The Mother of All Insults, Unmotherly

Nov 6 , 2021
By Kidist Yidnekachew

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Lately, I am coming across a lot of gamblers at betting outlets all over town. Whenever I am off to work, I see young men and teenagers, mostly men, standing at the betting place, conversing and arguing about politics. Sometimes there is a brawl. Whoever loses gets angry and starts cussing loudly for everyone to hear.

This is what happened the other day as I was walking by a betting place in my neighbourhood. I am not sure what happened, but two men in their late 20s were fighting and calling each other names. None of the insults and curses was anything I had not heard before.

Most of us at some point lose our patience and blur out cuss words depending on how angry we are, but our degree of using offensive words depends on our personality, upbringing, and level of self control. Some people like to curse when they are angry to let out their anger while others like to smash windows and throw whatever they can find in sight. Both groups need some kind of anger management intervention.

The common insults specifically targeted towards mothers are very irritating. No mother deserves to get insulted for something her child does or says 20 or 30 years after she gave birth to him. During the first decade of his life, she could be held responsible, but not for the next years, as other things shape his personality. Even in the formative years, the mother is not the only person responsible; there is the father and other family members. And yet, whenever someone invokes someone’s ire, the mother gets insulted.

I wonder who the first person was to come up with the insult and their motivation behind it.

Is it to piss off the person being insulted or is this some sort of hidden Freudian thing?

Especially now that I am a mother, I am super sensitive to these kinds of things directed at other moms because I know firsthand the sacrifices made for children. Mothers do not deserve to be slurred because someone’s son made someone else angry.

How about taking it with the person? I do not mean to fight the person but tell them what they did wrong instead of dragging their mother's name through the mud?

Ironically, a person called this slur gets mad and uses it back, and the two men ending up insulting one another’s mothers.

There is also another colloquial slur in English referring to a female’s private part and it is used to refer to weakness or cowardice. I find that offensive because it associates being a woman with being weak and because it takes something of a female’s body part and turns it into an insult, showing how little society thinks of women.

What is ironic about women being called weak is that we are actually very brave and strong emotionally and physically. Only a woman can push a human being out of her body and still get back on her feet after a few days. Only a woman bleeds every month and still keeps breathing. Let us not call women weak. They brought all of us into this world and the least we can do is respect her for that.

There is also an insult used to describe men who are considered contemptible, colloquial to a man’s private body part. It is also offensive because not all men are the same. And there is no need to use a derogatory term to refer to them. All insults are offensive, but some leave their mark and negatively impact the person in the long term.

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PUBLISHED ON Nov 06,2021 [ VOL 22 , NO 1123]

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