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When did the middle finger become offensive?

By Daniel Nasaw
BBC News Magazine, Washington

6 February 2012  

An American television network has

apologised after pop star M.I.A. extended her
middle finger during Sunday night's Super
Bowl halftime show. What does the gesture
mean, and when did it become offensive?

A public intellectual, expressing his contempt

for a gas-bag politician, reaches for a familiar
gesture. He extends his middle finger and
declares: "This is the great demagogue."

The episode occurred not on a chat show nor

in the salons of New York or London, but in
4th Century BC Athens, when the philosopher
Diogenes told a group of visitors exactly what
he thought about the orator Demosthenes,
according to a later Greek historian.

The middle finger, extended with the other

fingers held beneath the thumb, is thus
documented to have expressed insult and
belittlement for more than two millennia.

Whether or not M.I.A. was aware, the gesture originally

referred to a phallus
'Phallic gesture'
Ancient Greek philosophers, Latin poets
hoping to sell copies of their works, soldiers, athletes and pop stars, schoolchildren, peevish
policemen and skittish network executives have all been aware of the gesture's particular power to
insult and inflame.

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"It's one of the most ancient insult gestures known," says anthropologist Desmond Morris.

"The middle finger is the penis and the curled fingers on either side are the testicles. By doing it, you
are offering someone a phallic gesture. It is saying, 'this is a phallus' that you're offering to people,
which is a very primeval display."

During Sunday night's broadcast of the Super Bowl, America's most-watched television programme
of the year, British singer M.I.A. extended the finger during a performance of Madonna's Give Me All
Your Luvin'.

The NFL and NBC television, which broadcast

the game and the half-time show, apologised.

"The obscene gesture in the performance was

completely inappropriate," said Brian
McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL.

The gesture is widely known to Americans as

flipping the bird, or just giving someone the
finger.
Diogenes of Sinope was reputedly a fan of the middle-
The Romans had their own name for it: digitus finger gesture
impudicus - the shameless, indecent or
offensive finger.

In the Epigrammata of First Century AD by the Latin poet Martial, a character who has always
enjoyed good health extends a finger, "the indecent one", at three doctors.

Monkeys' obscene gesture

The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that German tribesmen gave the middle finger to advancing
Roman soldiers, says Thomas Conley, a professor emeritus of communication and classics at the
University of Illinois, who has written about the rhetoric of insults.
Earlier, the Greeks used the middle finger as
an explicit reference to the male genitalia.

In 419BC, the playwright Aristophanes puns in

his comedy The Clouds about dactylic (finger)
rhythm, with a character gesturing first with
his middle finger and subsequently with his
crotch.

The gesture's origins may extend even further

back: male squirrel monkeys of South America
are known to gesture with the erect penis, They may look innocent, but these squirrel monkeys
are capable of their own obscene gesture
says Dr Morris.

The middle finger, which Dr Morris says

probably arrived in the US with Italian immigrants, is documented in the US as early as 1886, when a
pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters gave it in a joint team photograph with the rival New York Giants.

Expression of 'displeasure'
The French have their own phallic salute, says Dr Morris.

In performing the "bras d'honneur" (arm of honour), one raises the forearm with the back of the
hand facing outward, while slapping or gripping the inside of the elbow with the other hand.

The British gesture - the two-fingered "v" with the palm facing inward - is a "double phallus", Dr
Morris quips.

Although scholars and historians continue to

debate its origins, according to legend it was
first displayed at the battle of Agincourt in
1415, although this is widely regarded as
mythology.

The story goes that English soldiers waved

their fingers at French soldiers who had
threatened to cut off captured archers' first
two fingers to prevent them shooting arrows.
The legend that the "two-fingered salute" stems from
The English were thus boasting they were still
the Battle of Agincourt is apocryphal
capable of doing so.

The middle finger's offensive meaning seems

to have overtaken cultural, linguistic and national boundaries and can now be seen at protests, on
football pitches, and at rock concerts across the world.
In December, Liverpool striker Luis Suarez was photographed giving an American-style middle finger
to Fulham fans after his club's 1-0 loss there.

The FA cited him for improper conduct and suspended him for one game.

Protest, rage, excitement

In 2004, a Canadian MP from Calgary was accused of pointing his middle finger at a member from
another party who he said had been heckling him in the House of Commons.

"I expressed my displeasure to him, let's put it this way," Deepak Obhrai told a Canadian newspaper.

Two years earlier, pop star Britney Spears gave the finger to a group of photographers in Mexico
who she complained had been chasing her. Some of her fans thought the gesture was aimed at
them, and Spears later apologised.

While the middle finger may historically have symbolised a phallus, it has lost that distinctive
meaning and is no longer even obscene, says Ira Robbins, a law professor at American University in
Washington DC, who has studied the gesture's place in criminal jurisprudence.

"It does not appeal to the prurient interests," he says.

"This gesture is so well ingrained in everyday life in this country and others. It means so many other
things, like protest or rage or excitement, it's not just a phallus."

And he rejects an Associated Press journalist's characterisation of the gesture as "risque".

"What is risque about it? Maybe the dancing was risque, but the finger? I just don't see it."

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