Recently, at the excellent Blogher website, I ran across an interesting post from Suzanne Reisman. The subject?
The latest brouhaha is over the use of the word scrotum in a children’s book, and the number of librarians who have thus banned the book from their public shelves. According to The New York Times, in The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, the main character, a 10 year old girl named Lucky, overhears someone telling another person about how his dog was bit by a rattlesnake on the scrotum.
That's right, this book is being banned because of the use of the word--gasp!-- scrotum.
Never mind that there is no sexual connotation. Never mind that the scrotum in question (OOOh! I used the bad word!) is that of a dog, for heaven's sake. Obviously, our children need to be protected from...umm...dry, analytical anatomical terms for body parts.
You've got to be kidding me! Do you know WHY the librarians are banning this book? Out of embarrassment! It seems that too many of them are being asked to identify what a scrotum is, and, rather than explain that it is part of the male anatomy that is extremely sensitive to pain, especially rattlesnake bites, and leave it at that, they would simply rather ban the book.
These are librarians, for heaven's sake! Aren't they the ones that are supposed to be fighting AGAINST banning books?! At the very least, you would think that they would want some job security. Seriously, though, are we really so puritanical a nation that our librarians can't say the word--here I go again--scrotum without having hysterics?
My first reaction to this article was, as you can see, frank astonishment. And then outrage that otherwise unobjectionable reading material should be banned for the use of ONE WORD.
My second reaction is to want to go out and buy the damned book.
Never mind that there is no sexual connotation. Never mind that the scrotum in question (OOOh! I used the bad word!) is that of a dog, for heaven's sake. Obviously, our children need to be protected from...umm...dry, analytical anatomical terms for body parts.
You've got to be kidding me! Do you know WHY the librarians are banning this book? Out of embarrassment! It seems that too many of them are being asked to identify what a scrotum is, and, rather than explain that it is part of the male anatomy that is extremely sensitive to pain, especially rattlesnake bites, and leave it at that, they would simply rather ban the book.
These are librarians, for heaven's sake! Aren't they the ones that are supposed to be fighting AGAINST banning books?! At the very least, you would think that they would want some job security. Seriously, though, are we really so puritanical a nation that our librarians can't say the word--here I go again--scrotum without having hysterics?
My first reaction to this article was, as you can see, frank astonishment. And then outrage that otherwise unobjectionable reading material should be banned for the use of ONE WORD.
My second reaction is to want to go out and buy the damned book.
So, if you feel the same, here's a link to the book in question. I can't say whether the book is good or not until I've read it; all I know is, and you have been warned, it contains the word scrotum.
Buy the book at Amazon
2 comments:
Heh, heh, heh, you said "frank." ;)
So it's evil to teach kids to use the proper word for their body parts in this country but it's OK to send bloody TV shows into their homes all day long, even though many parents don't monitor their children's TV viewing?
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