On Vocabulary of Sex

How the culture of developed countries allow terms such as penis and vagina be used with a neutral tone?

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On Vocabulary of Sex
by Shahriar
07-Feb-2009
 

There has been a flurry of sex-related short stories in the past little while, some written by women [See Parinaz Samii]. This effort in itself is pushing the envelope and creating a space that didn’t exist before and my hat’s off to the writers, regardless of their literary merit.

Reading these stories and also readers’ comments make it evident that Farsi language offers few choices in sex vocabulary. Writers have resorted to all kinds of indirect reference to genitalia, as well as directly using the few terms available in Farsi, thus creating various reactions in readers that range from outrage to mockery. The “K” terms in Farsi carry their traditional connotation and writers have either intentionally attempted to change this connotation and bring the “K” terms into the realm of neutral and publicly-acceptable terms or have used them due to the lack of any other available terms.

I neither claim to be a linguist, nor an expert in social sciences but the effort of these writers has prompted me to share my humble thoughts with you. I am sure most of you who speak the language of a developed country, have noticed how you switch languages whenever you encounter a void in Farsi to express yourself. You will have a very hard time to readily find a sentence in Farsi that would carry the meaning of: “You should maintain his self esteem by avoiding negative remarks”, or “I need my space and don’t want to compromise my privacy”.  The same phenomenon happens more intensely in the realm of sex and becomes extremely dependent on the gender of the speaker. A female speaker can say: “I fucked him” in English and it wouldn’t be groundbreaking in any manner, but the same sentence in Farsi would sound either meaningless, in the context of a male-dominated culture, or would be understood and encouraged by a listener who supports equality for men and women; nonetheless such sentence yet has to establish a space in the Farsi language.

The void becomes painfully clear when a speaker, attempting to address male or female organ, in a neutral or “respectable” manner, would have to resort to another language (be it Arabic like “فرج” or French like “vagin”) to avoid the Farsi term’s connotation and “vulgarity”, or would use vague and general terms lik “آلت تناسلی” that may not be the best choice of terms.

One should ask how the culture of developed countries allow terms such as penis and vagina be used with a neutral tone, in a manner that doesn’t raise eyebrows and can be heard during six o’clock News of the most conservative TV channels.

I’d like to point out that such rich sex-related vocabulary in developed countries has not always been around and has come about through a long and hard evolutionary, and sometimes revolutionary, process. Many pioneers have suffered and taken the brunt of opposition to new spaces and change. More specifically, you can trace this process of social change back to the 1920’s with Dr. Sigmund Freud redefining sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life and moving away from the Victorian concepts of sexuality that were intertwined with concepts of guilt and sin.

Dr. Alfred Kinsey was another pioneer whose extensive research and reports on sexual behaviour in human male and female in the late 40’s and early 50’s changed cultural attitude toward sex, established facts about sex and paved the way for many other pioneers in various fields.

One such important field that has always been a venue for free expression, exposure to the truth, and an agent for change, is comedy. Pioneers such as Lenny Bruce (50’s and 60’s) and George Carlin (60’s onward) pushed the discussion of sex (amongst a lot of other things such as race and religion) into the public realm. Both comedians were taken to court by conservative forces. Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trial led to the first posthumous pardon in New York history. George Carlin’s comedy routine “Seven Dirty Words” was central to a 1978  U.S. Supreme Court case that challenged the power of the government to regulate “indecent” material on public airwaves.

In summary: Vocabulary expands with the level of development in a country. The basic purpose of development is to broaden people's choices. Vocabulary of sex is just one small indication of many voids in the path of development for Iran.

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more from Shahriar
 
alborz

Dear Double Standard Dad - Principles...

by alborz on

...are ultimately what makes a marriage a fulfilling or not. While your observations are acknowledged, your conclusions are questionable at best.

I say this not in defense of Iranian men.  My sister is happily married to an American, and as she grew up in this country it was perhaps a more compatible choice given the number of Iranian men that would have had a similar experience as hers at the time she married. 

30 years after the revolution, the Iranian diaspora now has second and third generation immigrants and they have had the opportunity to make informed decisions about what is best from both cultures.  Your daughter from every indication also has had the benefit of both.  The more relevant criteria, I think, would be for her to find a partner that has made choices that are similar, principled and that safeguard the institution of marriage.  Now, how confident are you that she knows what these principles are?  How confident are you that your influence has been principled?  Why do you think she has already expressed an inclination towards choice that makes you concerned?  Could it be that she, based on prior experiece, is eliminating the very tradition that you espouse?  Your very concern is born out of her choice and these questions are now relevant to you.

Your caution and concern which would lead to close scrutiny of "candidates" should be equaly in force for a person of any cultural background, but perhaps with specific scrutiny in certain areas.  Your premature elimination or inclusion purely based on culture runs the risk of depriving your daughter from a partner that has made conscious decisions about the qualities that are truly principle based and not blindly based on tradition.

While I acknowledge your concerns, I fear that they are not principled ones and so ultimately you may have your worst fears materialize, if your daughter also makes a un-principled choice with a non-Iranian.

Best Wishes,

Alborz


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Azadeh

by Double Standard Dad (not verified) on

Thank you for sharing your observations on life. It pains me that I have obviously annoyed or angered Flying Solo. Clearly she feels that I am prejudiced; perhaps, she's right. If I am, the prejudice I harbor is not based on ethnicity as I would have to discriminate against my wife and children since they too are Persians.

If I am prejudiced as Flying Solo believes, I carry only the prejudice which any father carries within his heart for the welfare of his children. I don't think that I slandared Iranian fathers or husbands; I simply noted that I would be worried if my daughter were married to a man whose views and beliefs about marriage and the roles of each partner in that marriage would be vastly different from her own. I don't want my child to be broken-hearted, just as I would not want her future spouse to feel as if his expectations in marriage had not been met. My children mean more to me than life itself. I am sorry that Flying Solo would begrudge me the right to want my children to find the same kind of happiness in life that I found with their mother. My son can find that happiness with a partner from either of his cultures, but I believe that my daughter should choose a partner from the culture with which she is most familiar. I intend no insult or slander against anyone, I am simply a father who prays for his children's long-term happiness in life.

Really, thank you very much for trying to understand my point of view.


Azadeh Azad

Dear Double Standard Dad

by Azadeh Azad on

Your observations of the Iranian men and women is 100% accurate in its details, IMHO. That's why I had decided not to ever get married to an Iranian man since I was ten years of age! And I never did! National pride and deep emotional attachments to close relatives, that are major components of Iranian identities, prevent most Iranians from seeing what lay in front of them and especially within them regarding the issue you have raised! That's too bad.

Azadeh


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Flying Solo

by Double Standard Dad (not verified) on

I guess that I will have to take your word on it since I have never had an Iranian father or husband. What I can tell you for sure is that no American mother or wife can hold a candle to an Iranian mother or wife as my children and I can attest to. Still what I hope for my son someday is very different from what I hope for my daughter. If that is wrong, I'll just have to be wrong.
Best wishes!


Flying Solo

Lauding the Iranian Father

by Flying Solo on

Double Standard Dad:

 There is nothing quite like a 'father' to set the tone for a woman's mate selection.  I have been blessed with an open minded - loving and respectful one  and it never occurred to me that he was such because he was Iranian.

I happen to give my countrymen a lot of kudos for putting up with the females of their ilk.  There are bad apples everywhere - of course.  To insinuate, though faintly, that somehow an Iranian father is inferior to an American one - that an American husband has a leg up on an Iranian one - has the aroma of 'bias' if not 'prejudice'.  Respectfully, I take exception.

 


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Sure....

by IQ (not verified) on

Who raised these selfish Persian men anyway?


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Flying Solo

by Double Standard Dad (not verified) on

As I do not want to highjack the legitimate topic of the thread, I'll try to be brief. I agree with all that you said about marriage, especially those that are mixed; some survive while others do not, just as in any other types of marriage. I guess what it all boils down to is being more comfortable with what is in one's cultural comfort-zone.

While I cannot dictate to my daughter whom she ultimately chooses as a life partner, I would be uncomfortable with her marrying an Iranian man until he proved himself worthy of my dauther. I'm sure that any Iranian father would feel the same about an American boy pursuing his daughter.

I know that my son has seen throughout his life how I have treated, loved and respected his mother, so I know that he has had a decent example of how to treat a lady when he chooses his future wife.

I cannot be sure, however, that my daughter would fare as well because she would be married to a man whose cultural norms regarding marriage and the expected roles of each partner in marriage would be alien to her...and to me. Of course, my children have seem the older Iranian couple type marriage in their baba and maman borzorg and in their Iranian aunts and uncles, but they haven't lived in those households daily, they only visited occasionally. They are accoustommed to what they've seen in our home...from their own dad and mom.

Maybe I am being a complete and total bigot about this, but something in my gut tells me that a typical Iranian father in a mixed marriage would want his daughter to marry an Iranian man while he would not care whom his son choose as a life partner. When it gets right down to it, perhaps an American father is not so different from an Iranian father after all.

Thank you very much for your insights.


Flying Solo

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by Flying Solo on

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Iranian Wife, Yes; Iranian Husband, No!

by Double Standard Dad (not verified) on

Something in what Flying Solo touched upon made me think of a double standard regarding my own children that I have tried unsuccessfully to reconcile. I haven't even been able to logically put it into words, but I know that its something that I feel strongly.

I am the non-Iranian spouse of an Iranian woman. Although in the early days of our marriage, we had to struggle through many cross-cultural challenges to find our way to where we are now...34 years of a reasonably happy and satisfying life together. During our marriage, we were blessed with two children that make us both proud: our first, a daughter who is now 27 years old and our second, a son who is now 19 years old.

Through the years, I have taken note of the way that my wife's friends interact with their spouses in public and I have had the opportunity to observe closesly how my wife's relatives, both men and women, interact with their husbands or wives. All of these marriages consist of two Iranian partners.

There has always seemed...and I use the word "seemed" because I am no expert on marriages between Iranian men to Iranian women...to be a lack or equality in the relationships that made me uncomfortable. All too often, it appeared to me that the concept of respect was a one-way street wherein the woman owed the man respect, but not visa versa. I always kept my mouth shut and didn't discuss the topic with my wife because firstly, I didn't want to seem judgemental about something that I knew nothing about, and secondly, it was simply none of my business how other married couples interacted with their spouses.

This changed last year when our daughter announced that she was dating an Iranian (born in the USA) man that she had met at a party in the D.C. area. I became very uncomfortable with the idea of my daughter getting involved with a Persian man...even one that had never lived in Iran. My daughter was right when she asked me how I could be so judgemental when I had not even met him. She asked me if I would feel the same way if her younger brother wanted to date an Iranian girl. In complete honesty, I had to answer that if her brother was involved with an Iranian girl, it wouldn't bother me a bit. In fact, if he found a girl someday as sweet as his mother, I would be overjoyed!

I know that the way I feel betrays a double standard that appears to be based upon prejudice, but its not. There is some aspect to the relationships that I have observed over the years that at a very primal level makes me fear for my daughter's emotional welfare and happiness. I don't have those concerns for my son.

Perhaps, my westerrn expectations of what marriage partners should be to one another simply cannot fully understand and comprehend the complex and intimate bonds of affection and respect that exist in a tradidtional two-Iranian marriage.

I have asked myself many times if I am judging those marriages by an inappropriate western standard which skews my perceptions. Maybe I am...which is wrong I know, but still in my heart of hearts...I can't help but feel what would be acceptable for my son, would not not acceptable for my daughter. This is not based upon prejudice, but fear for her welfare.

I have shared the major part of my life with an Iranian partner who has made my life complete, but I would certainly deny that to my daughter if the situation ever arose. I know it sounds wrong, but I love my child to much. I can't help but feeling that an Iranian man would never treat her the way I have always tried to treat her mother. Maybe an American man wouldn't either, but at least some of us (American men) have been raised to treat our spouses as full and complete partners in life... both inside and outside the bedroom.


Flying Solo

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by Flying Solo on

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Good topic!

by Anonymous.... (not verified) on

I'm certain there are names other than K and K. In fact as I recall Dool was commonly used for Penis. Unfortunatley I was too young to notice girls when I left Iran thus I don't recall the word of Vigina, but I'm sure there is a word other than K... In fact I think K and K was common amoung Lato Jahela

Also, with do respect I believe what flying solo is suggesting is isolated to a certain demographic and social class. Persian women having a different standard has more to do with their own self confidense than anything else. If their media and billboards and other channels of communication alike was complimentary to the Persian man, I have no doubt their perspective would be very different. I really don't think Persian women have given much thought to the way the west engages in social engieering.


Flying Solo

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by Flying Solo on

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