Category: Language/Slanguage

Humour is ever so much better than violence

Prop 8 takes one in the goolies.

The cats, each in his own way, mourn Jeff’s absence; one by pissing copiously all over the chair he normally occupies in the kitchen, I’ve already Feliway’d it, and the other by voluntarily sitting in my lap for the first time in six months.  Gizmo was sitting in my lap when Eddie started howling piteously at the back door (the wind is rattling the doors and windows) so I had to stand up and push him off my lap.  He sat in the kitchen doorway, tail switching and with a miffed look.  He let Eddie have a cuff on the way by for good measure.

Teaching the children to swear

Jeff says he likes it when I rant.  Not in person, of course, that’s yucky, but the written rants are okay.

Today I’d like to rant about teaching children to swear.

Now, in traditional child rearing, parents don’t swear and so…. children don’t swear.  If they do swear, they get paddled, or grounded, or whatever the traditional punishment method is.  Paul and I were not so much with the traditional child rearing, except those parts that are kinda apple pie, like getting them immunized and taking them to school and feeding, clothing and housing them adequately. But we did a lot of non traditional stuff, like nursing until they could talk and cosleeping.  And, not to put too fine a point on it, we both swear.  Paul is less pungent than I on most occasions, but he can certainly let out a beaut from time to time, and so, we had a dilemma.

The child rearing books frown most creasingly at hypocrisy on the part of parents.  We were essentially left with two options; scold the children for imitating us, or – and this was not an easy decision – TRAINING them how to swear.  On the face of it, this is nuts, but this is how it works.

About the time the kids start swearing – usually around four but you could probably profitably do it until the kid is about eight – you sit them down with all of the words, and you go through them all.  FIRST.  Do not assume that children know what the words mean.  Make sure they know.  This took almost an hour, because the kids got right into the swing of things, and also there were many side trips… kike, paki, chink and nigger took a long while to explain especially to kids who were in racially balanced daycare from the time they were tiny, and went to equally racially balanced schools.  SECOND.  Having defined the words, EXPLAIN WHY THEY HURT.  The blasphemy words hurt people who are religious, the bodily function words hurt people who are squeamish, the slurs hurt real people ‘Fag” being an example, even if partly recovered by Dan Savage – anyway, you get the idea.  You don’t tell kids that the words are bad, you tell them that they have varying effects on different people, and that some people would rather be slapped than listen to foul language.  THIRD.  You tell them – and this is really important – that there is not a single word on that list that they can’t say, in or out of context, at home.  You also give them a list of adults they may swear in front of.  In other words, you kinda sorta keep a secret – that there are people who know, and people who don’t know.  There are people on the inside, and people on the outside. There isn’t a four year old on the planet who isn’t familiar with this level of mild social hypocrisy but you’re also providing a safety valve in case the kids need to talk about something important with a family intimate – who isn’t you – thank you Jan and Soon and Catherine.  FOURTH  You give them the Canonical List of people NOT TO SWEAR IN FRONT OF.

  1. Grandparents, font of all prezzies.  Why?  Because when little kids swear, it’s not their fault, it’s the parents’ fault, and you don’t want the grands to think we’re bad parents, right?  I know you aren’t going to believe this, but this is precisely the kind of reasoning you can use on a child that age.  Then you casually mention the prezzies again.  Kids aren’t stupid.  Also, we mentioned older folks, as having a higher standard of behaviour than the rest of us.
  2. Babysitters and babysitters’ children.  Why?  Because babysitters can hire and fire us, and if we make life difficult for them or are ‘bad influences’ on their kids, out the door we will go.  Kids got that one in a real hurry.
  3. Schoolteachers and schoolmates.  Why?  It’s not worth the hassle.
  4. Anything in a uniform.  It can be a busdriver or an escalator repair mechanic, but if you get out of the habit of swearing in front of uniformed individuals, you will be in good shape later.

At the end of our dialogue – imagine keeping the attention of a four year old girl and a six year old boy for two hours, which we did, and many times Paul and I were blown away by the observational skills and emotional savvy both kids demonstrated that day  – the kids had a working knowledge of swearing and they didn’t break training until Katie was 11. After that I didn’t really care – nobody was expecting me & Paul to have ‘control’ over their behaviour at that point anyway.

YMMV. Blessed be!

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A GREAT language blog, hours of fun here.
Honest to God, I thought the kid would make an exit there and then.

Why would somebody ask for ‘more ranting’?

Tonight I would like to rant about the lack of menstruation rituals in our culture. Tonight I’m going to take the man’s view, as the woman’s view about it isn’t nearly transgressive enough for me ce soir la. Jeez, where’s an accent grave when I need one…
If I was a man, I would want rituals and predictive patterns in young women’s lives that preserved their fertility for their true purpose, namely, making babies with me and not with other men. Having some kind of ceremony where it was drilled into the girl’s head that she had one shot at the childbearing game and if she slept with the wrong guy it was game the fuck over would be useful if my strategy for access to childbearing women meant I was employed and civil. Mind you, if my strategy is to just rape the shit out of her and hope for a lucky plug, it’s still better than if she was really trying to save it for the right guy. Her body may betray her and pop an egg for me. I’d be the ‘wrong guy’ – but I’d still be first. Now, the sperm competition theory of fucking, which holds that guys enjoy sharing girls because if you’re second (or later) you come way harder (your sperm will ‘wash away’ that of your, uh, competitor/buddy), so if you let your buddy go first, because you don’t really care if you get her pregnant, and you’d prefer to come harder because of your wiring, you’ve more or less dropped out of the discussion about breeding. You’ve actually given some consideration to the notion, which is why you’re wearing a condom while all of these shenanigans are going on. I mean, it’s still rape, but there’s a different angle. You get it now? All different styles of thinking about ‘the breeding thing’ lead to different results in terms of how it affects the woman’s life. Oh, sorry, I’ve gone back into the women’s way of thinking about this, ‘scuse me all to hell.

So mOm, did I make you laugh really hard on the phone tonight, or what?

Back to the subject at hand. Women should have menstruation rites so that they actually have two whole chunks of time to think about fertility without having to do any work. That is, in part, what rituals are all about. It’s about the whole “stop working and start thinking” thing that has made humanity what it is. Having enough excess capacity in your life to be able to stop and think is what makes for civil life. Having the spare time to develop morality makes morality. Leisure, in short, makes ethical life possible. But don’t worry, in the end it’s all about sex. Yeehaw. Hurry hurry love.
Did I ever say why it was I refer to my mother as mOm? It’s because when I spell her title that way, it is the “Kilroy was here” or “Clem” sign. See his hands, on either side of his head? Te he. But I also do it because of where I got the idea of it, pOp – which is a clown face with a big nose in the middle. Squint and you’ll see.