In a very rum letter to the Daily Telegraph, the Mother’s Union of all people joined with some other bodies to demand that ‘primary schools should teach the correct names for genitalia’. What can they mean?
A confederate of the Mother’s Union in this campaign, the Sex Education Forum, says that by the age of seven, children should name ‘external genitalia’. From examples supplied, it seems to want us all to speak Latin. It’s as if we should no longer say womb but uterus, not skull but cranium, not big toe but hallux.
By using Latin names for genitalia, the campaigners hope to avoid ‘perpetuating shame’. I wonder whether they haven’t got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Thus, there is a Latin word penis, a word meaning ‘tail’ that came to be used metaphorically for another item of anatomy.
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