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.
Correspondence
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Created on 9/24/2010
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Additional Information
- Publication
- The Library Quarterly 66: 118.
- Language: English
- Date: 1996
- Keywords
- Correspondence, Homophobia, Librarianship, Prejudice