The finger

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Person "giving the middle finger"

In

obscene hand gesture. The gesture communicates moderate to extreme contempt, and is roughly equivalent in meaning to "fuck you", "fuck me", "shove it up your ass/arse", "up yours", or "go fuck yourself". It is performed by showing the back of a hand that has only the middle finger extended upwards, though in some locales, the thumb is extended. Extending the finger is considered a symbol of contempt in several cultures, especially in the Western world
. Many cultures use similar gestures to display their disrespect, although others use it to express pointing without intentional disrespect. The gesture is usually used to express contempt but can also be used humorously or playfully.

The gesture dates back to

Classical era

Diogenes, pictured by Gérôme with the large jar in which he lived; when strangers at the inn were expressing their wish to catch sight of the great orator Demosthenes, Diogenes is said to have stuck out his middle finger and exclaimed "This, for you, is the demagogue of the Athenians."[3]

The middle finger gesture was used in ancient times as a symbol of sexual intercourse, in a manner meant to degrade, intimidate and threaten the individual receiving the gesture.

Mediterranean world, extending the finger was one of many methods used to divert the ever-present threat of the evil eye.[7]

In

Roman stone busts from Bar Hill Fort, Scotland. Silenus and bearded man with middle finger extended in the "infamis digitus" to ward off the evil eye.[25] A video of the figure on the right has been made.[26]

In

Late Antiquity, the term "shameless finger" is explained in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville with reference to its frequent use when accusing someone of a "shameful action."[34]

Boston Braves baseball pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn pictured giving the finger to cameraman, 1886. First known photograph of the gesture.[35]

United States

Linguist

New York Giants
.

Canada

In 2023, in a ruling issued February 24 regarding a Canadian man who was accused of criminal harassment and uttering threats, Quebec court Judge Dennis Galiatsatos wrote, "To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger," and, "Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly. Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability." The accused man, Neall Epstein, was acquitted.[36]

Early appearance in films

During a wedding sequence in one of Alfred Hitchcock's silent films, The Ring (1927), a misunderstanding results in the ringbearer giving the finger to another member of the wedding party, to comedic effect.

In the film Speedy (1928), Harold Lloyd's character gives himself the finger into a distorting mirror at Luna Park, about 25 minutes into the film.

Political and military use

The gesture has been involved in political events. During the

2013 German federal election, the leading candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Peer Steinbrück controversially gave the finger in a photo interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung's Magazin supplement.[43]

During

Gunnery Sergeant Michael Burghardt gained prominence when the Omaha World-Herald published a photo of Burghardt making the gesture towards Iraqi insurgents he believed to be watching after an improvised explosive device failed to kill him.[46]

The middle finger has been involved in judicial hearings. An appellate court in Hartford, Connecticut ruled in 1976 that gesturing with the middle finger was offensive, but not obscene, after a police officer charged a 16-year-old with making an obscene gesture when the student gave the officer the middle finger.[47] The case was appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court,[48] which upheld the decision.[49] In March 2006, a federal lawsuit was filed regarding the free speech issue.[50]

Giving the finger has resulted in negative consequences. A Malaysian man was bludgeoned to death after giving the finger to a motorist following a car chase.[51] A Pakistani man was deported by the United Arab Emirates for the gesture, which violates indecency codes.[52]

People have given the finger as a method of

political protest. At a concert, Ricky Martin gave a picture of George W. Bush the finger to protest the War in Iraq.[53] Serbian protesters gave the finger to the Russian embassy regarding their support of Slobodan Milošević.[54] Artist Ai Weiwei has used the finger in photographs and sculptures as a political statement.[55] As a political message to the Czech President Miloš Zeman, Czech artist David Černý floated an outsize, purple statue of a hand on the River Vltava in Prague; its middle finger extended towards Prague Castle, the Presidential seat.[56] Černý had also mounted a middle finger on a pink former Soviet tank from the Monument to Soviet Tank Crews in 1991.[57]
In 2011–2012, the pink tank with the finger was displayed again on a barge on the Vltava.[citation needed]

In 2017, while bicycling, Juli Briskman gave the finger to the motorcade of Donald Trump as it drove past her, and a photograph that went viral forced her to resign from her job. She was elected to the board of supervisors for Loudoun County, Virginia, in the 2019 Virginia elections.[58]

In popular culture

2013 parliament election
in the Czech Republic.

The use of the middle finger has become pervasive in popular culture. The band

San Quentin State Prison, released as At San Quentin.[61] However, the photo remained fairly obscure until 1998, when producer Rick Rubin made it the centerpiece of an ad in Billboard criticizing country radio for not giving airplay to Cash's Grammy-winning album Unchained. Cameron Diaz made the gesture during a photo shoot for Esquire.[62] Harold Lloyd shot the finger to his own reflection in a Coney Island funhouse after getting paint on his suit in Speedy, his final silent feature, from 1928.[63]

Athletes, including

Ron Artest, Luis Suárez, Virat Kohli, Juan Pablo Montoya, Iván Rodríguez, Danny Graves, Jack McDowell, Natasha Zvereva, Josh Smith, Bryan Cox, and Johnny Manziel have been suspended or fined for making the gesture.[5][62][64][65][66][67][68] José Paniagua was released by the Chicago White Sox after giving the middle finger to an umpire; he never played in the majors again.[64] Baseball executive Chub Feeney once resigned after giving the finger to fans on Fan Appreciation Night.[64][69] Bud Adams, owner of the National Football League's Tennessee Titans, was fined US$250,000 for giving both middle fingers to the fans of the Buffalo Bills during a game.[70][71] Professional wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin is also famous for flashing one or both middle fingers as part of his gimmick. Hockey star Jaromír Jágr made the gesture several times following goals in the early 1990s.[72]

The

Don Stevenson
was caught flipping the bird at the camera. The finger was airbrushed out of subsequent releases of the album.

In automobile driving culture, giving the finger to a fellow motorist communicates displeasure at another person's reckless driving habits and/or their disregard for common courtesy.[79]

The finger is included in Unicode as U+1F595 🖕 REVERSED HAND WITH MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED,[80] part of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block.

The media sometimes refers to the gesture as being mistaken for an indication of "we're number one", typically indicated with a raised index finger.[69][81][82] Sometimes, though, the "mistake" is actually an intentional euphemism meant to indirectly convey the gesture in a medium where a direct description would be inappropriate. For example, Don Meredith is famously noted in a 1972 Monday Night Football game describing the finger of a dejected Houston Oilers fan as, "He thinks they're number one in the nation."[83] Ira Robbins, a law professor, believes the finger is no longer an obscene gesture.[5] Psychologist David Walsh, founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, sees the growing acceptance of the middle finger as a sign of the growth of a "culture of disrespect".[62]

Google Street View's picture of the area around the Wisconsin Governor's Mansion, taken in 2011 during the tenure of Scott Walker, shows a jogger giving the finger in the direction of the mansion.[84]

Similar gestures

The hand gesture on the left is the normal "victory" symbol. The gesture on the right is the rude gesture.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, the V sign, "two-fingered salute" or "the fingers", when given with back of the hand towards the recipient, serves a similar purpose. According to a Royal Shakespeare Company synopsis of the play Henry V, a "two-fingered salute" appeared in the Macclesfield Psalter of c. 1330 (in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), "being made by a glove in the psalter's marginalia". George H. W. Bush, former President of the United States, accidentally made the gesture while on a diplomatic trip to Australia.[85]

In countries where Spanish, Portuguese or French are spoken, and especially in Spain, Portugal, Brazil and France, the gesture involving raising a fist and slapping the biceps on the same arm as the fist used, sometimes called the bras d'honneur (French), corte de mangas (Spanish), manguito (Portugal), dar uma banana (Brazil), or Iberian slap, is equivalent to the finger.

Italy, Poland and countries under the influence of Russian culture,[citation needed] such as Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, also see it as equivalent to the finger, but the majority of young people in these countries use the finger as an insult, which is associated with the Western culture.[5]

More commonly in Turkish or Slavic regions, the fig sign (also known as nah or shish) serves as the equivalent to the finger, meaning "you won't get it" or "in your dreams". The gesture is typically made with the hand and fingers curled and the thumb thrust between the middle and index fingers. This gesture is also used similarly in Indonesia, Turkey and China.[86]

In Japanese Sign Language, this same gesture (with all fingers curled inward except the middle one) means the following: elder brother (hand moving up), younger brother (hand moving down), and siblings in general (one hand moving up, one moving down).[87][88] This comes from a childish name of the middle finger, o-nii-san-yubi ("big-brother finger"), as opposed to o-tō-san-yubi ("dad finger", the thumb), o-kā-san-yubi ("mom finger", the index), o-nee-san-yubi ("big-sister finger", the ring finger) and aka-chan-yubi ("baby finger", the pinky).[89] The equivalent words for sisters are expressed with the pinky. In the Japanese manual syllabary, the middle finger (with the front of the hand facing forward) stands for the kana (which, incidentally, is also an archaic word for "brother").

See also

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Further reading

External links