Lady Julia’s Entranced Realm

According to CBC News,  a parent’s complaint regarding “sexually explicit content” recently led to the removal of  “Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary” from schoolrooms teaching fourth and fifth grade children.*  The offensive content?

Oral sex – “oral stimulation of the genitals”

After review by a panel comprised of parents, teachers, and school administrators, the dictionaries have been returned to the classroom and students may access them only if their parents have signed a permission slip.

Does anyone else remember looking up the meaning of “dirty words” when you heard them?  I remember giggling with my friends during library time when we tried to find as many as possible in the time we were allotted (or before the teacher caught us).  I understand the urge to protect children, but by the time a child is in public school a few years, they’ve heard most “dirty words” countless times.  Because of this, wouldn’t it be prudent to allow children to learn the correct meaning of terms they are already hearing (and probably using), should they wish to know?

In other book banning news, FOX News reports this week a middle school in Virginia removed, “The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition” by Anne Frank, after a complaint by a parent that the book contains “sexual references”.  The county’s Director of Instruction “didn’t want to make a big deal” out of the situation so he acted on the complaint by removing the book and replacing it with the originally published version, one censored by Anne’s father to remove the sexual content (among other things).

“The Diary of a Young Girl” has long been a reading assignment for many seventh or eighth grade students.**  It’s written by a 13-15 year old girl who endured the horrors of hiding for two years from the Nazis in a confined attic and who later died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

I read the censored version of Anne’s diary when I was in school (although I didn’t know at the time it was censored).  It was powerful, it was frightening, it was real.  It’s true I didn’t suffer from the removal of Anne Frank’s innocent description of her vagina.  (She describes it without being crass and remarks she doesn’t see how a man fits in that little hole and she certainly doesn’t understand how a baby comes out.)   That said, I do not believe I would have been harmed by it either.  In fact, I know I wouldn’t have.

The same year I read “The Diary of a Young Girl”, we (most of the girls in my class) were passing around copies of “smut” books some had either bought or swiped from their mothers, books like “Sweet Savage Love” by Rosemary Rogers.  I assure you nothing an innocent girl could have written in her journal would have compared to the things described in books that fell open to all the naughty bits because the books had been opened to those pages so many times.

I will only add that I was a sheltered child.  Seriously sheltered.  My parental sex education consisted of  a set of books from Time Life that addressed the biology of sex and sexual maturation, and one sentence from my father.   “Yeah sex is good or everyone wouldn’t be doing it, but if you do it before you get married I’ll kill you.”   Sheltering didn’t help me, it only led me to alternative sources to satisfy my curiosity.

I understand and respect the opinions of people who are concerned about protecting their children, but quite often I think they must not remember what they or their friends were like when they are children.  Wouldn’t talking to your children be a much better way to address things we must all eventually learn?

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* Approximately ages 10-11

** Approximately ages 12-14

Powerful aftershocks continue to strike the country of Haiti.   As many as 200,000 people have died, while an estimated one million were injured. Many hospitals, homes, and vital services have been destroyed. An estimated total of 600,000 to 700,000 people are in need of food, water, shelter and medical care. (That’s approximately the size of the city of Baltimore proper.)

I’ve avoided blogging about this for a couple of reasons.  It’s receiving world wide coverage so I thought, what can I say that would influence people more than the images being flashed across their screens?  Also, it breaks my heart to think about all those poor people.  I selfishly thought I would make a donation and leave the fundraising to celebrities and the media.

I received a request from a friend that reminded me we must all try to do our part.  Perhaps you’ve already given.  Can you give again?  I’m going to skip some luxuries and give a little more, because I have things like a home, food, a soft bed, and medical care that so many Haitians – 40 percent of which are children under 15 years old – do not have.

I’m sure you have your charity of choice. If you need suggestions, here are a few of mine:

The Salvation Army International

The International Red Cross

UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Fund)

Regardless if you can contribute monetarily, if you’re a praying person, please continue to remember these people. Long after the fickle attention of the media wanders, they will still be trying to sort out the broken pieces of their lives.

Thank you for listening and for any help you can offer.