Ahh. Didn’t click on yer link.
So let’s play out one of these girls futures …
She is so excited over this empowerment that she goes to college and majors in both Women’s Studies and Literature. Of course then after college she works in retail. 
She believes that cleavage revealing bra-less shirts are a statement, a liberation flag, after all, breasts are just a functional part of the anatomy. Her boss disagrees and tells her that more modest attire is required. She ignores her. Now it might even be that a large segment of the customer base agrees with her political position and a large number are just coming in to gawk as she leans forward (the customleer base) … the boss’s concern that it hurts her business may be wrong … is this former girl now woman right to ignore the boss’s directive?
I’m just wondering if the support that these kids are getting is the sort that supports “free speech” so long as someone is saying that which they want to hear and censorship of that which they do not agree.
Me, I don’t care if the principal was right or wrong in his assessment of his families sensibilities. I don’t care if the political statement these kids were making was nobler than noble or if they were just looking for attention. In school you play by the rules. It was correctly the prinicipal’s call and they knew what he said even if they never said “Okay” and instead allowed their silence to be misunderstood as assent.
I expect you’re about to get 15 replies explaining (correctly) how a business is completely different from a school and employer-employee relationships are very different from those between principal and student.
Yes, because the consequences could be DIRE… School is the last time to do that. The stakes are usually nil, and even if the girls have to serve the suspension, what they learned would make it worthwhile.
Yes, the situations are different: adult employees have more rights. But the core principle is the same.
The point was actually that adult employers have rights that schools don’t, but yes, adult employees also have the right to quit a job if they don’t like the rules of the workplace. And the purpose of a business is different from the purpose of a school.
If you insist on being a reductionist and taking all of the details of the situation, maybe - but what’s the point of that? A case should be judged on its own merits, not analogies.
So let’s play out alternate futures. The girls go on to college. They get good jobs and are productive members of society. They excel, as many students do after a slight run in with their high school administration.
They chose their battle wisely, IMO. A battle that makes a reasoned stand (vagina is not a bad word no matter where it’s said), a big impact (hey, we’re talking about it!), and minimal consequences (in-school detention is really nothing).
I wish my kids had chosen their battles as wisely.
stretch your points are why I felt that Whynot had posted well … mostly. They made a choice and are being punished for their choice. The punishment is measured and no big deal given that they are indeed guilty as charged. That should be it, end of story. So why the public outrage that they are being punished? Why the outpouring of support for their “free speech rights” and decrying “censorship” except for the fact that the, what Marley23 calls, “own merits” of the situation are that they are disrespecting the principal and disobeying his directive in order to express a political POV that many who post here (including me) and even who live in that town agree with. So that makes it alright. Again, free speech for those who agree with me; censorship is fine if I don’t like what you have to say. It just reminds too much of those who want to pass a flag burning amendment. Would the same people be rushing to their anti-censorship/free speech defense if the principal had declared “no political grandstanding” and a group got up to support Bush’s Iraq policy or to discuss “the scourge of illegal immigrants” and express support for the Minute Men? I doubt it. I think instead they’d be defending the right of the principal to discipline and bemoaning how rude and direspectful these kids were.
Because some of us don’t think they did anything wrong. As has been repeatedly expressed in the last five pages or whatever we’re at.
The horror, the horror.
I don’t see the politics here. There’s a difference of opinion, but no partisanship involved.
Yeah, like I said: violating an unjust rule is okay by me.
From what part of my post (or anyone else’s) do you glean the second part of that remark? You’re charging hypocrisy here, so back it up. Show me somebody in this thread who has said it’s okay if they talk about vaginas, but not if they talk about Jesus or something.
Yeah, maybe. But I think criticizing people for things you think they’d say (but haven’t) is a really stupid exercise.
Well, having read the linked NYT article, I can only say that there are a helluva lot of people in Cross River who are incapable of paying attention. “Censorship,” indeed.
Working backward: Yes, the way the word was used was respectable, and dare I say, respectful as well. It wasn’t censored and certainly within the confines of this thread, nobody thinks it’s a bad word. As to the statement that they didn’t do it to be defiant of the administration, well, I’ll do the decent thing (for a change) and withhold my judgment. However, what was in no way respectful or respectable was their inability to accurately judge the composition of the audience that they had already (or so it appears) been told would consist of younger kids and parents.
And yoo hoo! Kalhoun! It appears that the number of concerned and misguided (again, censorship?) parents has now increased to “many”. So you’re up in that wise, but these students and their parents also concede that there are “some” people who feel that the school did the right thing on the grounds of insubordination. Which, interestingly enough, is precisely what has been offered forth in this thread.
And while I’ve read things from Eve Ensler in the past and rather liked what she had to say, she’s light years from the issue in this case, and moving further away at the speed of light.
Politics isn’t just Pubbies and Dems. The Vagina Monologues is a political statement.
So we each get to decide which rules are just and which are unjust and only follow the ones we like. Yup, that’s how the world works. Those tax invaders will be happy to hear it.
As to my assumption of what people would do if it was someone saying that they felt was inappropriate …well, I’ve asked several times and the most I’ve gotten is your resounding
I’d be happy to be corrected, but so far I haven’t heard anyone doing that.
True enough. I think it’s too bad that people are so touchy these days about anything being political. They didn’t criticize anyone, weren’t mean and weren’t vulgar unless you have a problem with short skirts and platitudes about sexual liberation.
You’ve missed the point. I’m not discussing how I think the world works – the way the world works is that bland and timid people like this principal frequently get to tell people what to do. I’m aware of how the world works. You keep asserting that you play by the rules in school, and it’s important to follow the rules. I’m talking about morals, and yes, it’s moral to defy stupid rules. Sometimes it’s an obligation, sometimes it’s a choice, but it’s not intrinsically wrong to violate an injust law.
Perhaps other people are ignoring it because it’s an irrelevant, stupid question. Actually it’s not a question, it’s an accusation - and since it’s a hypothetical, all you can really do is assert that you wouldn’t act that way. What’s the point?
Speaking of censorship…I just lost my preview screen and my post isn’t showing up.
What the hell? Why is this showing up, and editable, but not my intended post?
Helloooooo? Damn, and just this morning I posted nice words about the new server…
OK, this is really bizarre. After the preview page didn’t show up, I saved my actual text in Word, and I keep trying to paste it in here. When I do, the preview page doesn’t load and the post shows up blank. Yet when I type this (enthralling, I’m sure) gibberish, it previews and posts correctly.
Sorry folks, looks like you’ll have to wait for my masterpiece. :dubious:
OK, that was really bizarre. I forgot the “/” in a closing quote tag, and instead of just displaying weird coding, it disappeared my entire post. That may be the strangest thing I’ve ever experiences on this board! Here we go, after much ado:
Sorry, I found this thread was making me headachey yesterday so I just lurked for a day. So y’all are going to have to deal with another long post to reply. Or just skip it and go onto the next joke, whichever you prefer.
That’s because I focused on the wrong part of it and it made it sloppy. Sorry. Let’s say that I was trying to illuminate the learning process, which includes learning consequences, and I in no way think the girls should not suffer consequences for their choices. Yes, they’re going to get both positive and negative consequences for their actions - this action and every other action in their lives. It’s by trying and learning that they learn when it’s worth it to stick you neck out for your beliefs and when it isn’t.
Again, the principal should decide what shows or, yes, words, are appropriate for the event and how they are likely to be perceived by the potential audience. If *Spicorama *isn’t suitable, then it should not be allowed. If the kids feel it is morally right to perform it anyway, then they should try that out. See what the consequence is - from the principal and from the community.
I suspect the hate motivation is going to quickly spin into the “threatening the physical safety of others” loophole I so cleverly hid in my rhetoric. I do support the right to limit speech when it may incite others to violence, and yes, motivation is clearly a deciding factor in such cases.
Ohh, can I do one?
After a stint at college doing a dual degree in world religions and women’s studies, she moves to the Pakistan and helps in the formation of several girls’ schools there. One of her students, inspired by her teacher’s stories of fighting for intellectual freedom as a young girl, becomes a lawyer specializing in women’s rights. Along the way, she abolishes, through persuasion, not force, the zina laws against rape victims.
But as for your projected future, I’d say the same as **Marley23 **- your young hoochie-mama has every “right” to wear slutty clothes to work in defiance of her boss. He has every right to fire her for not following company policy, or to make her punch out or to send her home for appropriate clothing, and she has the further “right” to leave the job when she’s not getting enough hours because she’s always being sent home because of her clothes.
Well, isn’t it censorship, in the most literal sense?
freedictionary.com gives this as the definition for “censorship”:1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
Its first definition of “censor”: “1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable”
It’s not *illegal *censorship, because it’s not being done by the state or a state agency (or so courts have claimed in the past in other high school “first amendment” cases), but it is an authority figure (“person authorized”) dictating (“removing or suppressing”)what may not be read or said (“books, films or other material”). It’s practically the definition of censorship!
I hope it’s clear by now that I am not in this group. Free speech is for everybody - morally, if not legally - as long as we’re safe about it. Free speech is *especially *for those I disagree with - but I reserve the right to be pissed off about what you say and yell back just as loudly. Because if I agree with you, it’s *not *about “free speech”, it’s just “saying what’s so.” 
Free speech doesn’t legally exist for high school kids, which is why speaking freely is an act of civil disobedience, and the kids should take their punishment like any other.
I’ve yet to see anything to indicate that the principal in this situation is either bland or timid. He’s kept at least one book in the curriculum against parental complaints, he allowed a trio of juniors to perform a reading from “The Vagina Monologues” at an Open Mic Night where the audience was expected to consist of parents and younger siblings of students performing, he either asked or told these girls not to use a word because of the anticipated audience, and when they used it anyway, he punished them. Bland and timid, to my aged and infirm eyes, would entail rolling over and pulling whatever portion of the curriculum is found offensive (and from experience I can tell you that the people complaining, while in the minority, are a huge pain in the ass), and/or refusing to allow the girls to perform from a charged show at an all ages venue.
And this could not be more true. However, there is a vast difference between obeying an unjust law and acquiescing in accomodation to your audience.
Well, some of us think that they both deserve the punishment they are getting and that they did the right thing. These are not mutually exclusive thoughts–I can believe both things at the same time.
The principal has two choices here: he could refuse to let them participate in the program or he could ask them to censor the work. He asked them to censor.
The girls had three choices at that point: they could censor the work, they could chose not to participate, or they could read the work as written and buck the system. They chose to buck the system.
They may end up paying the consequences of bucking the system. Or the system could be changed because they bucked it. The community could rise up and explain to the principal that he was wrong in his assumptions of what they would and would not tolerate or embrace. And if that is what happens, then the girls did exactly the right thing. They showed the community what the principal is doing on the community’s behalf and they showed the community what they believe. And now the community can better define its mores and values to the principal that assumed they would all be ascairt of the word vagina.
So, yes, they did a “wrong” by going against the principal’s wishes. They did a “right” by following their convictions. Communities need strong, risk-taking individuals just as they need meek followers.
Y’know, I spend assloads of time talking to my husband about why it’s okay for people in general to say hateful things but why it pisses me off when he does it. Please don’t assume that I support what these girls did because it’s not my ox being gored–that’s kinda offensive. I don’t assume that you support censorship because you believe that people should always follow the rules.
True; I was being a little unfair. I think that describes his action in this case and I’ll leave it at that.
That’s a decision a performer has to make. It’s one that reasonable people can differ on, and should be able to differ on without fear of punishment.
Okay, I suppose. But how, precisely, do his actions read as either bland or timid?
Ordinarily, yes. Hell, absolutely yes in most instances. But this was an all ages gig, and as I said somewhere else, in order to be treated like adults, young people need to act like adults. I know that if I were to be performing a reading from The Vagina Monologues and noticed that the crowd was made up of people with children that I would, at the very least, be hesitant to possibly offend the audience members. Now, when I was in high school, and the earth was still cooling and dinosaurs were dropping like flies, I might not have been able to make that determination. Of course, there would have been no way in hell that the administration where I went to high school would have allowed a reading for a venue such as this in the first place. Which leads back to a lack of blandness or timidity on the part of the principal.
Dork.
Can I say that?
From the principal’s statement:
Everyone knows that if a 5yo child heard that word, he/she would be scarred for life.
7yo? Ditto.
8yo? No, this age is safe.
9yo? Wrong
10yo? OK
11Yo? Bad
See, it’s very important to screen out certain ages, or penis will ensue.