America's Prudish Side

The following is an article written by one of my husband's business acquaintances. I thought that it would be interesting for all of you European readers to see how prudish America still is. While Germany is in the process of realizing that they may have gone too far overexposing their kids to porn on nightly television , the U.S. is still bowing to its prudish side.

MY VIEW: Can you say ‘scrotum’?
By Felice Cohen
In Todya's New York Metro News
Hey kids, can you say vagina? How about scrotum? OK, maybe “Sesame Street” won’t be helping kids pronounce these words anytime soon, but on that same note, does banning these words from kids’ vocabularies really protect them? Some folks think so.
But is it protecting or censoring? We’re not talking about the f-word that instills shock, nor the n-word that fuels hatred; scrotum and vagina are simply the actual names of body parts.
An Atlantic Beach, Fla., theater had “The Vagina Monologues” displayed on its marquee until a woman complained. Why? Because her niece asked her, “What’s a vagina?” Instead of simply answering her niece, a girl old enough to read (thus old enough to know what a vagina is), the woman complained to the theater. And like good little PC-doers, the theater changed it to “The Hoohaa Monologues.” Said a theater spokesperson, “We decided we would just use child slang for it.” Child slang? If children already have a slang name for vagina, why not just use the real word? My 2 1/2-year-old niece knows what a vagina is. As she should. She has one.
When asked what the woman told her niece, the woman replied, “I’m offended I had to answer the question.” Offended? I’m offended. “The Vagina Monologues” author, Eve Ensler, is offended. What’s there to be offended about? Having a vagina? The whole point of the play is empowerment of the female body. Thankfully the cast made them change it back, but the message had already been sent.
On the same note, the new children’s book “The Higher Power of Lucky,” which just won the Newbury Medal, children’s literature’s most prestigious award, is currently being banned from school libraries and bookstores across the country because the book contains the word “scrotum.” That little sack that contains the key to continuing world population has parents hopping mad. Will knowing the word scrotum cause kids to have sex prematurely? Or will not knowing?
In an opening scene in the new Broadway show “Spring Awakening,” a teenage girl asks her mother where babies come from. The mother doesn’t say. Later on the girl becomes pregnant and the mother says she should have known better. But how? The mother never explained it. Had the girl known the scrotum carries sperm to the penis that when inserted into a vagina causes impregnation — well, you know the rest. And if you don’t, ask your parents.