@lawfulgoodness This is super late but basically what is a trend in fic (and sometimes media but mostly fic) is this weird obsession with putting some characters into this non-cursing role and it’s largely female characters or mlm (more often than not, canonically gay chars). It always seems to stem from either this weird propriety thing (almost like a “that’s not ladylike” thing which especially considering how often mlm are the target of it is troubling) or giving them a mothering type role over their male/straight male counterparts.
A good example would be the female characters in Harry Potter. Hermione is the biggest victim of this, though it’s in part because of her personality and she sees it as disrespectful but she also canonically has cursed especially as she gets older. So like, it makes sense when she scolds Ron or the others for their language. On the otherhand, pretty much all of the female characters get this same exact treatment in the fandom, like Ginny for instance. Ginny, who canonically has a mouth on her and isn’t very good at following rules, but yet people put her into a similar, almost mothering “watch your language” sort of role.
And, I haven’t just seen this in the HP fandom, I’ve seen this happen to female characters in pretty much every type of fandom, often doing so to their male friends and especially their husbands if they’re married. It’d be one thing if they had kids that were in the room (though tbh, as mentioned in a previous ask, my mom is definitely the biggest proponent in my household of cursing in front of my baby brother lol and my stepdad has always been just so done with her not holding her tongue in front of me) but they literally do this when they’re among friends?? And 90% of the time it doesn’t even fit their personality!
On the mlm side of things, obviously this was started because of the fandom’s weird beef with having Bitty and Jack not curse (which, as @heyfightme made a post about and then we later discussed, doesn’t even mesh with canon and doesn’t make sense considering they’re literally??? college athletes?? like have y’all ever met a college boy who hasn’t cursed?? let a lone a college hockey player?) Though Jack is allowed to curse more by fandom, it’s just he normally curses in Quebecois French as opposed to English. Bitty pretty much never curses in fics- considering he’s considering the less masculine one of the two, kinda adds to my point.
However, looking at other fandoms, someone who was a huge victim of this was Kurt from Glee. He very rarely cursed in fics (though he definitely cursed in canon) and would get weird about it with the other male characters in glee club. Despite the fact he was a fairly feminine character in general, this was like exacerbated tenfold by fandom (the “oh my gaga” phenomena anyone?) and he fell into a lot of stereotypes and tropes female characters did, like the disdain for cursing.
Like maybe I’m making it out to be a bigger issue than it is, but it’s a little off putting when only feminine characters aren’t allowed to curse, especially considering it’s almost used as a way to feminize characters. It’s one thing if it’s a legit personality thing (like young Hermione or Mrs. Weasley) or if the author isn’t a fan of cursing but when literally every other character curses except those specific characters it’s telling.
(Sorry this was a long post but I’m just frustrated with people over feminizing mlm (especially as this is typically done by cishet girls) but also that cursing is seen as something inherently masculine and that it makes girls less feminine is complete horseshit.)
