Correspondence

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
James V. Carmichael, Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: I agree with Robert Hauptman-certainly a champion of intellectual freedom if ever there was one-that we live in an age of linguistic vulgarity and decline (July 1995, p. 359), although I would take the Freudian course and argue with D. H. Lawrence (Sex, Literature and Censorship: Essays) that anglo-saxonisms sometimes serve as a healthy outlet for violent feelings. I write, however, because I do not want the importance of Louise S. Robbins's article (October 1994) to be lost in "astonishment." It is indeed astonishing to see the word "cocksucker" in perhaps the most venerable library journal. It is horrifying to realize that it was used, not with hatred or with violence, but with apparently cynical indifference, by none other than the Librarian of Congress about a group of people who could not defend themselves in the courts of the day against bigotry. It is terrifying and it is exceedingly painful to be the recipient of such an epithet when it is hurled in contempt by people who want to reduce homosexuals to a physically intimate act, transformed, by the power of handy anglo-saxonisms, to a pornographic cartoon. A friend of mine had the epithet hurled at him last year, and was nearly beaten to death in his home in Wilmington, North Carolina, by an unknown assailant who decided that homosexuals did not have souls, minds, or anything useful to contribute to society except as convenient, disposable fellators.

Additional Information

Publication
The Library Quarterly 66: 118.
Language: English
Date: 1996
Keywords
Correspondence, Homophobia, Librarianship, Prejudice

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