its a word

When my daughter was three, she approached me with a very concerned tone in her voice and asked why Nanu ( her word for Grandma) told her that her vagina was a wee wee. My son a five year old interrupted with his the very same thing happened to me voice and said Nanu told me to use the word pee pee for penis.

That night during my daily phone conversation with my mother, my mother asked me, in her I am asking you but really telling you voice, why do you teach your children to use such ‘dirty’ words. She went on to say the kids are too little to use language like that, language that some adults are even uncomfortable in using.

I tried to tell my mother that my wife and I wanted the kids to be comfortable with their own bodies and to know there is no shame in having a vagina or a penis. My mothers response was, well then they must know I have a vagina and their grandfather has a penis. (Now you must understand this was, perhaps the second time in my life and I was 33, that I ever heard my mother say vagina and penis and the first time I ever heard her refer to her having a vagina and my father having a penis) and isn't there something wrong with kind of knowledge she added!

Patience prevailing, and an attempt on my part to understand my mothers concerns, I listened to all the arguments against the use of the words vagina and penis. Her entire life, my mother was told there is appropriate and inappropriate behavior, language and actions and no one should ever question right from wrong when it comes to behavior, language and actions. For some reason black was black, white was white and in certain circumstances of life there may never be grey or better yet never a change in course.

My mother and I butted heads, she believed that the words vagina and penis were 'dirty' words, my wife and I considered those to be words describing a part of the anatomy and there was nothing 'dirty' when using those words in a sane and simple conversation.

It was difficult to argue my case with my mother, because in doing so it sounded as if I, this 33 year old pisher (Yiddish phrase for a kid trying to be an adult) knew more, new better then my own mother. But my wife and I did feel we knew more when it came to talking with our kids about their bodies.

I learned that words have specific meanings to people and there rises a problem in communication with these people if both of you have different definitions for the same words used. I also learned that respect for the origin of the definition is important, but to move forward you must educate those with which you speak as to how definitions can change and meanings become entirely different.

This was tenuous and touchy subject, the vagina and penis conspiracy, but after hearing my kids use those ‘dirty’ words in a purely innocent manner, my mother came around and realized both words were only natural and normal body parts of a female and male.

In today’s political arena, where hubris, histrionics and horror are used to excite the populace, certain words are still used as weapons, and meanings of those words are still culled from the early ages of defamation, doom and disaster. It is easy to call someone a name knowing that that name being used is to define the person as an enemy, the devil or someone other than us.

Whether it be Gay or homosexual, Muslim or Islam, Black or African American, unemployed or lazy, living off the dole or Socialist, the politicians much to the sheer joy and pleasure of their ignorant, head in the sand constituents love to shout out words using only their archaic meaning and never once trying to enlighten a group of lemmings who would rather hate then love, exclude then include divide then find consensus to a more neutral definition.

The Republican/Tea Party candidates love to accuse the Gays, the Blacks, the unemployed, the poor of being nothing but anti American. They love to use the demonizing words so often shouted from the pulpits of churches who idolize a God who hates, to disassociate themselves and the good people from anyone else not like them. They refuse to change their definitions because in doing so the fire and brimstone would be diminished and most of these politicians would have to talk about their personal records and achievements.

Vagina and penis were never bad words, but they were needed by those who feared sex. Gay, Black, Poor, Unemployed were never bad words but they had to be invented to help sustain and maintain the egos from insecure individual.

Isn’t it time those of us with sense with knowledge with a backbone insist the proper definition of words which left unchecked cause havoc and hate. Isn’t it time to recognize that women have vaginas, men have penis’s some people are born as homosexuals, some people are naturally black, some people are poor not of their own choosing and some people are unemployed due to circumstances beyond their control.

Use the words in proper context not as a proper excuse for your own insecurities.