Say vagina, get suspended

[GLWasteful]

@Musicat

My point, since it does not seem to be obvious, is that the age of the person hearing certain sounds is not a determining factor (if indeed there is any factor) of whether injury will result. It may be common assumption, but not factual information, that children are harmed by hearing certain words and that the harm no longer occurs when they grow older.

Even if you don’t feel the subject of this thread is a particular word, consider what would have happened if a word at random were picked from, say, NBC News and used in the performance. Nothing. So it is indeed the particular word, regardless of the reason or source.

Too true. However, certain people choose to convey information to their children in their own fashion and at their own pace. I do not consider my fashion or pace to be the one universal, nor would I care for others pushing their own. Therefore, considering that the principal in this community perhaps has a better grasp of what people choose than anyone on this board, a choice/decision was made. Once again, I do not think that there is anything wrong with the word “vagina”, and my daughter has known it since she was much younger. And creating a hypothetical such as “a word at random” doesn’t seem to speak to a single thing that any news story has reported coming from the administration. Namely: that the show could have been performed in its entirety if the intended audience had known going in what they were about to see. The issue is that these girls (and not “kids” as Kalhoun said, they were fucking honors students) said one thing and did another.

Thank you. I will do just that, and commend you for being so friendly and civil.

Just happy to be part of the team.

[stretch]

@GLWasteful

DSeid: I suppose I’m one of those who feels that restrictions should continue to exist in certain instances and that the final decision as to what happens if students go against those restrictions should happen at the most base level. If the teacher or sponsor feels that they are able to handle it, great. If the teacher/sponsor feels that the offense was egregious enough to warrant interdiction by someone else, then whoever they want to send it up to. That will, in most instances, be the principal. No offense, stretch, but if the principal can’t handle the situation, particularly in the case of something like this, then he or she should probably not be in that position. As soon as you try and have the superintendent stepping in to run the show, it will quickly devolve into chaos. And as a school board member, I have enough crap to worry about without trying to ride herd over students. As to who decides, it should be the principal. Will there be horrible clusterbiblicalknowledges sometimes? Sure, but I honestly don’t know who else such a decision should be left to. To turn that around: Who do you think should make that decision?

Did you see the part where I said “that the principal is still the appropriate person to make this decision”? My point about the higher levels–superintendent and school board–is that after the principal makes his decison(s), these higher levels will be getting involved by either supporting or getting rid of the principal. Sorry, I wasn’t clear.

Can I claim “complex”, too? Because up until now I’d been considering myself a “crusty old bastard”. And “complex” is quicker to think and, if need be, type out.

Hell yeah! I know you’re complex–I enjoy your posts because they are generally nuanced and thoughtful.

[Auntbeast]

Thank you all for a very interesting thread. My vagina thanks you too.

I’m just thinking back to my drama days in middle/high school. We always had a program. Heck, we weren’t nearly as college conscious as kids these days and we never missed an opportunity for the limelight. So I think to myself, there’s the program…Little Kayleigh, Keightlyn and Euthanasia performing an excerpt from The Vagina Monologues…oh crap…how in the heck would they list it in the program?

I also remember that we wrote a play based on nuclear annihilation and no one had a problem with the content. Civilization as we know it, destroyed by our own hands. Okidoki.

I’ve enjoyed your forays into all the other points of this event, but honestly, I’m just flabbergasted that the word vagina was considered unacceptable.

I also guess that the girls said it in unison for another reason no one has mentioned. If one said it, one got in trouble, if they all said it, they all got in trouble, so there was a bit of solidarity there at least from my perception.

[Musicat]

Perhaps I missed seeing this point in the six pages of this thread, but what we have here may be simply a failure to communicate between ages-related cultures. Older people like the principal are probably more reticent about using certain words in certain situations, but the younger generation is more familiar and informal with the same words in similar situations. That’s what I read between the lines from the three-at-once unison performance the girls did of just the one word. It sounds like they were trying to say, “Hey, principal dude, this is something we’re comfortable with, and you’re just an old fuddy-duddy. Accept it and get over it already, cause we’ll be around long after you’re gone.”

[foolsguinea]

What is the information that parents are transmitting at their own pace that is threatened by reference to the middle interior genitalia?

Never mind that we live in an age where TV advertises creams for vaginal yeast infections & talks about benign prostate enlargement.

Sex is one of the most important & morally fraught aspects of our animal existence. I wouldn’t buy the idea that any authority has the right to enable the irresponsibility of any parents who are determined to “protect” their children from knowing about death, or war, or doubt. Why should sex be any different?

[GLWasteful]

@foolsguinea

What is the information that parents are transmitting at their own pace that is threatened by reference to the middle interior genitalia?

Well, sex certainly. Terminology, too. Some parents are going to be prudes and assholes. Others will have spoken to their children of matters sexual and proper terms at a very early age. But I don’t think that I, and I alone, know what’s right for everyone else. Nor, for that matter do you. Such are the ways of the world. It is, to use a new fave term of mine, complex.

Never mind that we live in an age where TV advertises creams for vaginal yeast infections & talks about benign prostate enlargement.

Yeah, and I don’t wanna get into how disturbing it is to see Kim Alexis, she of my youthful masturbatory fantasies, hawking Vagisil. Hell, I still hafta sleep tonight.

Sex is one of the most important & morally fraught aspects of our animal existence. I wouldn’t buy the idea that any authority has the right to enable the irresponsibility of any parents who are determined to “protect” their children from knowing about death, or war, or doubt. Why should sex be any different?

And as soon as you get your own society to run, you get to call the shots as you see fit. And to the best of my knowledge, there’s been nothing in this thread speaking to the sexual aspect. Political? Sure. Puerile? Ayuh, especially in the beginning. All about the word “vagina”? Too goddamned much, erroneous though it’s been. Sexual? Not that I’ve seen. Of course, we’re well into the sixth page of this mother, too, so it’s possible that it’s come up in passing and I, being the multitasking SOB that I am, just missed it. And to expound: You would consider it your right to delve into what death is in front of other people’s children? Whose death? Because there are scads of people who feel that God and Sonny Jesus have got their backs, and when they “pass away” they get whisked right up to heaven where Grandma and Great Aunt Elsie will be waiting with buttermilk and hoecakes. Me? Not so much. So according to you, I would be remiss not to explain in front of other peoples offspring that there’s no such thing? That when you die, you’re done. You wind up feeding worms one way or another? Or war? Whose version? Those who feel that it’s an opportunity to exact vengeance? Those who feel that it’s a necessary evil? Those who think that it’s wrong no matter the root cause? Doubt? Really? The world isn’t quite as black and white as too many people want to see it.

And Musicat: Frankly, I don’t know the age of the principal in this story. I imagine that it’ll be made more clear when the movie-of-the-week comes out starring Tim Daly. But I’m forty. As I said, I remember doing things that I thought would stick it to The Man when I was in high school. Often through the auspices of my high school theatre program. Problem being that most of those things just made me look like an even bigger ass than I was. Which was no mean feat, I can assure you. Hell, I’ve continued to take stands where I thought they would help advance a cause. Disobeying either a request or an order did nothing to advance a cause in this instance. Seems like it stirred up a whole messa shit and not a lot else. I kinda doubt that this school will be doing anything even remotely interesting or thought-provoking anytime soon. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d like to be. But I’ve got this niggling thought in the back of my mind that they’ll be doing Seven Brides for a fucking musical and Mama, Say ‘I Do!’ for a play. And that to my mind is the true travesty here.

[GLWasteful]

@stretch

I enjoy your posts because they are generally nuanced and thoughtful.

I’m not at all sure that we see precisely the same thing when we see my posts.

And I had, indeed, missed your statement that the principal should be the final arbiter of what goes down in his or her school.

[Zoe]

Zoe: There is nothing dirty or evil or charged about the word vagina.

GLWasteful: Nor has a single person contributing to this thread claimed anything of the sort.

I was referring to this comment by this single person:

GLWasteful: The people in charge decided that the word was charged enough that it might offend some in attendance.

foolsguinea: What is the information that parents are transmitting at their own pace that is threatened by reference to the middle interior genitalia?

GLWasteful: Well, sex certainly. Terminology, too.

To the fifty percent of the audience that brought their vaginas with them to the program, the word vagina is probably more likely to connote gender than it is sex or terminology. We’re kind of used to these things. It’s the spoken word that we’re not used to.

Judging from his letter, I think the principal did consult with other faculty members in reaching his decision. He has a right to make the call. He’s the first one who is held legally responsible.

The disciplinary measures that were taken were appropriate for the insubordination. In the school where I taught, students in in-school suspension were allowed to do work from each of their classes so that they did not lose a grade for the day. That was the advantage of in-school over out-of-school suspension. (That, and you got to listen to marvelous operas!)

Part of learning to think critically is knowing when to question or even defy authority. Thoreau’s refusal to pay a poll tax influenced Gandhi and set a nation free. And that influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others.

A poll tax seemed like a minor issue to me when I was in high school. Maybe the word vagina does to you too. The Vagina Monologues is all about being comfortable with that which makes us female. So much of the time when that part of the body is referenced, it is used as an insult for someone that is intensely disliked. There are all sorts of unpleasant things associated with our vaginas including even the clinical term itself. What’s more, we ain’t got no balls!

Women wish to improve the messages (subliminal and overt) that girls receive about their bodies almost from birth. If someone in the audience thinks that the word vagina is offensive, it is time that she or he learns better.

The words bull, leg, breast and thigh were at one time considered inappropriate. Male bovies were called “she cows.” On a chicken, legs and thighs were called “dark meat” and the breast was “white meat.” Even the legs on a piano were often covered up. We got over it.

I was twenty-four years old before I heard the word menstruation pronounced properly. I had only heard it slurred, whispered or mispronouned. I was so surprised when I heard it that I checked a dictionary to make certain that it was correct. If that word was appropriate in a Methodist Sunday School Board film in 1967, I think that it’s time to introduce vagina in our public school programs.

[GLWasteful]

@Zoe

I was referring to this comment by this single person:

And the individual that you reference never once said that “vagina” was “evil”, “dirty” or “charged”. What I did say, though, was,

@GLWasteful

The people in charge decided that the word was charged enough that it might offend some in attendance.

Bolding mine.
I will thank you to pay closer attention in the future.

Inre the rest of your post: I mostly agree. I’m still not sure that suspension was necessarily the best punishment, but I could be wrong, too.

If someone in the audience thinks that the word vagina is offensive, it is time that she or he learns better.

Again, I agree. But I don’t think that I know the best way to teach them. Nor do I think that these three girls necessarily knew better, either. And judging by what I’m able to recall about my own misspent youth, when I was a callow youth in high school not only did I not know the right way to to teach adults better, what I did know taught them that I was a snot-nosed little shit who needed a good thrashing and that schools were too goddamned permissive. And giving that impression to parents does more harm than good. Particularly when you are attempting to pass on information of any importance.

[tdn]

@Auntbeast

I’m just thinking back to my drama days in middle/high school. We always had a program. Heck, we weren’t nearly as college conscious as kids these days and we never missed an opportunity for the limelight. So I think to myself, there’s the program…Little Kayleigh, Keightlyn and Euthanasia performing an excerpt from The Vagina Monologues…oh crap…how in the heck would they list it in the program?

Dearie, we’ve been over this. Is it so hard to imagine that it was listed as “My Short Skirt by Eve Ensler”?

[Sunrazor]

I’m with **WhyNot ** on this one. Sometimes civil disobedience is the only recourse, when government (in the form of school administrators) insist on pandering to the lowest common denominator. I hope a lot of attention is focused on this, and school administrators are forced to answer the question, “Why would you ban the word ‘vagina’?” The only truthful answer would have to be, “Because some parts of the human body cause me to blush with shame when I think about them, and I want children to blush with shame when they think about them, too, and the best way I know of to cause that to happen is to ban any reference to those body parts.”

[Auntbeast]

Well, condescension aside, I had no idea what the name of the individual piece was, if there even was a name for it, other than the fact it was an excerpt from The Vagina Monologues. So thank you for educating me, and double plus thanks for the tone. It has been my experience that if you are quoting something from a larger text, you state what the larger text is.

[GLWasteful]

@Sunrazor

The only truthful answer would have to be, “Because some parts of the human body cause me to blush with shame when I think about them, and I want children to blush with shame when they think about them, too, and the best way I know of to cause that to happen is to ban any reference to those body parts.”

Or, y’know, because the principal felt that tailoring a piece to take the audience into consideration might not be a bad idea.

Waitaminute. . .haven’t I seen that very thought expressed? Somewhere? Hmmmm

[Malacandra]

@Sunrazor

I’m with **WhyNot ** on this one. Sometimes civil disobedience is the only recourse, when government (in the form of school administrators) insist on pandering to the lowest common denominator. I hope a lot of attention is focused on this, and school administrators are forced to answer the question, “Why would you ban the word ‘vagina’?” The only truthful answer would have to be, “Because some parts of the human body cause me to blush with shame when I think about them, and I want children to blush with shame when they think about them, too, and the best way I know of to cause that to happen is to ban any reference to those body parts.”

Blush with shame. Right. :rolleyes:

Y’know, the elderly churchwarden who runs the village table-tennis club is a close enough friend that I’d cheerfully say to her “I heard you were having some trouble with your leg. How’s that working out?”. And, though in general the vee-word doesn’t make me blush with shame, I’d really, really hesitate to substitute it for the word “leg” in that context.

You know very well that another perfectly truthful answer to the question above would be “Because many people do not consider it proper to mention some parts of the human body gratuitously, and we think it polite not to violate their boundaries”. Only truthful answer my granny’s snatch. :rolleyes:

[tdn]

@Auntbeast

Well, condescension aside,

I didn’t mean to be condescending, so sorry if I came off that way. But it’s a point I’ve been trying to make for six pages now, and I’m beginning to feel a little invisable. You can understand my frustration.

It has been my experience that if you are quoting something from a larger text, you state what the larger text is.

Normally, yes. But one would think that if the principal banned the v-word from the performance, it would be reasonable to assume that it was not printed in the program, either. I have no idea what was actually printed, but was simply offering possible alternatives.

[Cervaise]

@Zoe

I think that it’s time to introduce vagina in our public school programs.

This would certainly minimize attendance problems.

[Cowboy8467]

Perusing CNN this morning I noticed that now the author of the monologues will be traveling to the school to speak with the student body. I also noticed in the article that the superintendent has now postponed the suspensions for “further study”. I guess they got more attention than they were hoping for.

Link

[Cowboy8467]

FWIW the suspension was lifted

[UTEPMiners]

Wow, I don’t really agree with that. They shouldn’t have been censored in the first place, but once they broke the rule the principal set, they should be punished. But this could also be a good thing, maybe it is a step towards everything having to do with sex and genitalia becoming not so taboo.