Should Guidebook editors Censor "Offensive" Names

[Dru]

Robin Tivy, founder of bivouac.com, changed the suggested name for peak 7000 "The Vulva" to "The Vx" because he was trying to attract sponsorship money for the website and "did not want to offend the militant feminists at MEC"

 

I thought part of feminism was empowering womens' sexuality, and how better to do that than by mentioning unmentionables?

[scrambler]

Vx sounds like nerve gas.

[klenke]

Catbird said: "But I totally agree with Bob on the media. It's so screwed up. What's immoral: showing someone getting shot full of lead or a pair of breasts?"

 

They're both immoral as far as I'm concerned. If you want to see someone's breasts out in the open, go some place where they're not modest about it, such as one of those Amazonian tribes...or a Rio beach.

[Beck]

racy names with an element of double entendre really showcase the brillance of climbers sending FA'S out there, and infantile, juvenile, blatently offensive and pornographic route names make climbers look bad.

 

naming a route " I fucked your mother" is a bit disappointing, "the mom connection" is subtle and means the same to me if i was the one naming it.

 

this mirrors society becoming increasingly self interested and less involved with group dynamics or feeling a sense of responsibility of community, and how we leave things for our kids...

 

a story about naming peaks and routes, a few guys were up climbing in the north cascades back in the day, and they were all named richard.

They sent a good FA or maybe it was even an unamed peak, and wanted to call the route "the three dicks"

 

 

these Gentleman dirtbag climbers refrained, because of the possible scandal over that name and the discrediting of the climbers community.

 

now, we are enculturated to think "shock value" makes quality in all sorts of media and semantics issues in this country.

 

However, being an editor and writer, and responsible for publication of a 15,000 copy run publication, know, professionally, there is little room in publishing for "pornographic" phrases, and YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE an editor has a compelling interest in not engaging the readers in a smut fest with pornographic imagry or verbage and will most likely censor this. We are bound to decency and respect for readers, unless, of course, we publish Maxim, Cosmo, the New Republic, or more vivid pornography.

 

want a cool name that will get published? think up something SNAPPY and filled with INNUENDO.

not " my dick is biggest cause i can suck it myself,"

or "your mamas cunt is filled with puss."

 

call them "superrichard" or "stinkysnapper"

 

got the idea? innuendo, or else you just show the world how infantile climbers are. and most of us aren't infantile.

 

think about young climbers and the families. do you think a family is going to show their daughter " lesbian love tool" or "dicksuckers anonyomous" to their kids as climbs? think about it, boys, let's all grow up!

 

"sapphic addictions", probably okay. "lesbian super vibrator up the twat without a stop",PROBABLY going to get a abbreviation in a guide book.

 

my 2 cents, coming from the publishing arena

[allthumbs]

Funny post Beck, and right on I might add. I think I'll try to modify my smutfest language into more innuendo...for the mother's out there.

[klenke]

Beck said, "these Gentleman dirtbag climbers refrained, because of the possible scandal over that name and the discrediting of the climbers community.

 

"Now, we are enculturated to think 'shock value' makes quality in all sorts of media and semantics issues in this country."

 

A klenke bullshit sociological response:

 

Music history parallel: The Doors were scheduled to appear (for the first time) on the Ed Sullivan Show. They were to perform their hit Light My Fire, only Mr. Sullivan and the TV execs/producers wanted Mr. Morrison to not sing "baby we couldn't get much higher." Jim was to substitute some other word that did not have the drug connotations.

 

Well, Jim wound up singing the word "higher" anyway. Sullivan was so irate he didn't even shake the band members' hands. The Doors were never invited back.

 

But (paraphrasing) Jim said he did it for the shock value. That was essentially the Doors' modus operendi. And so it goes that what was once considered ribald is now considered mundane. In the 90's you had rappers and rockers spewing racist epithets and cuss words like it was nothing. They still do it today though it's not as prevalent. The constant "erosion" of the swimsuit and bikini is another prime example.

 

As the thermodynamic property of entropy intimates, society as a whole trends toward the liberal slope. A relaxation of restraints over time (entropy) causes what was once considered taboo to later be in and then later be lusterless. Thus the need to create new luster elsewhere (to find something new to shock society with). When this new things gets old, we search for the next new thing after that. And so it goes and so it goes.

 

In this way, civilization starts from anarchy, reaches a high point (a maximum utopian index), and then trends back toward anarchy until, out of the chaos (a maximum anarchic index), a new civilization begins to take shape and the whole oscillatory process starts over.

 

Mathematically, the utopian index is the inverse of the anarchic index.

 

Yeah baby!

[Dru]

Some route names not edited or censored:

 

Titties and Beer (and) Annie's Climax; Leavenworth

Smell Of Fat Chick; Squamish

This Ain't No Pussy Crack; Squamish

[browntoe98]

"This debate alone is enough to prove that the word is inciniary and should simply be left out of guidebooks."

 

I think you meant incendiary. In any case the author/editor/publisher of any book should decide what's in it. This is as true for the website "White Power Warehouse" as it is for Thich Nhat Hanh's Miracle of Mindfulness. If you don't want to read the words, don't buy the book. If you buy the book, feel free to cross out all the words and put in your own.

 

BTW, I don't climb rocks. It has nothing to do with the names of the routes.

 

anth

[Beck]

Wow, klenke, thas' HEAVY man, like, woah....

 

dude, my brain is undergoing entropy unlike many of the rest of my tissues...whats up with that, man?...

 

 

No, and dru, those names would have NEVER gotten censored in any guide I would do, it's just the incredibly offensive ones....

 

"sheep buggerer" would be appropriate, i think

 

[slaphappy]

Dru said:

Some route names not edited or censored:

 

Titties and Beer (and) Annie's Climax; Leavenworth

Smell Of Fat Chick; Squamish

This Ain't No Pussy Crack; Squamish

 

I met Annie, and the thought of it makes me ill.

[scrambler]

A klenke bullshit sociological response:

...But (paraphrasing) Jim said he did it for the shock value... ...In the 90's you had rappers and rockers spewing racist epithets and cuss words like it was nothing...

 

My take on it is that it's all symptomatic of rebellion against authority. Youth is the time when you begin to rebel and these guys are pushing a product geared to the youth market. Besides, power is an aphrodisiac and the illusion of power is enhanced by challenging the pecking order without experiencing retribution. In the end, it comes down to sex (the will to life). Youth is the time when you come into your sexual reproductive prime.

 

These guys who say, never censor anything, or in other words, those who don't have the sensibility to control their vulgarity, are the ones who are stuck in an adolescent state of being, not quite child but not yet an adult. Maybe this suspension of aging is not altogether a bad thing, probably accounts for why, us old farts, climb.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2003 by scrambler

[klenke]

John, you're not an old fart, I mean old fart, I mean old fart.

 

Your comments make sense to me.

 

 

[David_Parker]

scrambler said:

There just isn't a racial slur for a white middle class person that carries any sting.

 

I thought "trask" pretty much covered it.

[klenke]

No, "trask" is a slur on the whole human race.

[marylou]

 

scrambler said:

There just isn't a racial slur for a white middle class person that carries any sting.

 

 

Not unless of course that middle class white person happens to be female, homosexual, or handicapped, to give a few examples.

[scrambler]

Uh...what I was alluding to was WASP. How many of you are offended by that?

[jefffski]

i think some FA's give their routes offensive names to piss off people who are likely to be offended. I guess it works.

 

Also i have never come across a name that was hateful. colourful--yes, offensive--yes, gross--absolutely, but not hateful.

 

Can anyone come up with any names that could be considered hateful? Something like "kill the jews" or "hang the gays" would fit the bill. There are laws against that here in the GWN (great white north).

 

Since we're on the topic of offensive names what about sports teams--the cleveland indians, atlanta braves etc. How would you feel about a team named the Anytown Protestants? or the Maincity Caucasians?

 

For those who feel compelled to blather on about this, i wish you'd take some of that misguided energy and channel it (no pun intended), somewhere useful, like gun control or a crisis hotline.

 

As for myself, a gorbie, (albeit an old one) i am offended by the squamish route "teenage girls won't blow gorbies", but as the route is beyond me i don't think i have a say.

 

otherwise i still think it is important to preserve the original names, but sometimes it may be better to bury the full name in the back of the guidebook.

 

As a sidenote to the use of the N word (the real one this time), you may be interested in this article. The name will be preserved.

 

http://www.townshipsheritage.com/Eng/Archives/News/niggerrock.1.eng.html.

 

 

 

 

[murraysovereign]

jefffski said:

As for myself, a gorbie, (albeit an old one) i am offended by the squamish route "teenage girls won't blow gorbies", but as the route is beyond me i don't think i have a say.

 

As a sometime-Gorbie also, I'm offended that teenage girls won't blow Gorbies. I mean, is that a Hate Crime, or what?

[jefffski]

sometime-gorbie? c'mon mur, you're a charter member!