Language Police

Pandagon has got a post up about the censoring of language by the FCC. I think it's a complete load of bullshit that "fuck" is uttered a in millions of homes everyday but never on network TV- cause we must protect the children.

So of course- the "we must protect the children" dipshits come out.

I have always taken the view that exposure and explanation is better than walling a child up in a candy frosted land of pure thoughts. This applies to:

Sex education: sex happens- if you make me a grandma before I turn 50- I'll kill you, use a condom, make sure that both sides enthusiastically consent.

Violent video games -it's fun to play a warrior hero in a game, but that is fantasy and violence is not heroic in real life. In real life people really get hurt and die and it's much harder to figure out who the bad guy is.

Porn: If you ever try to treat a woman like women are treated in porn she will not enjoy it. Porn is fake, real sex doesn't look like that. And those sites put viruses on my computer- that is bad bad bad!

And the topic of this post- Language!

Cuss words are earned in our house. That means that it needs to be something bad enough to warrant a cuss word. A six year old doesn't usually have anything terrible enough to warrant a cuss word. A twelve year old may have a few things, and the Kid gets to test out usage with me without fear that I am going to fly off the handle. There are a few rules though- he is never allowed to use words that insult groups of people that he is not a part of- meaning the only racial slurs he would be allowed are cracker or honkey, and since he has a penis he doesn't get to call someone a coward by calling them a pussy (Hello! They push babies out of pussies- nothing cowardly in that!)

In an effort to bullyproof the kid, we run through things that would be appropriate comebacks to teasing. Those comebacks cannot be racist or sexist or ableist and since they are highly likely to be used at school, can only contain cuss words in foreign languages. He can call someone an asshole in Russian, for that I am proud.

But what does this have to do with the "But what about the children" language police?

Last summer, the Kid was walking up to the grocery store when 3 other kids stopped him and tried to rob him. They pushed him around, hit him and wanted him to give up his money. His response was "Fuck off".

He came home, we called the police. The other kids were found and their defense was "we tried to rob him but he cussed at us. "

Let's see- trying to rob someone= actual crime (in this case, because they hit him it would have counted as a felony even though they didn't get anything out of it), responding to a crime with "fuck off" = not a crime and a completely reasonable response to the situation.

Somehow we have kids who think that it is just as bad to cuss at someone as it is to rob them. Either cussing is being highly overestimated in it's criminality, or we have some fucked-up value system. And it wasn't just the kids, when the officer came back and told me what had happened (which I already knew from my kid) he expected me to be shocked by the "Fuck off". When I said "Fuck off is a pretty appropriate response to that situation, don't ya think?" he had to think about it for a second but he agreed.

So I think that I will teach my kid that cussing is ok but robbery is not.

(Endnote- while we could have prosecuted the kids, I don't generally think kid jail is a good idea. Instead I asked the officer to scare them and their parents really bad with the idea that we could press charges of felony robbery for what they did. Kid hasn't had a problem since. )