Why are curses not offensive if you mask all but the first letter with symbols? [closed]

Nudity and foul language is often blurred in the media. I can understand the need to blur nudity, but when it comes to blurring F-words I don't see the sense of it. When you write F- off, you simply introduce a new synonym for a foul term. So if blurring foul words are required by law, you would need to blur the blurred word in time, right?

So is this an cultural oddity of the english language, or is there more to it?

In my opinion, this is a convention that allows people to have their cake and eat it.

Nobody (except, perhaps, for young children or some non-native speakers of English) is fooled by the supposedly obfuscating blanks or asterisks; but using them creates the appearance that the term has been emasculated / made less shocking or offensive.

It's a form of hypocrisy or fake propriety that (like so many other manifestations of hypocrisy) has been accepted and integrated into many English-speaking cultures, or even enforced by laws or regulations that prohibit the use of explicit expletives.