Remember, remember, the fifth of November... in honour of the day, I was watching V for Vendetta. I won't summarise the movie here, but suffice to say that it focuses on the question of terrorism, one that I think it's wise to consider today, if at no other time.
We're all tired, I'm sure, of hearing that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", but it is certainly something we should all keep in mind. Terrorists, one would guess, cause terror — but whatever spin that terror is given, is it ever justified, even if the people on the receiving end are villainous beyond measure? Is physically violent terror any different from mentally-induced terror?
Most importantly, as Evey Hammond asks in V for Vendetta (and I'm paraphrasing), how is destroying a building meant to fix a country with a host of problems? And is asking a country to unite behind the destruction of the building any different than the government asking the country to unite in the face of a deadly pandemic?
So maybe we're all terrorists, establishment and anti-establishment alike. Because there's never going to be a "right" answer, as long as there are people on both sides of the divide. We can only make our voices heard and hope to achieve a solution that we can all live with, right?
In that vein, if you live in the US and are over 18, please, please go vote on Tuesday. It's the least you can do.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Blogging About Other Blogs
I was reading the archives of the blog Language Log, which in a post from June discussed the censoring of obscene language in newspapers. It contrasts the New York Times, which avoids the topic by using euphemisms such as "f-bomb" for "fuck", with the English newspaper The Guardian, whose style guide establishes that swearwords should always be spelled out in full when used in quotes or in the body of an article, though careful thought should be given as to whether the word is necessary and whether it will offend when not used in the context of a quote. Fair enough, I think. The post on Language Log goes on to mention other examples, but what do you folks think? Should newspapers, magazines and radio stations be considerate of their readers/listeners, or should they tell it like it is? And is there a difference between using a profanity in the context of a quotation and using one in the general text of an article? And within that, are there further divisions — say, could the word "bullshit" be used in an opinion piece but not in a news article? I ask for your consideration.
Sorry if it seems like I haven't replied to some of your comments. As the discussion facilitator I'm trying to step back from the discussions, such as in the last sex ed post. It would really help if I could get more comments and stimulate proper discussion, though! I do understand that the Blogger interface certainly doesn't provide for the ease of discussion that an h2g2 thread would, but it does allow people both from the online world and the real world to comment here. So comment, dammit! (Or should I not be saying "dammit" on a blog?)
Sorry if it seems like I haven't replied to some of your comments. As the discussion facilitator I'm trying to step back from the discussions, such as in the last sex ed post. It would really help if I could get more comments and stimulate proper discussion, though! I do understand that the Blogger interface certainly doesn't provide for the ease of discussion that an h2g2 thread would, but it does allow people both from the online world and the real world to comment here. So comment, dammit! (Or should I not be saying "dammit" on a blog?)
Monday, October 09, 2006
Sex Education
Hi, I thought it's about time we had another post.
Something that's often occurred to me in my experience of sex education in American schools is that while we often get "pregnancy ed", "STD ed" or "drug/alcohol ed", we tend not to actually have "sex ed". Other than how to protect yourself from pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, small attention is given to sex. We are taught how to use a condom, but only in reference to the sort of sex that makes babies. Anal, oral, that kind of thing is never discussed, nor is the possibility that one might want to have sex with someone of the same sex. Masturbation is certainly not mentioned. And, of course, abstinence is offered as the best protection against pregnancy and STDs. The thought that teenagers might have sex for fun seems not to have occurred to the types who devise sex ed curriculums.
There are members of the religious right who would like to see abstinence-only sex education in our schools, and then on the opposite end of the spectrum there is the sex ed programme in Sweden, for example. Swedish sex ed is compulsory from second grade and contains a wide variety of age-appropriate material that actually teaches kids about what it might be like to be a sexually-active adult (see this article). I remember going to the doctor when I was around 14 and being asked if I was "sexually active", and I had no idea what that meant. Isn't this the sort of thing we should be teaching our young people — or was I just unusually naïve back then?
So how is sex education approached in your part of the world? Should the subject be left up to individual parents, or should there be standardised school curricula — and if so, how detailed should they be?
Finally, let me just state unequivocally that (in my opinion) a sex ed curriculum which teaches abstinence only or which doesn't address issues of recreational sex, relationships, etc. is being willfully blind to the behaviour of contemporary teenagers.
Something that's often occurred to me in my experience of sex education in American schools is that while we often get "pregnancy ed", "STD ed" or "drug/alcohol ed", we tend not to actually have "sex ed". Other than how to protect yourself from pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, small attention is given to sex. We are taught how to use a condom, but only in reference to the sort of sex that makes babies. Anal, oral, that kind of thing is never discussed, nor is the possibility that one might want to have sex with someone of the same sex. Masturbation is certainly not mentioned. And, of course, abstinence is offered as the best protection against pregnancy and STDs. The thought that teenagers might have sex for fun seems not to have occurred to the types who devise sex ed curriculums.
There are members of the religious right who would like to see abstinence-only sex education in our schools, and then on the opposite end of the spectrum there is the sex ed programme in Sweden, for example. Swedish sex ed is compulsory from second grade and contains a wide variety of age-appropriate material that actually teaches kids about what it might be like to be a sexually-active adult (see this article). I remember going to the doctor when I was around 14 and being asked if I was "sexually active", and I had no idea what that meant. Isn't this the sort of thing we should be teaching our young people — or was I just unusually naïve back then?
So how is sex education approached in your part of the world? Should the subject be left up to individual parents, or should there be standardised school curricula — and if so, how detailed should they be?
Finally, let me just state unequivocally that (in my opinion) a sex ed curriculum which teaches abstinence only or which doesn't address issues of recreational sex, relationships, etc. is being willfully blind to the behaviour of contemporary teenagers.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Banned Books
Welcome to post number three!
Sorry it's a bit late, but this week (as of last Saturday) is Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Organization. The ALA and various libraries around the United States have been using this week to agitate against the banning or challenging of books and their removal from public and school library shelves — usually because the material, whether sexually, religiously or socially objectionable, is deemed inappropriate for a younger audience.
We all know the uproar caused by the Harry Potter series. Famous obscenity trials such as that of Lady Chatterley's Lover are often familiar as well. But how about other examples? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird have both been banned and challenged for racism and the use of the word "nigger", even though both books contain anti-racist messages. The Diary of Anne Frank was banned in one school district because it was said to be "a real downer". And sex education books and books which mention homosexuality are removed from libraries or restricted from children all over the US.
While it may seem reasonable to impose certain limits on what books children read (for example, you wouldn't necessarily want your elementary-school kid to read Lady Chatterley), but on what basis can you draw such distinctions of appropriateness? And should such decisions be left up to school administrators, religious leaders, librarians and community leaders, or should they only be determined by individual parents? Or should any restrictions be imposed at all?
I will impose an editorial comment just for a minute: celebrate Banned Books Week! Read a banned book! In the words of the button I've been wearing to school all week: "First they burn books, then they burn people."
Sorry it's a bit late, but this week (as of last Saturday) is Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Organization. The ALA and various libraries around the United States have been using this week to agitate against the banning or challenging of books and their removal from public and school library shelves — usually because the material, whether sexually, religiously or socially objectionable, is deemed inappropriate for a younger audience.
We all know the uproar caused by the Harry Potter series. Famous obscenity trials such as that of Lady Chatterley's Lover are often familiar as well. But how about other examples? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird have both been banned and challenged for racism and the use of the word "nigger", even though both books contain anti-racist messages. The Diary of Anne Frank was banned in one school district because it was said to be "a real downer". And sex education books and books which mention homosexuality are removed from libraries or restricted from children all over the US.
While it may seem reasonable to impose certain limits on what books children read (for example, you wouldn't necessarily want your elementary-school kid to read Lady Chatterley), but on what basis can you draw such distinctions of appropriateness? And should such decisions be left up to school administrators, religious leaders, librarians and community leaders, or should they only be determined by individual parents? Or should any restrictions be imposed at all?
I will impose an editorial comment just for a minute: celebrate Banned Books Week! Read a banned book! In the words of the button I've been wearing to school all week: "First they burn books, then they burn people."
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Swearing
I decided to pick a (perhaps) somewhat less controversial topic to start with. After all, I'm willing to bet that the majority of us have sworn numerous times before, whether taking the Lord's name in vain or uttering one of those four-letter words banned by profanity filters everywhere in a moment of frustration.
All considerations of religious objections aside, we frequently tend to shrink from such obscenities. (I know, one might argue that our European-based, Western civilisation is, by its nature, a religious one, but I'm going to put that aside for the moment, for ease of discussion.) These days, the famed four-letter words (from such mild expletives as "hell" to "fuck", often considered the most taboo word in the English language) have perhaps less power to offend than they once did. I know teachers who will swear in front of students, children who will swear in front of parents. Yet as a society, we still avoid profanities assiduously. "Fuck" and "shit" top the list of words bleeped out on American radio, and I also once saw an extensive list of words that should be avoided, or are even entirely forbidden, on the BBC. Those of you who hail from h2g2 will, I'm sure, have run up against its profanity filter at some point since its inception. One is able to fill a page in one's notebook tallying the profanities of one's history teacher, and yet the fact is that these words still occasion enough notice to be tallied — they are a minor taboo, but a taboo all the same.
It's interesting to consider that, at one point, a thousand years ago, some of the words we now avoid in public were perfectly acceptable — I am particularly considering "fuck" and "shit". While "fuck" is of unknown origin, it was in common use in Anglo-Saxon times, sometimes describing animals' mating procedures and sometimes those of humans as well. "Shit" was the word of common parlance before other euphemisms like "poop", "doodoo", etc. developed. I'm not sure when "shit" fell from favour, but it mustn't have been any later than the Victorian period, when "leg" ranked right up there with the other profanities.
I once read in a linguistics book that profanity can be classified into three categories: the religious ("hell", "damn"), the scatological ("shit", "crap") and the sexual ("fuck", "cunt", "wank"). Sounds fair enough, but what is more intriguing is the degree to which each of these categories is considered taboo in our society. The religious words we say without great concern, unless we are among the devout or our devout ourselves — and even then there's nothing particularly odd in, say, a Christian who says "dammit!" or "what the hell?" If someone says "damn", it seems, it's barely worth looking to see who said it, whether that person is an adult or a child. The only really profane scatological term that I can think of is "shit", and it's true that while that's avoided (often the more benign "crap" is substituted) I wouldn't say it's really shied from in casual parlance. On the other hand, the sexual words like "fuck" and "cunt" would really have to be considered the most taboo words in the English language. It's hardly surprising. We no longer have a state religion that causes devotion, and everybody shits — there's nothing shameful in it, and everyone does it the same way, so why worry about it? But sex — that's a different story. We shy from it and we discourage — particularly in people my age — the practices described by words like "fuck" and "wank". And in doing so, we therefore consider it proper to discourage the words themselves. It is all too tempting to get wrapped up in Western civilisation's condemnation of the sexual, but that's a task for another post or five.
Concerning the use of language: last spring I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. There's a passage I remember very clearly, where, in an internal monologue, the correct term for the sex act that's occurring between Offred and the Commander is discussed. It's not "copulating", it's decided, and it's not "making love". That would imply willingness, love, sharing, elements that are absent in the occurrences of Handmaid's Tale — which, ultimately, Atwood describes simply as "fucking". That, it seems, is what these profanities stand for: the dirt and grit of life that we can't accurately describe with a more cheerful euphemism.
Or is it? Is profanity something to be encouraged, suppressed or just ignored? Would it be all right for kids to swear, and how about adults when talking to kids? What words should be censored on the radio, TV and in written publications? You know, all that good stuff. Crap, I sound like a middle-school English teacher with a discussion question. Oh well.
I shall try my best this post to be a better discussion leader and stop promoting my opinion after I've made the initial post. Thanks everyone who's commented so far — it's great encouragement for me to write more (though I guess if you're sick of me already you could just stop and then I would get the message).
All considerations of religious objections aside, we frequently tend to shrink from such obscenities. (I know, one might argue that our European-based, Western civilisation is, by its nature, a religious one, but I'm going to put that aside for the moment, for ease of discussion.) These days, the famed four-letter words (from such mild expletives as "hell" to "fuck", often considered the most taboo word in the English language) have perhaps less power to offend than they once did. I know teachers who will swear in front of students, children who will swear in front of parents. Yet as a society, we still avoid profanities assiduously. "Fuck" and "shit" top the list of words bleeped out on American radio, and I also once saw an extensive list of words that should be avoided, or are even entirely forbidden, on the BBC. Those of you who hail from h2g2 will, I'm sure, have run up against its profanity filter at some point since its inception. One is able to fill a page in one's notebook tallying the profanities of one's history teacher, and yet the fact is that these words still occasion enough notice to be tallied — they are a minor taboo, but a taboo all the same.
It's interesting to consider that, at one point, a thousand years ago, some of the words we now avoid in public were perfectly acceptable — I am particularly considering "fuck" and "shit". While "fuck" is of unknown origin, it was in common use in Anglo-Saxon times, sometimes describing animals' mating procedures and sometimes those of humans as well. "Shit" was the word of common parlance before other euphemisms like "poop", "doodoo", etc. developed. I'm not sure when "shit" fell from favour, but it mustn't have been any later than the Victorian period, when "leg" ranked right up there with the other profanities.
I once read in a linguistics book that profanity can be classified into three categories: the religious ("hell", "damn"), the scatological ("shit", "crap") and the sexual ("fuck", "cunt", "wank"). Sounds fair enough, but what is more intriguing is the degree to which each of these categories is considered taboo in our society. The religious words we say without great concern, unless we are among the devout or our devout ourselves — and even then there's nothing particularly odd in, say, a Christian who says "dammit!" or "what the hell?" If someone says "damn", it seems, it's barely worth looking to see who said it, whether that person is an adult or a child. The only really profane scatological term that I can think of is "shit", and it's true that while that's avoided (often the more benign "crap" is substituted) I wouldn't say it's really shied from in casual parlance. On the other hand, the sexual words like "fuck" and "cunt" would really have to be considered the most taboo words in the English language. It's hardly surprising. We no longer have a state religion that causes devotion, and everybody shits — there's nothing shameful in it, and everyone does it the same way, so why worry about it? But sex — that's a different story. We shy from it and we discourage — particularly in people my age — the practices described by words like "fuck" and "wank". And in doing so, we therefore consider it proper to discourage the words themselves. It is all too tempting to get wrapped up in Western civilisation's condemnation of the sexual, but that's a task for another post or five.
Concerning the use of language: last spring I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. There's a passage I remember very clearly, where, in an internal monologue, the correct term for the sex act that's occurring between Offred and the Commander is discussed. It's not "copulating", it's decided, and it's not "making love". That would imply willingness, love, sharing, elements that are absent in the occurrences of Handmaid's Tale — which, ultimately, Atwood describes simply as "fucking". That, it seems, is what these profanities stand for: the dirt and grit of life that we can't accurately describe with a more cheerful euphemism.
Or is it? Is profanity something to be encouraged, suppressed or just ignored? Would it be all right for kids to swear, and how about adults when talking to kids? What words should be censored on the radio, TV and in written publications? You know, all that good stuff. Crap, I sound like a middle-school English teacher with a discussion question. Oh well.
I shall try my best this post to be a better discussion leader and stop promoting my opinion after I've made the initial post. Thanks everyone who's commented so far — it's great encouragement for me to write more (though I guess if you're sick of me already you could just stop and then I would get the message).
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Welcome
Hello there,
First post... exciting.
I've created this blog to discuss one of my favourite topics, societal taboos. Maybe I just enjoy shocking people, but it's always been an interest of mine to talk about the things no one else wants to talk about. Sex, drugs, swearing, pornography, more radical politics, teenage life... the list goes on and on.
None of us should be afraid to use the English language (or, indeed, any language) to talk about topics like this that affect us all as humans. As a teenager, it's especially important to me to be able to discuss life freely, when so much is deemed inappropriate for the classroom or the dinner table.
I can't promise regular updates, but when something comes up that should be talked about, rest assured that it will be discussed. I have a whole host of topics that I would love to expound on at length — please join me in discussing them. The relative anonymity afforded by the Internet allows us to explore the things we would never mention in public.
I suppose I should ask, why are we embarrassed? Why is it that four letters can carry such an enormous connotation of rudeness and hate to some, and be dropped easily into a conversation and barely noticed by others? Why is it that MTV brings sex to our living rooms, but we almost daren't teach about how to have sex responsibly in our schools? Why do libraries ban books even today, and why wouldn't my mother let me buy the erotic novel Story of O?
There is nothing criminal in sex. There is nothing criminal in profanity. There is nothihng criminal in reading. There is nothing criminal in being a communist. And there ought not to be anything criminal in viewing pornography underage and there ought not to be anything criminal in limited recreational drug use or in prostitution.
Of course, that's what I think. But I'd like to hear what you think, of course. Please comment on my posts — that way we can discuss our language and our culture properly and maybe even, I don't know, draw some conclusions from it. These are taboos: no one else will discuss them.
Hopefully our first subject will come soon!
First post... exciting.
I've created this blog to discuss one of my favourite topics, societal taboos. Maybe I just enjoy shocking people, but it's always been an interest of mine to talk about the things no one else wants to talk about. Sex, drugs, swearing, pornography, more radical politics, teenage life... the list goes on and on.
None of us should be afraid to use the English language (or, indeed, any language) to talk about topics like this that affect us all as humans. As a teenager, it's especially important to me to be able to discuss life freely, when so much is deemed inappropriate for the classroom or the dinner table.
I can't promise regular updates, but when something comes up that should be talked about, rest assured that it will be discussed. I have a whole host of topics that I would love to expound on at length — please join me in discussing them. The relative anonymity afforded by the Internet allows us to explore the things we would never mention in public.
I suppose I should ask, why are we embarrassed? Why is it that four letters can carry such an enormous connotation of rudeness and hate to some, and be dropped easily into a conversation and barely noticed by others? Why is it that MTV brings sex to our living rooms, but we almost daren't teach about how to have sex responsibly in our schools? Why do libraries ban books even today, and why wouldn't my mother let me buy the erotic novel Story of O?
There is nothing criminal in sex. There is nothing criminal in profanity. There is nothihng criminal in reading. There is nothing criminal in being a communist. And there ought not to be anything criminal in viewing pornography underage and there ought not to be anything criminal in limited recreational drug use or in prostitution.
Of course, that's what I think. But I'd like to hear what you think, of course. Please comment on my posts — that way we can discuss our language and our culture properly and maybe even, I don't know, draw some conclusions from it. These are taboos: no one else will discuss them.
Hopefully our first subject will come soon!
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