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

[naomikritzer]

I'm actually highly amused by the person who uses "fine china" as a euphemism for the genitals. That's a lovely way to avoid the kid embarrassing you right up to the point where they hear someone talk about eating dinner off the fine china in a conversation where they actually mean, you know, plates and stuff.

I use vagina, vulva, penis, butt, and other standard terms for body parts. We do say "pee" rather than "urinate," "poop" rather than "defecate," etc., so it's not all-anatomy-text all the time around here or anything, but I do make a conscious effort not to use the cutesy euphemisms.

First, I've read that kids who don't learn the proper terms are more likely to be victims of sexual molestation. I don't know if this is true or an urban legend (Rivka, you probably actually know this, is it true?) but it's easy enough to just teach them the right words for the parts of their body.

Second, it goes along with my general philosophy towards early sex ed, which I got from my mother. She suggested that I answer all questions about where babies come from exactly the way I would answer questions about the digestive system. If a kid asks where your food goes when you eat it, you just explain it, even though poop is gross and kids find it funny. You limit the level of detail but it's determined by your kid's attention span rather than "OMG we can't tell them about poop YET, what if they tell all the other kids at preschool tomorrow during show & tell?"

As a bonus, it's actually much easier to explain this stuff to a young kid, because a really young kid is just curious. There's nothing prurient when they ask, there's no embarrassment, they just want some factual information.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

As A Professional (nursery teacher for many years) I don't think of "butt" as a silly euphemism, it's as much a name for that part as belly is for abdomen. I just don't like cutesy names, pure euphemism. I guess I don't like . . . dimunitives. I don't mind penis, or pecker, but willy bugs me, and I think of "pee pee" as urine.

I like balls, or testicles, or scrotum. I don't mind vulva or even, as I knew from one family, "cooch," for the outside mound or "vagina" for the inside, but . . . girlparts? That bugs me.

I use "poop" for bowel movements most of the time but am okay with BM. I associate BM, though, with Grandma trying to get us to use proper language, not natural use. Poop, pee. I don't mind "shit" from a child, too, as long as they know that it's one of those things that requires context. I guess I prefer "poop."

I just want to be 1) clear and 2) straightforward. I don't want to be vague or euphemistic.