Why does this use of the verb "fuck" sound weird?

February 8, 2018 2:41 AM

A minor linguistic puzzle. This friend of mine was chatting to a guy on a gay hookup app. The guy asked if he was a top or a bottom, and my friend said "both". And got back this reply: "let's fuck each other" Why does that sound kind of ... off? It's grammatical, it follows that Gricean maxim of not being superfluous (since it reveals that he is also both top and bottom). Yet it's something (IMHO) a native English speaker wouldn't say. Why?
posted by dontjumplarry to Writing & Language (17 answers total)

I, a native speaker, would say it if I meant "I'll peg you, you peg me". It's highly intentional, more so than a simple "let's fuck".
posted by Thella at 2:57 AM on February 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yeah does it seem almost like a reflexive verb from a Romance language?
posted by johngoren at 3:04 AM on February 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

"let's fuck", for me, contains basically the same semantic information as "let's fuck each other" and I'd expect to hear the former rather than the latter. But in this specific example I guess there's an additional bit of specificity if you're taking "fuck" as a verb that means one person sticks it in and another person gets it stuck in rather than as a verb that means "we are both generally going to do it". So I guess this phrasing is specific about the fact that both people expect to take both the giving and the receiving role, which might feel relevant to the person saying it.
posted by terretu at 3:11 AM on February 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

(this might also be a heteronormativity thing more than a language thing, as the default hetero setup for fucking kind of inherently involves one person giving and one person receiving so there's no need to specify, whereas in reality people are having sex that is definitely more specific about who is doing what)
posted by terretu at 3:12 AM on February 8, 2018 [13 favorites]

Makes perfect sense to me (native speaker) in the context of the action 'to fuck' having an actor (penetrator) and a subject (penetratee), and clarifying that both people will take both roles here. Cf 'let's penetrate each other'.

I might not say it in a context where only one party is likely to have a means of penetration (ie vanilla m/f), because the clarification wouldn't be necessary, but in other contexts I'd use it.
posted by corvine at 3:13 AM on February 8, 2018 [11 favorites]

Seems that "fuck" as a transitive verb implies an imbalance. Symmetrical fucking is intransitive.

If we fuck, that's mutual.

If I fuck you, that is NOT.
posted by Kahomono at 4:06 AM on February 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I think the transitivity is the key, and that it sounds funny to you because ‘fuck’ in a straight context (don’t know if you are, but even if you aren’t it’s still easy to perceive straight usages as a norm) can be intransitive, and when it’s transitive the transitivity doesn’t carry any information — “let’s fuck” or “I want to fuck you” are pretty precise equivalents for a straight couple, because who’s penetrating who is presumed. For a gay male couple, the transitivity carries information — “I want to fuck you” is meaningfully different from “I want you to fuck me” and from “Let’s fuck each other” (presumably as at least two sequential events).
posted by LizardBreath at 5:18 AM on February 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

To me it also has a weird connotation of being screwed over (as opposed to just screwed which might be sexy... I guess?)

Let's fuck each other... to me almost sounds aggressive like: "I'm gonna fuck you up!" As in I'm gonna punch you in the face!
posted by winterportage at 5:20 AM on February 8, 2018

as a native speaker, just have to chime in with this not sounding odd to me. nb, in terms of vanilla PIV sex, I wouldn't find it odd if the V partner told the P partner "I want to fuck you", so I might just have a different gloss on it.
posted by annabear at 5:23 AM on February 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

Native speaker, doesn't sound odd to me. It sounds like it is describing iterative acts: first, I will fuck you, and then, because we both like to switch, you will fuck me. "Let's fuck" runs the risk of simply meaning "let's have sex", rather than describing the specific act he's requesting.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:12 AM on February 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Queer woman, grammar freak, native English speaker. It sounds 100% normal to me. I agree that there's probably an element of heteronormativity involved in how it sounds to any individual.
posted by donnagirl at 6:13 AM on February 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

Quoting the film version of Apt Pupil:

Kurt Dussander: This is the end. Here. A drink. To our lives together. The beginning and the end.
Todd Bowden: I think you should fuck yourself.
Kurt Dussander: Oh, my dear boy. Don't you see? We are fucking each other.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:19 AM on February 8, 2018

Sounds perfectly normal to me. I'm very familiar and comfortable using "fuck" as a positive term for playfully aggressive sex. If there's a distinct energy difference between the two parties, the more active one is performing the fuck.

I'd guess the meaning of the message to be along the lines of "let's spend a lot of time having sex and have a lot of give and take of action and energy"
posted by itesser at 7:40 AM on February 8, 2018

if both are vers, then what is being said is that i fuck you, you fuck me. its a negotiating of positioning.
posted by PinkMoose at 7:41 AM on February 8, 2018

Homosexual American cis male, 45ish. For me, "fuck" between two men explicitly implies anal sex. Other forms of sex aren't "fucking". "Let's fuck each other" specifically implies a suggestion we take both roles in anal sex ("switch"). It doesn't seem particularly awkward linguistically, just very explicit about what is wanted. None of this is 100%. I wouldn't be too surprised to hear "let's fuck" to generically mean "let's have sex". But I'd first go with a more specific interpretation of anal sex.
posted by Nelson at 9:12 AM on February 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Sounds queer, not weird to me.
posted by fritillary at 12:53 PM on February 8, 2018

Nthing that this doesn't sound like weird usage to me at all.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:26 AM on February 9, 2018