Dine Racoma aka SexyMom freaked out when a commenter condemned her for “being a disgrace to Filipino mothers” because she used the word “sexy” to describe herself.
The outpouring of support in the subsequent comments not only showed people approving of the contextual use of the word “sexy” on her blog; her son BA argued that his mother’s blog is redefining the word sexy vis-a-vis the image of a Filipina by using it in a very wholesome manner.
I wonder where such narrow-minded bigots who give little emphasis to context come from?
On the other side of the globe, Simon Jones describes how his blog got an NC-17 rating, and an unusual trend where the word “hell” is treated as a dirty word.
I especially find the bit on “hell” as amusing. In traditional Judeo-Christian tradition, hell is where the evil and the damned are banished. I wonder if the parents Simon talked about where Jews or Christians, and what word they actually use to describe hell. “That place of eternal damnation that must not be named” perhaps?
I’m also curious on the semantics of the reasoning behind this trend. Do they believe that merely uttering “hell” would bring a child there? Are they trying to avoid them picking up “go to hell!” expression? Is uttering the word an invocation of the devil? Did the Bible suddenly sprout a verse that says that saying “hell” does not please God?
Or is it just another case of extremist overzealous Christianity?
Both of these remind me of my post asking why Tagalog words pertaining to sexuality were considered dirty vis-a-vis their English counterparts.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Prudence // Jun 30, 2007 at 1:52 am
“Or is it just another case of extremist overzealous Christianity?”
— I fear that fundamentalist Christians are on the rise again, with the tone of the debates I read online. Now I’m beginning to think that maybe Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins were right in saying that it is the religious moderates who’re really responsible for the proliferation of the religious extremists.
2 Jon Limjap // Jun 30, 2007 at 8:23 am
Far as I can glean from history, whichever religion is the majority tends to be moderate; whichever religion is threatened tends to breed extrimist. In the middle ages up until the early 19th century Christians were marginalized, thus leading to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, witch hunts, and other forms of Christian extremism.
Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire early this Century, it is Islam’s turn to be marginalized, bringing about such organization as al Qaeda, Taliban, JI, etc.
I don’t really understand why moderation would give rise to fundamentalist-extremists, but the trend I do see is that the rise in numbers of non-practicing Christians and atheists, as well as “religious tolerance”, are freaking the fundamentalist types out.
This is what I see as the reason for their resurgence.
Makes me want to convert to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster sometimes!
3 Prudence // Jun 30, 2007 at 11:01 am
The religious moderates only encourages the extremists to pursue their extremists goals because the extremists “freak out” and do not understand why the moderates do not want to do what they are meant to do when they are of the same religion. Of course, nobody would admit that their belief of their religion is incorrect and give in to the other. And so the friction builds up.
I do not believe that there really is such as a thing as religious tolerance. Every religion’s creed do not tolerate the presence of another religion. It’s either your a believer (the faithful) or the unbeliever (the heathen). Think about it.
4 SexyMom // Jul 1, 2007 at 1:50 pm
It was indeed an unfortunate event, but because of the outpouring of support, a crusade has been spearheaded to improve the image of the Filipina in the net.
5 Jon Limjap // Jul 1, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Prudence
I think Buddhism is the only religion that encourages tolerance of other religions and beliefs.
The other religions are, ironically, mutually exclusivist and inherently destructive. :p
Sexymom,
Glad that you and your family has managed to turn something negative into something positive.
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