Defend your right to bare arms
Going through the several hundred emails that piled up at work while I've been working unpaid overtime feeding the mosquitoes, I took a few extra minutes to read through a cable offering "a new tool for English teaching."
English teaching is something we support out here -- don't let that tripe about India being English-speaking fool you -- and a "48-part video series following 28-year-old Rebecca, an aspiring singer, as she journeys across the country and learns about life and love; success and loss" sounded as though it hit most of our message points. And then I reached paragraph number nine:
Say that you're a Public Affairs Officer in a "conservative community." What do you do: not order this 48-part teaching tool for your English-learners who're hoping to study their way to a decent job far, far away from Trashcanistan? Paste a little black rectangle over Rebecca's eyes? Or the viewers'? Add a 5-minute coda in which Rebecca is raped and murdered as comeuppance for her wanton ways, lest any female resident of Desolatia even think of donning capped sleeves?
Furthermore, what if I'm offended by their offense-taking? I mean, 28-year-old Rebecca probably doesn't have the tricep flaps that could provide picnic shade for a family of six that I'm developing. If they're offended by her toned young arms, I can't imagine what kind of offense they'd take to my body, and that offends me. Who wouldn't take it personally to start off as objectionable, before so much as an exchange of curled upper lips? Would we make similar concessions to a culture that protested they found the sight of a black bicep repugnant?
So tell me, State: who's got offensive right-of-way here? And when do we finally learn that appeasement in the cultural sphere is just as spectacularly a bad idea as appeasement in any other domain?
English teaching is something we support out here -- don't let that tripe about India being English-speaking fool you -- and a "48-part video series following 28-year-old Rebecca, an aspiring singer, as she journeys across the country and learns about life and love; success and loss" sounded as though it hit most of our message points. And then I reached paragraph number nine:
9. Cultural sensitivities. Officers in conservativeWhich...I don't know, maybe it was the week I had; maybe it was reading about the resurgence of Shariya law in Indonesia, with a woman brutally caned for being alone in the office with her male boss, and female human rights activists paraded before a jeering male mob for not wearing headscarves in a hotel hallway after their conference on women's rights was over for the day -- does any of this news make it to the U.S.? -- or the 18-year-old girl in a Calcutta hospital raped by a sweeper who thought she was still under anesthesia and wouldn't know...but it got me thinking.
communities need to review all segments before use.
There are some segments with content that may offend
some audiences. For example Rebecca at times wears a
sleeveless blouse. There is also a scene when her car
breaks down, she enters the automobile of a male
stranger.
Say that you're a Public Affairs Officer in a "conservative community." What do you do: not order this 48-part teaching tool for your English-learners who're hoping to study their way to a decent job far, far away from Trashcanistan? Paste a little black rectangle over Rebecca's eyes? Or the viewers'? Add a 5-minute coda in which Rebecca is raped and murdered as comeuppance for her wanton ways, lest any female resident of Desolatia even think of donning capped sleeves?
Furthermore, what if I'm offended by their offense-taking? I mean, 28-year-old Rebecca probably doesn't have the tricep flaps that could provide picnic shade for a family of six that I'm developing. If they're offended by her toned young arms, I can't imagine what kind of offense they'd take to my body, and that offends me. Who wouldn't take it personally to start off as objectionable, before so much as an exchange of curled upper lips? Would we make similar concessions to a culture that protested they found the sight of a black bicep repugnant?
So tell me, State: who's got offensive right-of-way here? And when do we finally learn that appeasement in the cultural sphere is just as spectacularly a bad idea as appeasement in any other domain?
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