Etiquette Abandonment: Swearing Like Sailors

Nowadays, it is common to hear swear words being casually  uttered left and right by both men and women. Sometimes it just sounds ridiculous because there are other words that would articulate the murmurer's distress more accurately.  On rare occasions it can be necessary to let burst an occasional 4-letter word, such as when your car gets hit by a deer, or when your pinky toe gets stubbed. But curses are casually dropped into multiple arbitrary places in a sentence structure, the very words lose their meaning, and you risk sounding like a nincompoop. So why do we keep saying these words even though doing so is not best for our personas? The answer is a simple case of where the theory of enlightened self-interest falls flat.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest) We know that swearing makes us sound unintelligent, but many of us still do it. Why? Because we like the freedom of it. Swearing means that we are adults, we are no longer going to be chided by our mothers, or be ordered to wash our mouths out with soap. Therefore, uttering previously forbidden words from our childhoods over and over again gives us a sense of power, however false that sense of power may be.

Being at a Catholic all women's college and hearing swearing day in and day our makes me wonder if swearing has something to do with feminism as well. During the second wave of feminism women were encouraged to do everything a man could. Historically, swearing was something only men did. However, it was not a gentlemanly quality. I wonder if women saw swearing as an opportunity to be more equal to men; a window into further freedom.

So what do you think? Is excessive swearing a result of humanity's wish to declare their freedom to make their own decisions? And is this abandonment of etiquette on the women's side a result of the second wave of feminism?