What do you guys think of this?

Yes, it is safe for work.

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?

"However, Jacqueline doesn't want to offend her readers or her readers' parents, so when the book comes to be reprinted the word will be replaced with twit."

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

She had the following say

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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. (...) I just think it's a quirk of language that we'd probably be better off without.

I think your "u" key is broken.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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'

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

Isn't it strange how those kind of 'traditions', I guess, permeate every school.

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

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?

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.

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.

You're such a fucking androgyne, sometimes.

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.