Not American, but I’m from Hong Kong and the higher acceptability of “saying things in a blunt way” in the socioeconomic circles I grew up in rings true to me. A caveat that traditional Chinese culture makes it more uncommon for discussions to center around sexual things. That said, it seems that if sexual things do come up, people aren’t super averse to it in the way that people in elite Western circles are. (Except in and around church. I grew up Protestant.)
The main (economic) factor might be that my parents and relatives all grew up poor (a common background for many people in HK) and that I have a sort-of-working class background (parents still broke but relatives became better off—got a great education with help from relatives but lived relatively worse off with my parents -it’s complicated). My sense is that my priorities are very different from Western EAs with more money, or actually, even other people in my home city with more money.
I’m guessing that for the generation before me, growing up in a small flat with 6 other siblings, it just doesn’t really matter if someone’s kind of “vulgar” or speaks kind of bluntly. And if people deliberately offend you with a comment, sure enough, you might get angry at that person—but it’s unlikely that you’ll find what they said paralyzing.
I myself grew up in better conditions, but maybe the cultural memory of severe material hardship persists, at least for a while. I didn’t really care that much when friends from school used explicit language. Because it frequently happened on a daily basis. Some of my (~middle class) friends and I often said “offensive things” to each other in the past for fun, and sometimes I kind of miss the opportunity to do that (sometimes not though) since now my social circles mostly consist of people from the upper/upper middle classes.
Not American, but I’m from Hong Kong and the higher acceptability of “saying things in a blunt way” in the socioeconomic circles I grew up in rings true to me. A caveat that traditional Chinese culture makes it more uncommon for discussions to center around sexual things. That said, it seems that if sexual things do come up, people aren’t super averse to it in the way that people in elite Western circles are. (Except in and around church. I grew up Protestant.)
The main (economic) factor might be that my parents and relatives all grew up poor (a common background for many people in HK) and that I have a sort-of-working class background (parents still broke but relatives became better off—got a great education with help from relatives but lived relatively worse off with my parents -it’s complicated). My sense is that my priorities are very different from Western EAs with more money, or actually, even other people in my home city with more money.
I’m guessing that for the generation before me, growing up in a small flat with 6 other siblings, it just doesn’t really matter if someone’s kind of “vulgar” or speaks kind of bluntly. And if people deliberately offend you with a comment, sure enough, you might get angry at that person—but it’s unlikely that you’ll find what they said paralyzing.
I myself grew up in better conditions, but maybe the cultural memory of severe material hardship persists, at least for a while. I didn’t really care that much when friends from school used explicit language. Because it frequently happened on a daily basis. Some of my (~middle class) friends and I often said “offensive things” to each other in the past for fun, and sometimes I kind of miss the opportunity to do that (sometimes not though) since now my social circles mostly consist of people from the upper/upper middle classes.