Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Miss Poubelle recently received correspondence from a Guide reader who complained about the rampant use of the expression it sucks. This reader felt that the expression is basically homophobic and ought to be avoided, especially by gay people. Miss Poubelle's initial reaction was to agree. But as she found out more about the topic, she became less certain that we ought to object to this slang use of the word suck.

By a happy coincidence, she was in Chicago recently during a meeting of the American Dialect Society, and heard Professor Ronald Butters of Duke University give a paper focussed on the history and current usage of sucks. Butters tried to make two points in his talk. First, that it is not actually certain that it sucks originates in a reference to oral sex. Second, that for most current speakers of English, it has no particular sexual overtones.

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Butters pointed out that the first attested non-sexual use of it sucks to mean 'it is worthless, bad, rotten' dates only from 1971. In that year, a writer protesting Polaroid's involvement with the South African government included the phrase Polariod sucks! in an article in the International Times.

When that author wrote Polaroid sucks, was that short for Polaroid sucks dick? This is something that Butters claims is unclear. At that time, there were several slang expressions involving suck. For example, to suck eggs, to suck rope, or to suck air means 'to be worthless, objectionable, childish' and to suck ass means 'to curry favor, act obsequiously". How are we sure that Polaroid sucks was not intended to be understood as Polaroid sucks eggs?

Miss Poubelle found this argument less than convincing (as did many in the audience). The phrase is not so old, and many listeners had strong intuitions that it originates in a reference to oral sex. Something that supports this position is the taboo nature of sucks through much of the 1970s. The New York Times, for example, had a policy against the word as late as 1978, and would not use it in quotes. Since the phrase to suck eggs has never been considered obscene, the editors of the Times must have understood it sucks to be a shortened form of some other phrase, presumably it sucks dick. And to denigrate someone by saying you suck is in that respect either homophobic or sexist or both.

Butters was more convincing when he argued that for most speakers of American English in 2000, there is no longer any sexual connotation associated with it sucks. The best evidence is that the phrase is routinely used in places where a reference to oral sex makes no sense. A commercial for Amstel Lite beer says "Sorry! We're from Amsterdam. We didn't realize that lite beer was supposed to suck!" A review of a movie or a concert tells us that the script sucked or the acoustics sucked. Is there any way to construe these statements where they reasonably refer to oral sex? Beer, scripts, and acoustics hardly seem likely targets for homophobic abuse.

Now Miss Poubelle does not deny that in 1975 it was probably homophobic and/or sexist to say the Red Sox suck. But we know that words are always changing their meanings. And the simple fact seems to be that most people who now use the word suck don't understand it to have any sexual overtones and are not being consciously homophobic. It used to be homophobic, but it isn't anymore.

There are no doubt some readers out there who would argue that since the phrase has a homophobic past, it is now contaminated and should be avoided. Miss Poubelle won't try to dissuade them from this belief. But she believes this battle is lost. Language moves on, and it's better to fight real homophobia today than to spend our time on the frozen prejudice of thirty years ago. **