Be Excellent To Each Other

What do you guys think of this?

Yes, it is safe for work.

I think we had this before, and what I think is that 10 yearolds have more things to worry about polluting their minds than the word "twat".

Malc

Oh, has this been discussed before?

Sorry, I missed the memo

I think it is terrible that an author has felt 'pressured' into editing out a work in a book because of of this, but I guess she knows where her money comes from.

On the same sort of subject, and feel free to shout if you don't want your topic derailed, Mimi, what do you guys think of the uproar about this?

Also: after only three complaints?

The other day, in the park I was playing with my kids, we stopped for a bit to have something to eat. There were a couple of teenagers about 30m away, and they were laying down, talking, cuddling, kissing and what not. So Eliot (he's 7 and 1/2) sees them, and tells me that they are having sex. I looked round to see if they were, and no, they were still just cuddling, and occasionally kissing. So I asked Eliot what he knew about sex. He said: "John told me all about it". John is another 7 year old, with teenaged brothers. So God knows what he said (haven't got round to finding out exactly what was said by John yet, I will do soon tho) to him.

The upshot is, I'd rather he knew the correct (appropriate for his age) information, than some 1/2 truth, 1/2 myth that he's been told be someone with much older brothers.

Malc

Jacqueline has gone right down in my estimation. What a bloody wuss. She's possibly the best placed author after Rowling to stand up for herself and have a great shot of getting her way - her books are huge, and have been for absolutely ages. I'm surprised she'd shy away from 'offending' the desperately easily offended, given the relatively grave matters some of her books have dealt with.

I'd be very surprised if she had much say in the matter.

Oh, and, going back to my B+B post earlier, the girl who messaged me was definitely pubescent at about 8/9. So I'm sure for her that sort of information would have been useful at that age.

Malc

She had the following say

"Remove it and I'm taking the next multi million seller to Transworld".

No, I am happy to share a subject with you, Nyn!

Well, I don't think it is ever too early to learn about sex education. my mother hit puberty at the young age of nine, and the trend is that the onset puberty in girls is getting younger and younger. At nine, my mother had received no sex education and didn't know of the horrors natural processes of menstruation, and was somewhat scarred by the experience for a time.

I guess that parents should have the ultimate responsibility and so make the final decision for their individual child, BUT I almost wish it were compulsory. Going to a school with a largely asian population, many of my female friends said that these matters were never, under any circumstances, discussed at home in their culture*, and we had no sex eduction at school (this was later in our school years, but if the information had been given to them when they were young, then they'd not have grown up clueless to begin with.

My only sex education class was given by a lovely teacher called Ms Wynne, when I was 10 years old. She actually told the class that it had been decided recently that such information should not be given to children of our age but that it was our parents responsibility, but that she was going to tell us anyway because she thought it was the right thing to do.

She first read aloud a book called 'Where Do I Come From' before explaining a bit more thoroughly and answering any questions (which we had none of, because we were all too shy and embarrassed to talk at this point )

*I don't know if this is the case in general, or if they just happened to be of the families that didn't speak of such things, but they all seemed to agree that it was part of their culture not to do so.

That. For most authors, yeah, you'd have no say in it. But she's a heavyweight name, and the most popular children's writer in the UK after Rowling, and critically acclaimed across the board for years. If anyone has a chance to put their foot down and have it mean something, it'd be her.

Ere, bruv wot is dat ginger doin' knobbin' that paki-stani? Wiv that giant dog runnin around, innit?

I thought this was going to be a thread about a woman transsexual.

I knew someone would. Trust you

It read more like Mimi looking for a willing applicant for a contract killing. You know how rough it is round her way...

If there's an obvious joke to be had and no one has beaten him to it already, then never fear - myoptika is here!

I thought the elections came early and you were removed from the mod team.

I thought it was an anti-Dudley campaign.

Nevermind.

Hehe I would have gone straight to PMing Comical Gnomes of that were the case.

Why aye, vort Rooncle instead laike.

Dunno. On the one hand, censorship's never a good thing and artists being put under pressure to alter their work is equally bad, on the other I really don't think it's terribly healthy for us as a society that we use swearwords that imply that lady bits = bad, in the exact same way that using "gay" or "fag" as generic terms of abuse is out of order. On the other other hand (I am, apparently, Zaphod Beeblebrox), I've got much less of a problem with "twat" (which seems about on a par in severity with "prick", although people seem happy to use the former to describe men but the latter isn't thrown at women much) than I have with The Other Word.

I wouldn't describe myself as "the easily offended", just the opposite. The words don't offend or outrage me, I just think it's a quirk of language that we'd probably be better off without.

So in summary, I don't know.

No wonder Pod thought you were Dutch

I've never been very good at accents.

Your silly ponce accent on LIVE is awesome.

I'm glad you said that - I was told to pipe down and many other condescending things when I put forward this same opinion, once.

I do agree with you very much, but I think the severity of the word c*nt is something different to the word 'twat'. I think most people se the word c*nt as the most offensive word in our language, and no, I don't think that it is a good thing that the most hateful word that you can think of actually means a woman's sexual organs, either.

Still, if a book were published and used the word c*nt I would be appalled to hear that it had been censored. People may well think that there is a difference in responsibility with children's books, but I really think that this was a bad decision.

I think your "u" key is broken.

I don't know where I stand on this one either, really. When I first read it, I thought "wtf? The word 'twat' shouldn't be in a book for 10 year olds", but I also feel quite strongly against censorship. Then again, this is mainly for things that have been banned outright or are censored for an adult audience. For children, perhaps they should be sheltered from words like this.

As an aside, I also am against the proposed suggestions for giving books age definitions, as it'll stop older children wanting to read books that are 'supposed' to be for younger readers.

Bah, who knows?

No, but I wasn't sure if it might break some people's access to the thread at work. Anyway, I don't like the word and so don't want to use it.

I'm not really convinced that the fact that it is slightly more offensive to call someone a cunt than a prick, a cock or a penis is actually indicative of anything much really. Anyway cunt gets used so much nowadays that it is going the way of all the other swearwords and fast becoming just another word. I wonder how long it will be before the whole idea that swearwords were ever offensive seems ludicrously antiquated?

Only cunts swear, anyway.

Thing is, if you remove the current swearwords from existence, more will rise up yo take their place and, with enough time, will become equally as offensive. Languages evolve, and context/intonation/intent is far more offensive than the word itself. Now what — ban anger? Try getting that past CG.

The Penn & Teller show on swearing was fantastic.

That's absolute ham, man. You're such a fluffwad.

If she hadn't started using words such as 'twat' in books aimed at 10 year olds in the first place, she wouldn't have to have been censored. I swore like a trooper at 10, but I'd have been shocked to see language like that in a book aimed at my age group. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I don't think it's appropriate. Can't we let kids have just a few years of innocence?

Never, there will always be swear words, new ones will take their place, or words that are now quite innocent in their meaning will be given a new, harder edge. Chaucer used his own contemporary equivalent of the word c*nt throughout his writing, especially in The Miller's Tale, it wasn't such a shocking word back then. People will never be without swear words, because people will never bore of offending other people

Well usually when I swear it isn't to offend someone it's just an exclamation. Anyway Stephen Fry is always right:

I can't remember the name of the book, but my 10 year old (he was 8 at the time) read a book where the main characters dad is a drunk. It described the dad "pissing all over the floor". Now we had to explain what that meant, but as soon as we did he was fine with the word, realised that it wasn't the right word to use in conversation, but was able to read the book and enjoy it.

Malc

Too far, man. Too far. That was just hateful

We didn't swear at my school. As unlikely as that may seem, it is true. if somebody swore, which may have happened 3 or 4 times in the whole time I was at primary school, there'd be a shocked silence and everyone would go 'ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm' (for reasons I do not know) and then someone would say 'I'm telling Miss' and everyone would run away in case they were implicated in the event, and the child that had swore would be firmly told off by the teachers.

I was actually shocked when my brother's were younger (they are 14 years younger than me) of the language they used when they were seven or eight - I literally could not believe what I heard when I saw the two of them and their friends playing football in the park one day.

there was a book at my school with swearing in it. I can neither remember the book nor the words, but I do remember asking my teacher about it - she told me to think about who was saying the word - it was a bad character, and bad characters sometimes use that kind of language, because that is part of their bad behaviour. I understood this, in context.* I think that is what Wilson was doing in this book - that character with bad attributes used bad language. Unfortunately I do not think that there is a 10 year old alive today that isn't surrounded by words worse than that in every day life, so keeping their innocence is a lost cause, I think if you do make it apparrent that it is wrong to swear, and something that only the bad characters do, then that is wholly appropriate.

* I must point out that I was also shocked to find a book in the library that had pictures of spiders - HUGE close up photographs of spiders. It disturbed me. one of my friends tried to get me to touch it (the picture of the spider) with my fingers, but it really really upset me, so maybe I was just a particularly soft kid.

This is quite true, and I am converted, you bunch of cocks.






Eeeeeeeeeee... scrubs out mouth

At our school the sound was "ammmmmmmmm", followed by "I'm telling". All kids do this. It's bizarre.

We didn't swear much that I remember at my school, except on occasion to be deliberately "ooooooh! He's naughty!"

I recall saying "bastard" when I was playing with a friend round at his house when I was about 7 or 8 - he told his mum and I got ticked off. Quite right too. Still, If I ever get the chance to drop Gavin in it in later life, I will, the fucking tell-tale bastard.

Isn't it strange how those kind of 'traditions', I guess, permeate every school. What does 'uuuuuuuuuuuuummmmm' or 'aaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmm' mean? Nothing. What does it signify - the slow wind up warning signal to let you know you re in big, big trouble? That's why being a kid is great.

I think the difference is that I swore, but I'd have been devastated if my mother had found out that I did. Swearing felt like something adult and seedy which we indulged in within our peer groups but didn't want any grown-ups to know about. When it's in a child's book, which is writted by an adult (and I admit that I don't really know the context), it sort of breaks that divide and makes it more OK to swear in common parlance.

EDIT: It's was always 'Uuummmm! You're not allowed to do tha-at!' in our school, said in a really annoying sort of 'ner-ner-ne-ner-ner' fashion, just before the little grass would turn and run in the direction of the nearest teacher. Once I had the satisfaction of tripping one such person as she fled; she hit the concrete with a satisfying *splat* that still sends shivers up my spine 20 years on.

See also: Drawing the blue bit at the top of the page to signify sky. When I was about 6 I started doing the sky down to the ground, and my peers mocked me for not understanding that "the sky is above us, stupid".

I'm still bitter about my genius being shouted down by the ignorance of others, see.



This. As with many things, actually, I hated the idea of my parents discovering I'd been bad. I got given lines at senior school in year 1 for saying "shit", and I was terrified about telling my parents, as they'd find out I'd been swearing. It didn't occur to me not to tell them, of course.



Very much agreed, actually, now I come to think of it. If it's in something that's *aimed* at children, then it must be okay *for* children...

It's not slightly more offensive though, is it? "Cock" is a curseword that Top Gear can use pre-watershed. The other's the ne plus ultra of swears.

Is it indicitive of society's general misogyny? Honestly, I don't feel remotely qualified to say. But as I said earlier, personally I equate it with using "gay" as a pejorative. Using the word doesn't just insult the person I'm aiming it at, it belittles a group who largely get a pretty raw deal from society as a whole and I'd rather not be part of that.

Sorry chap, you're going to have to explain why "cock", "prick" or "wanker" (all gender specific insults) don't belittle men but "cunt" belittles women.

Odd. I knew someone who did this (drew the sky to the ground) when he was just four, and his mother was pulled aside in his reception class and told that the child psychologist who looked at the drawings and came in to talk about 'happiness in the classroom' with one of the teachers said it ran against the normal pattern of child development. He is actually still almost bitter about this to this day. I'd think that this person were you if it were not for the fact that his name isn't Chris.

You're such a fucking androgyne, sometimes.

Good christ - that's a bit extreme of them. I started doing it because one of my older sisters, an arty sort, was trying to teach me to draw better. Alternatively my dad may have been abusing me, and I didn't know it. :rollseyes:



On the triple word score, too.

In school (in the class where we did all the horrific creative writing that I've mentioned in the past), the teacher let us use swearing in the stories. PROVIDED... that it was the characters swearing in the context of the story, and not used in verb form.

I don't know, but I don't think it is quite the same thing. None of the words you give carry the same weight in offensiveness, which is why you hear them on TV all the time, yet c*nt you hardly ever do. I do not think that they are the same level of offensiveness.

I think it is the fact that the words you give are little more than gentle insults in comparison to the worst word in the language.