Today, I was sitting in a Business Writing class. Next to me sat a girl who I’ve come to know over the past couple of months, and whose company I find tolerable. She spends most of her time in class on MySpace, typing unusually long messages to people who I can only assume belong to some sort of book club. Seriously, these messages easily approach 1,000 words (or so it would seem), and she types at least one per day of class.
I have this incredibly bad habit of saying the word ‘yo’ to people, usually tacking it on the end of a common phrase. I blame a friend of mine back in my hometown for this, as he was constantly saying ‘word’ to everything, and eventually, that morphed into ‘word, yo’, which I then picked up (against my will, no less) and began using. Like most everything else, I found that me, a white boy from farm country, saying the phrase “Word, yo,”, especially to ethnic friends, is hilarious. I can’t think of a time when it made anyone else laugh, but I used to get a kick out of it.
Anyway, I was sitting there, and when she walked in, I said “What’s up, yo?” I then explained to her that I had made a New Year’s resolution to stop using the word ‘yo’. She giggled politely, and the class started. Near the end of the class, I said this phrase in response to something another girl at our table said to me: “Alright, thanks yo. GOD DAMN IT!” I was cursing myself for using the word ‘yo’ by using a phrase I easily throw around with little regard for its meaning to other people.
In other words, by saying “god damn it” I am not asking any god to damn anything, I’m simply expressing frustration. However, plenty of people of a variety of faiths find this particular order of verbal utterances to be blasphemous, and this girl happens to be one of them.
She explained, in so many words, that she “…[is] a Christian,” that those words were offensive to her and then she ordered me not to “…say that around [her].”
I had only one response: “You must be joking.”
She wasn’t. Of course, I didn’t care. I explained that to her, and that I could not guarantee I wouldn’t say that phrase around her again.
Would it be difficult to stop using that phrase? Yes, probably just as difficult as stopping myself from using the word ‘yo’, and from using my old nemesis, the phrase “fair enough.” I still occasionally use that one, and every time, I chastise myself by saying in a slightly louder, exasperated tone, my phrase-of-choice: “GOD DAMN IT!”
As it was very near the end of class, and other people were working in a relatively quiet room, I didn’t have the time nor the desire to enter into an argument about which of us had what rights, and whose rights should be deemed more important.
What I would have said though, is that she has no right to not be offended. Nobody in America has that right. I do, however, have the right to free speech, which includes words that others may find offensive.
Out of curiosity, I checked our school’s Student Code of Conduct to see if it had anything to say on the topic. While there is a provision to protect the right of all students to speak freely, there is an interesting clause that prohibits any person or entity from infringing upon that right. It was comforting to know that whoever wrote the Code was intelligent enough to include that language, but the feeling of comfort I had was trumped by the elation I felt due to winning an argument with a self-righteous religious zealot.
Posted by Kyle 