Oh hey everybody. On today's Ask Cristen I'm doing something I have never done on any Stuff
Mom Never Told You video ever never and that is I'm going to be using some dirty words.
And if that's going to be offensive to you, then get the [bleep] out of here.
Before I start cursing like a sailor I just want to share a little bit of feedback from
last week's video on how to stop sexist jokes which generated so many comments. One of which
came from SunkissedObsidian. 'I personally find sexist jokes okay (and yes I am a feminist)
just as long as people know their boundaries and when to stop. What is comedy without racism,
homophobia, sexism, ect?' The point that SunkissedObsidian and a number of other commenters are making
is that hey if you start saying that x kind of comedy is not okay than we're going to
be left with nothing but stale knock-knock jokes and the world will no longer be fun.
I also don't think that specific topics should be explicitly off the table in terms of comedy.
There's so much bad comedy that isn't making any kind of wise statement through this humorous
veil about what actually is messed up in the world. It only laughs at what's messed up
in the world and then keeps going. I'm just saying be smarter. Now onto today's Ask Cristen
in which I'm about to use some dirty words. I think it's worthwhile to drop these curse-bombs
in the name of answering a question that I've thought about as well. This is coming from
Samatha Lopez who wants to know, 'Dear Cristen,' dear Samantha, 'Why is it ok to say the B
word on television but not other perhaps less offensive bad words? Why is this word not
censored?' Let us Samantha talk about bitch. There was an article that I found from the
New York Times in 2009 talking about how all of the sudden douche was everywhere on television
as well as bitch. They reported that the use of bitch tripled in the last decade growing
to 1277 uses on 685 shows in 2007 compared to just 431 uses in prime time episodes in
1998. In a nutshell the reason why you hear bitch on television so often but you don't
hear say shit or fuck is that the FCC or the Federal Communications Commission that oversees
profanity in broadcast TV and radio doesn't consider bitch to really be that bad of a
word. The FCC in general simply doesn't want to hear profane words relating to sex acts
or bodily functions. The individual networks also have rules as to how many times you can
say bitch or douche or dick. In fact AMC prohibited writers from using fuck too many times in
its purview, I'm sure Jesse can say bitch as many times as he wanted. So you have the
broadcasts networks saying hey listen we need to be able to use this kind of harsh language
as well because audiences love profanity because it makes conversation more realistic and edgier
whereas there are plenty of other people who are saying listen, whoa, whoa we're already
hearing bitch and dick and douche all the time, we don't need anymore profanity. And
the FCC actually delayed its ruling on dropping the F-bomb ban as I call it so it'll be interesting
to see how that shakes out. As a woman does it concern me that the FCC in fact legally
doesn't consider bitch to be a profane word? Bitch is a tricky word to talk about because
I use bitch in loving ways toward my girlfriends. It's this word that tossed about so much that
it's almost lost it's meaning which you could argue is maybe a good thing. In a lot of ways
bitch has been reclaimed but in a lot of ways too women are still called bitches all the
time and that doesn't feel good. But I want to know from you, is it time for the FCC to
finally just open up the profanity floodgates and let people on TV say whatever they want?
Or is all the cursing that we're hearing these days more than ever before and especially
the constant use of bitch problematic? Tell me all your bitchin' thoughts. Bitchin' as
in awesome. Don't forget to leave your questions as well because you ask and I'll try to answer.
Bitches.