Sadly, it apparently is.\u00a0 A few school kids<\/a> have bought and worn<\/a> the bracelets and gotten into trouble<\/a>.\u00a0 In several cases, it seems only the boys get in trouble for wearing the bracelets; the girls, especially those with a cancer-stricken relative, are permitted to have them on their wrists.<\/p>\n Setting aside the sexist enforcement of a stoopid policy, let’s look at the stoopid policy.\u00a0 (Stoopid, for those who don’t know, is foolishness which goes beyond basic stupidity.)\u00a0 Now, I would understand a little more if the phrase was “I \u2665 Titties” or something similar.\u00a0 But “Boobies”?\u00a0 Seriously, “Boobies”?\u00a0 Young children can often get away with using that euphemism.\u00a0 It’s not like it’s any secret that boys like boobies to begin with, so why not let them advertise this fact and at the same time (hopefully) raise a little awareness of a terrible illness.\u00a0 Sure, the vast majority of the boys wearing these things are doing so because, well, it gives them a chuckle to use the word “boobies” in any context and they enjoy any<\/em> reason to think about boobies.\u00a0 (Admittedly, that requires little provocation even in most adult heterosexual males, but still.)<\/p>\n Banning silly things like this seems like the kind of thing which would lead to rebellious behavior.\u00a0 This can be positive, such as learning to protest something you sincerely believe is good or at least okay, or it can be negative and lead one to doing anti-social things just for the sake of doing anti-social things.\u00a0 The administrations involved in these things seem to almost be banning these bracelets just for the sake of keeping kids from doing something they want to do.\u00a0 Yes, it’s a bit of a stretch to say this is going to lead to rebellious kids, but the lesson it’s teaching is a poor one, that free speech is not always acceptable but it is okay to use a flimsy excuse to ban something.<\/p>\n This comes back to an old theme of mine, one which I share with the late George Carlin:\u00a0 Words are words.\u00a0 Nothing more.\u00a0 Taking offense to any<\/em> word only promotes the use of that word in an offensive context.\u00a0 This is easy enough to see, especially if one looks at the reverse case.\u00a0 For example, the word “shit” no longer causes the offense it caused when Mr. Carlin first did his notorious “Seven Words<\/em>” routine, to the point where I have, in fact, heard it spoken on television a few times.\u00a0 It’s still considered impolite, but not really terribly offensive.\u00a0 Going the other direction, think of the swastika symbol<\/a>.\u00a0 This ancient character is still used in several eastern religions, but the western world associates it with Nazis and therefore sees it as an evil, offensive thing.<\/p>\n In this context, I think the whole Boobies thing seems even sillier.\u00a0 A word is a symbol, I suppose, but it’s not like the bracelets have naked breasts depicted on them.\u00a0 On the other hand, perhaps that’s what this controversy need!\u00a0 If I Boobies generates controversy and with it awareness, perhaps they should make bracelets with this<\/em> image on them:<\/p>\n I did this in pink, the official color for Breast Cancer Awareness as near as I can tell, but for the bracelets I am sure a variety of colors would work.\u00a0 Keep A Breast, let me know if you want to use this design; I will let you use it pretty cheaply.\u00a0 Students wearing them could just say they love bullseyes.<\/p>\n Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rant on. I Stumbled across a story this morning which was yet one more demonstration of the idiocy of school officials in the U.S. today. You see, there’s an organization called the “Keep A Breast Foundation” whose purpose in life is to raise breast cancer awareness.\u00a0 One of their campaigns to accomplish this goal was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"I](\"http:\/\/shadowkatmandu.com\/Stuff\/IHeartBoobiesGraphical.jpg\" "\\"I")
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