From: PPatrickfreeman at aol.com <PPatrickfreeman>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 09:27:25 -0400

Monica, I shared your recent post with a retired political science professor last evening. I thought his insights and questions about YA literature intriguing. See his message below.

Patrick Baker Science Teacher Nancy L. Cochran Elementary Dallas Independent Schools Dallas, Texas 75208



Patrick, This is interesting, indeed. I am reminded of a survey reported in The New England Journal of Medicine at the time of the Clinton-Lewinski "affair" re would it be
"having sex" if .... . There was a list of acts such as masturbation, petting, oral intercourse, etc., and the study found that very few folks consider oral as "having sex." Thus, when Clinton and Lewinski both denied having had sex, they were responding as were most subjects of this survey, i.e., as most Americans at the time.

There were differences among age cohorts, older folks regarding oral as sex, younger folks not. When I talked with my students about this survey, only very few of them were the least bit surprised.

That was at ECU; however, the editor of NEJM was fired for having dragged the Journal into politics. (You know my memory, but I'm sure it was NEJM. It absolutely was one of the medical journals.)

  Do you suppose the lady who wrote this e-mail knows of this survey? It might be
  useful to mention it to her.

  I agree with the writer, however: the situation is confusing, as I suppose these things always are amidst social and culture change. I find it hard to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable language, as in the case of "pissed off" and "shit," the former being much more acceptable than the latter. "Fuck" is verboten, but is
"fucked up"?

How about "TS"? I remember hearing a couple of my high school girl friends saying TS but refusing to tell me what it meant -- and how shocked I was to find that it's "tough shit." There are still people whose curse is "heck" instead of
"hell" and "darn" instead of "damn." Is YA literature restricted to such avoidance of reality?

  The politics of all this is closely tied to bourgeois propriety. There are certain words that only the "lower" classes use. Racial distinctions, too: what is "gettin' my groove on"? What is "mo-jo"? What is "funk"? Every white person in the United States knows that this is code for the only thing that over-sexed black males have in mind.
  There's not the least sense of double meaning nor is there any sense of fun. The tease is not a bourgeois thing.
Received on Wed 28 May 2003 08:27:25 AM CDT