Didn't need the strikeout - forgot there'd be a preview.
That sounds interesting and just the sort of conversation I want to have with my small boys. Alas I know nothing, so if be be very fucking grateful if you could elaborate
Whores or Brian Blessed?
/jk
Tbh it was quite an organic if surreal conversation when DC1 (then 6) asked what "fuck" meant on the way home from school with DC2 (3) and DC3 (8m) in the Phil & Teds. I told him it was another word for sex, but ...
Things to know:
Most swear words in English are Anglo Saxon (or older). That's what many of the commoners spoke when William the Bastard arrived in 1066 from France, although we call it English. He spoke French, unsurprisingly, and so did the nobles he had brought over with him. The ruling class spoke what linguists now call Anglo-Norman French (because it developed slightly differently from French on the mainland) and the church spoke Latin. There are lots of triplets in modern English reflecting the three influences, eg kingly/royal/regal. Also we note the historical-linguistic difference between animals as farmed by peasants (cow, pig) and as eaten by nobs (beef, pork).
With me so far?
Eventually the nobles were all speaking English (for reasons including interbreeding and native wet nurses and other staff) but there was still a difference between posh French-influenced English and common Anglo-Saxon English. The latter is known as vulgar, from the Latin (see?) meaning "of the people". Now, there wasn't the derogatory sense at that time, except the extent to which the nobility looked down on the commoners anyway.
But later - and honestly this is much much later, like centuries and centuries - people started getting very agitated about vulgarity. In the sixteenth century "cunt" was only rude insofar as it was talking about private parts; nowadays it's almost unutterably rude.
Why the change? Pure sensibility. People decided to find the words offensive in their own right, so they became offensive in their own right. They have power because we have given them power.
Meanwhile, blasphemy used to be a real taboo - in many periods of history and indeed currently in certain parts of the world, misuse of religious terms was truly shocking and actively illegal. Over the centuries we've become less and less religious as a society, and nobody in a pub shouts "Zounds" when his pint gets spilt. Nowadays people can sprinkle their conversation with the names of God and Jesus in front of maiden aunts and small children and nobody cares very much.
Knowing that it's just taboo takes some of the sting out of it for me. But it becomes like holding doors or picking your nails - a custom you observe because you've learned how people react when you do or don't observe it.
A small child is quite capable of understanding that we don't do things that could upset people, even if we think their upset is daft. That's the angle we took.
And it means that within a group that has decided the words aren't offensive, they aren't offensive. Within Mumsnet they aren't offensive; they're an in-joke, an intensifier, a signal of emotion. And that's why OP was wrong.