Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Once upon a time I worked in a women’s store, staffed entirely by women except for one random higher level manager who occasionally stopped by to use a spare office. He would sit in his office and make phone calls on the speaker phone to his doctor about some sort of urinary tract issue. He did plenty of other things to harass us, but he thought it was ok to talk about male anatomy and his problems in earshot of all of the store manager and female employees. Clinical language about human anatomy isn’t a bad thing, but generally isn’t appropriate to share with unwilling women in lower positions. It generally isn’t appropriate to share with anyone who is unwilling, especially when you are in a position of power. It isn’t dirty or bad. Medical information is generally a personal private thing. It’s really absurd and childish to use that against someone. Medical information, including sexual health and function, should be freely available to everyone.
Clinical language about parts of our bodies that are used for reproductive and sexual functions is still just clinical language. Apparently Google is filtering “clitorisâ€? as an unsafe word. Google automatically sets your search preferences as “safe searchâ€? unless you go in and manually change them. Clitoris is the clinical language for that part of female anatomy. It isn’t the sort of slang you usually see on adult sites. I usually use clit on Cyber-Dyke.net. Susie Bright wrote a fantastic blog about the topic HERE. It’s dated November, but I’m a bit behind on my blog reading list. Women’s bodies are officially inherently sexualized, as if that’s news to any women here. Women’s sexuality is much more “dirtyâ€? than men’s. Nude women, including classical art and breastfeeding mothers, are pornographic, but male nude bodies aren’t nearly so offensive. The words that describe female anatomy are also obscene. We can’t even talk to our health care providers without saying dirty words. Are we children? Are we not allowed to talk about reproductive or sexual health? Google does not need to be filtering searches for appropriateness. If parents want to filter their children there is plenty of nanny software. If grown adults don’t want to find porn they shouldn’t search for it! And tell me, how is it ok for a high level manager to talk about his urinary tract problems, but women can’t talk about their bodies?
If anyone knows if Google has updated their “dirty word� list please comment here!
Tags: banned words, clitoris, feminism, sexual health, women's health
