i was actually having fun with dennis. he typed it "motherfucking" when in fact most people don't actually say it that way, but as "motherfuckin". in written language itself is, very often, a style of presentation that is already removed from the way people normally speak.
/ dave / isn't exactly humorless and he is referring, i think, to an old bad subjects thread i initiated--which is perhaps why he responded to what i'd said, rather than what dennis said. when i teach sociology i almost always spend my first day of class doing what they call "breaching experiments". in this case, i come to class very professionally dressed, engage in typical first day things, tho let them know i have a sense of humor. at some point i start dropping various inappropriate words -- in fact i explicitly use a list of what an empirical study found to be the 10 worst things a man can call another man. these words happen to be, mostly, ways of calling men women, but also calling men gay.
embedded in this experiment is, first and foremost, the breaching of social norms that order or expectations of one another. some colleagues do things like come to class dressed in swim wear. i have pretended to be the janitor. these are okay, but the above is best because it exposes all sorts of things: power relations in the classroom, the use of symbolic expression to either enhance or detract from my authority, the way someone feels or reacts when norms are breached, the way power is bound up with gender and race and sexuality, etc.
/ dave / participated in a few of the convos where i brought up the issue, either relating a hilarious story associated with what happened first day of class or giving it a trial run, tested on others at that particular list.
we had a convo at some point about "cocksucker". i'm not sure he was being entirely humorless, but he can speak for himself.