Names.

[rivka]

Okay, I have to post something so that bad news doesn't stay on the top of my journal for the week that we're at SUUSI. (Laptop was stolen, remember, so no updates from the road.) After packing every imaginable item in the world, however - do you have any idea how much gear three people, one of whom is a toddler, require for a week's active vacation bracketed by a long and tedious car trip? - I am out of energy for posting anything particularly brilliant, so I think I'll just point and rant:

What is with parents who deliberately decide to teach their daughters cutesy names for female genitalia? Especially, for god's sake, "girl parts" - which seems to be one of the most popular options? Should I go back and try to expunge the word "elbow" from Alex's vocabulary, in favor of "bendy parts?" After all, as these euphemizers point out defensively, it's not technically inaccurate.

Also: Something is seriously wrong when women who have actually had a baby come out of their vaginas don't understand the difference between a vagina and a vulva.

Also also: Something is extra-specially wrong with the linguist who claims that, because adult women futz around embarrassedly with euphemisms, it's not linguistically "correct" to teach children the anatomical names, because "it's not what native adult speakers spontaneously generate." What. The. Hell?

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Maybe people make up cutesy words because they don't want the words for their small child's body to have any sexual connotation, so they won't use the same words that they use for themselves and their partners? I'm not defending the practice, but that's a guess. To me penis and scrotum and vulva and vagina are appropriate in many contexts, but some other expressions are just about adult genitals and I would be creeped out by using them for a child.

[ailbhe]

Mouth.

Shoulderblades.

Hip-bones (ok, maybe that's too racy...)

Tongue (definitely too racy).

Etc.

(We say vulva in our house, and always have. Um, or "bulva").;;