in the future he will receive (hopefully enjoyable) oral sex from this partner. If and when this fantasy is realized, it’s a good holiday for all.
Even supposing that a man doesn’t particularly care to get to third base, it’s hard to argue that fellatio in general isn’t a welcome and popular activity in our culture. Otherwise, how do you explain an entire niche of the porn industry centered around this single sex act?
So then, if everybody is happy when blowjobs happen, why do we persist in describing the things we don’t like as sucking dick? Describing a bad thing as such makes about as much sense as a person claiming to hate the combination of bread, cheese, and tomatoes yet then only ever wanting to eat pizza.
Along from the degrading affront intended when we say something or someone sucks dick, the phrase also packs along a lumbering dose of phallophobia. Men, at least most of the straight ones although I won’t wholesale discount gay men in this, seem to be really dodgy when it comes to talking about manly sex parts in a non-sexual but positive (or even neutral) way. They might compare notes on what they watch or think about when they jerk off but that’s about it.
When it comes to dicks that aren’t immediately attached to them, men get bent out of shape extremely easily. If you doubt this claim, look no further than the hilarious bathroom code universally known as urinal etiquette, that unspoken agreement wherein a man will put as many empty urinals as possible between him and another man when they go to the restroom because it’s apparently too uncomfortable to be that close to another man when his ding-dong is dangling out in front of him.
This dread of other dicks manifests in the slang phrase of calling someone or something a cocksucker (or any other variant). In the speaker’s mind, having to handle someone else’s penis in the mouth sounds like a wretched, vile, awful, total-opposite-of-fun thing to do. Designating the phrase with a negative value helps put some distance, both literally and figuratively, between the man and any penises that he can’t call his own.
And yet, I imagine most men wouldn’t mind if their sexual partner in crime offered to go down on them. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a pretty exciting occasion when everybody enjoys the activity. For this reason, when we say that something sucks dick, like locking yourself out of your house, shouldn’t it be the other way around? Instead of saying, “Wow, this sucks dick,” because you can’t get inside, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to say, “Holy crap, this really sucks dick!” when you find your keys and can now actually unlock the door?
Indeed, there are some interpersonal activities we probably shouldn’t be qualifying as innately bad or good in the first place, but if we universally agreed upon that pact then Twitter wouldn’t be half as much fun to read. Since people are bent on imbuing language with good or bad connotations, we should at least attempt for some consistency with our language.
In all seriousness, if we want to make an honest language out of English, it’d make a lot more sense to say something sucks dick as in the following example:
A group of guys come out of the exit for a roller coaster.
“Oh my god, guys, that was freakin’ awesome!”
“I know! That sucked so much dick!”
“YES!”
Several high-fives punctuate this shared elation before the group ambles off to find the bumper cars. The end.
In no way am I arguing that you shouldn’t say certain bad words. I’m not even saying that you should stop describing a situation’s quality as, “Wow, that really sucked a dick.” If you think the phrase indicates a bad thing, that’s fine, but then you should also never expect nor accept another person’s offer of oral sex for as long as you shall live.
Since I doubt most guys will want to go along with this, it’s worth reconsidering what you mean when you describe something with this phrase, especially because so many of you guys tend to think it’s pretty gnarly when someone wants to put their mouth on your dong.
Read more:
The Proper Use of Profanity, By Noah Brand
How to Receive a Blowjob Respectfully, By Camille Crimson
Image credit: uuuhyeah/Flickr
“Depending on the sexual orientation of whomever you’re speaking, the phrase is thus construed either as misogynistic or homophobic”
Or you’re just saying he’s less of a man.
This immediate jump to misogyny is the same crap logic women use when they want to blame men for everything, or not admit their own failings.
Learn to properly identify your target, girly man…
Sooooo, how would you interpret a women saying “that sucks dick” or worse, “suck my dick” which I’ve heard on occasion causing simultaneous shivers down my spine and begging the question “what is wrong with your equipment, why do we have to drag my equipment out on stage”
Oh and second point, the urinal thing has nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with the fact that many men would rather not make urination a communal experience.
I once heard a really pissed off woman tell a guy “you can suck my figurative dick!” — which made me laugh. A weird combination of vulgar and erudite. I mean, she knew the difference between figurative and literal.
Yeah, well, we also say something awesome “kicks ass” when a kick to the ass is anything but pleasant – idioms don’t have to make sense. And what about calling someone a kiss-ass? Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I don’t hear ‘That sucks dick’ very often – most of the time, what I hear (and use) is simply, “That sucks.” (Which, again, makes no real sense.) Dude lost his keys? That sucks. Chick broke her nose? That sucks. Sometimes if extra emphasis is needed, we do feel the need to put a direct object behind that verb, but even… Read more »
Hahaha thats tooo funny see we say “That sucked dick”after a crappy experience when your with a group of guys cause any straight guy will agree that having a dick in ones mouth is thee worst thing possible(if your a man -who’s straight that is…) hows that for”honest english”.
You know, I sucked a dick once. Aaaand it kind of sucked dick…
“You suck dick” is another way of telling a man that he’s a woman, or gay, which are the 2 worst insults you can throw at a man in our culture.
OMG! This article was enlightening and hilarious at the same time. Thank you, good sir. That sucked dick!