Gordaen's Blog

Censorship is essentially the denial of access to information. Today, life is all about information and access to it. Cell phones, the internet, PDA’s, ECU’s, and whatever you’re looking at right now are all about getting information to you and letting you manipulate it. Censorship is essentially the denial of the technological progress we have made, but is it justified?

This post isn’t about government secrets or crazy conspiracy theories (though I’m sure the wingdings font is an alien language); it’s about censorship of media, particularly books. We censor books and videos with the claim that the material is harmful to youth or society in general, but is it? Seeing a naked body is only a big deal because we make it a big deal. You’re more likely to point out a cat wearing a sweater with disgust than a “naked” cat, but the same isn’t true for humans. If we were all naked all the time, we would have far less to censor and the rate of STD’s would probably go down. More and more of the population is seeing that nudity isn’t necessarily bad; it’s a matter of context and taste.

Unfortunately, we still have a major issue with particular words. Fairly recently, the word “scrotum” in The Higher Power of Lucky has caused some controversy. I can imagine the thoughts that go through the heads of the people who want to censor this book. They read that first page and then think, “Oh my God! This book is terrible! I am not going to read the rest of this to understand the context, nor am I going to see if this book actually has value. No, I think I shall burn this book because it could cause the 1 in 10 kids who read it and actually know what a scrotum is to giggle. Giggling is the devil, Bobby Boucher!” Yes, it would certainly be terrible if children actively looked up the word and learned!

Then when these censor-loving fools talk to each other, they say, “Did you hear that our latest book has the ‘s’ word in it?”

And the other replies, “Shit?”

“No… scrotum!”

“Oh my God! You just said the word! You’re going to be immature forever and burn in hell!”

Censorship of young adults is even more bizarre to me. Ultimately, censoring a person’s book is saying just one thing: You don’t think that person knows how to learn, think, or act on his/her own. If you have raised your child properly, that means you have not taught your child what is right and what is wrong but, rather, you’ve taught your child how to understand right from wrong. If you think that if your child reads a book with violent murders in it, s/he is going to become a murderer, then you might want to question what values you have instilled in your child. If anonymous words on a page can unravel your years of parenting, you might consider traveling back in time to remove your (or your partner’s) scrotum, so that you’ll never have to worry about being a failure as a parent.