What, pray tell, is obscene? I’ll tell you: not the words, not the sex, not the bare flesh, but the smug, sanctimonious bastards who think they have the right to decide for you. Obscenity isn’t about morality; it’s about power—and always has been.
The great fraud of “decency” was cooked up by priests, politicians, and pearl-clutching prudes to keep you obedient. The same people who claim to be the guardians of virtue are usually found rutting in the shadows like alley cats. Spare me their moral lectures. A priest with a hard drive full of child pornography is obscene. A politician shoving war down your throat while whining about a nipple on television is obscene. But saying “fuck” at dinner? That’s the crime? Pull the other one.
The Dirty Origins of Clean Morality
The Greeks celebrated the human body in marble, the Romans scrawled their sexual fantasies on public walls—and nobody fainted. Then along came Christianity, the killjoy-in-chief of human civilization. The minute priests got political power in the 4th century, they turned natural human acts into sins and words into crimes. The same Bible-thumpers who now squeal about “family values” owe their entire moral framework to a bunch of desert mystics who thought menstruating women were unclean.
The Victorian era? Don’t make me laugh. A society so terrified of its own libido it covered piano legs with cloth lest someone get aroused by the sight of a table leg. And yet—oh, glorious hypocrisy—the same Victorians fueled the largest underground pornography trade in history. That’s what happens when you worship repression: it breeds perversion like maggots on a corpse.
The Great Lie of “Dirty Words”
Here’s the joke: Words like “fuck” and “shit” were perfectly acceptable for centuries. Peasants used them casually; farmers shouted them in the fields. They only became “vulgar” when French-speaking Norman aristocrats decided Anglo-Saxon words were beneath their dainty little noses. In other words, your grandmother’s delicate sensibilities about profanity are nothing but class snobbery passed down through the centuries.
Meanwhile, the same moral crusaders who faint at “fuck” will happily spit racial slurs, demonize immigrants, and cheer for wars that kill children. That is obscenity—naked, filthy, and unashamed.
What’s Really Obscene?
Let’s stop pretending that bare breasts or four-letter words are the problem. What’s truly obscene? Poverty in the richest nation on Earth. Priests raping children and being shielded by the Vatican. Politicians shoveling your tax dollars to weapons manufacturers while telling you books are dangerous. That’s obscenity. That’s rot. That’s the stench in the room while they wag their fingers at you for saying “shit.”
So the next time some sanctimonious fool clutches their pearls at “indecency,” laugh in their face. Tell them you’ll say “fuck” as often as you damn well please because it’s the only honest word in a society this dishonest. Their morality is fake, their virtue is theater, and the only obscenity worth censoring is their hypocrisy.
Further Reading: Obscenity and Power: Who Gets to Decide What Offends?
Explore these powerful critiques on censorship, faith, and control:
- The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
How overprotection and fear of offense are reshaping society and silencing dissent.
https://civilheresy.com/Coding of the American Mind - Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
A prophetic look at how entertainment values trivialize public discourse—and morality.
https://civilheresy.com/Amusing Ourselves
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