Date:    Tue, 31 Mar 1998 03:07:02 -0600
<br>From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
<br>Subject: Re: THIS X SUCKS and the historical record
<br>
<br>RonButters wrote:
<br>
<br>        Such a look at the "historical record" to date has shown me amazingly
<br>  little in the way of concrete examples of an "off-color" object for SUCK at
<br>  the time of the emergence of objectless SUCK in American slang--unless one
<br>  hypothesizes that TIT or TEAT is "off-color" and that the phrase SUCK THE
<br> HIND
<br>  TEAT is the "origin" of objectless SUCK.
<br>        It would be helpful if Mandel (and anyone else who would care to
<br>  contribute) would make explicit just which potential off-color direct object
<br>  they feel intuitively must (have) come after SUCK in the deep-
<br>  structure/historical evolution of objectless SUCK. I would be delighted if
<br>  Mandel and others would share with me any _data_ they may have about this.
<br>
<br>OK, I guess I'll venture some sort of data.  When I starting hearing the
<br>term in common use among teenagers (high school and college kids,
<br>perhaps back in the 1960s), it was NOT in the context of "sucking hind
<br>tit".  That's an expression that I have used since I don't remember
<br>when, but 1960s kids just didn't pick up on it.  That is, if they
<br>understood what I meant at all.
<br>
<br>It wasn't what came after the word "suck" that made a difference: it was
<br>the elided predecessor that made sense to these kids.  THEIR context was
<br>the word "cocksucker" and its derivatives.  Civil rights and Women's Lib
<br>and all that were all very well, but gays were still fair game for open
<br>insult.
<br>
<br>That was still true at my kids' high school in the early to middle
<br>1980s.  Common terms for groups at the school included "band fags", for
<br>those in the band; "lesbian thespians" for those who joined theater
<br>productions; etc.
<br>
<br>"Sucks", because of its usually unspoken association with
<br>"cocksucking", did carry overtones of taboo, off-color, unacceptable
<br>speech.  As I remember underground teenager publications in my neck of
<br>the woods at the time, there was much more interest in printing the
<br>"ultimate unprintable", and a common word for excrement, than there was
<br>to dwell on words associated with homosexual activities.  The objectless
<br>"sucks", however, was used for shock value.  For teenagers, the only
<br>shocking context for that word at the time was the one I suggest.
<br>
<br>
<br>--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
<br>    anthropology department
<br>    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!
<br>
<br>P.S.: Once more, this is talk about talk, and shouldn't embarass people
<br>in ADS.  Nonetheless,  I remember George Trager's glee with his own
<br>article associating the word "fuck" with Latin "facere", to do or to
<br>make.  He kept citing it for decades after its  publication, which I
<br>recall seeing in a journal he was editing when the article appeared.
<br>(I'm convinced the article was wrong.  What I never figured out was
<br>whether George was offering a serious etimology, or was just kidding
<br>people who, in his words, "couldn't say shit if they had a mouthful of
<br>it".)
<br>
<br>Maybe we can talk seriously about words that aren't used in polite
<br>society.  Still, we usually try to pass as members of polite society,
<br>and we often have hangups about daring to be serious about such
<br>off-color topics.
<br>