Friday, October 07, 2005

Harry Potter Gay?

Oh dear, political incorrectness lands this children's writer in a shitload of trouble!

Postscript

The author puts his side.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Although I'm not in the PC camp, there is something to be said about using the language elegantly and using it poorly.

I was rather disappointed that Madonna's books for children included the word 'fart'. It's a course, rough word; although not entirely wrong, I found it extremely unelegant for her to choose such a word in a series of books illustrated so elegantly.

-
CatR.

Anonymous said...

coarse, not course. Urgh. Ignore the slip.

-
CatR.

starlight said...

I've discovered that there's an unofficial hierarchy for offensive words and kids 'graduate' from one level to the next. For instance if you're between the ages 3-5 'fart' is an offensive word. Then you hit the grand 7-10 bracket and 'fart' is considered vocabulary while 'ass' becomes the taboo word. And so forth. Strange isn't it?

On one hand, I think having palpitations over 'tame' offensive words like 'fart' will only spur children to keep using them. On the other, I agree with CatR that there's a time and place to use such words.

Allan Koay 郭少樺 said...

i grew up in a house that had swear words flying around, from left and right, and smack in between.

i didn't end up being foul-mouthed all the time. i AM foul-mouthed, but even at a young age, i knew when or where i should or shouldn't be using swear words.

if anyone can conclusively prove that children exposed to swearing at a young age will grow up to become monsters or ruffians or whatever, i will stop swearing for the rest of my life.

you can't, cos i am living proof.

Anonymous said...

They're just words. I bet Hitler never swore much either.