Finding the right words, Julie Wray comments....
If you have ever been involved in teaching or facilitating sex education with young people, then you will know that using the right words, the ones that make sense and relate to young people, is crucial. In fact, I would say that in all my work in health care most people or service users prefer easy to understand language and meaningful words when explaining health matters that concern them.
I find it fascinating then that so many people use alternative words, essentially codes for the naming of body parts and especially genitals, our "private parts". One example has always stuck in my mind. When I was visiting a family as part of my role as a community practitioner and I happened to say in conversation that I had a niece called Lily, the person I was talking to was absolutely horrified and said "Oh no! Not Lily. That’s our family word for vagina! I was surprised and wondered why people do this.
I have always known the vagina as vagina, penis as penis but for many people all over the world the right words are the wrong words and a more palatable coded word is used. But then later in life it’s like they have to unlearn and re-name our body parts.
Why is that?
Let us know what you think.
1 comment:
Thanks Julie, this has really got me thinking. As you know I start one of my sessions with a mindmap of terms used, to arrive at something everyone feels comfortable with.
Just to share a couple of things I learned recently. When I was in South Africa developing "Play it safe"I learned that there was no word at all in Zulu for penis - people just describe where the part of the body is.
And recently I had a teaching resource (labelled pictures of the reproductive system) translated into Farsi by an Iranian doctor who told us there was no word at all in Farsi for clitoris.
I know from the hundreds of spam emails I get every day asking ME if I want a bigger penis, that none of them use the word penis.
Thirty years ago I learned from my midwifery tutor that the word pudendal actually comes from the Latin,"to be ashamed" (pudenare?) And that I think is what we are talking about here. We don't as parents or teachers often celebrate sex and sexuality in a positive way. We refer to the dirty, disgusting things that sex can cause with ease, and sometimes build sex education classes around sexually transmitted infections
This is a great subject for debate, from so many different perspectives. What do you think?
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