We Demand that S** Fr****so be Banned

As an administrator of writing at a newspaper named for one of America’s great cities but whose name I shall not, for reasons which will become clear, repeat, it is my duty to reject an ever-growing list of words and phrases and to limit, restrict, or outright ban from our pages those who are using/have used said words/phrases even if at the time they were used they had not yet been forbidden by us or indeed any other language-policing entity. 

I began this endeavor at this particular newspaper with the changing of my own job description. Editor in C***f, of course, had already been nixed, and under similar justifications I’ve recently amended my title to read Person or Individual in Charge of Overseeing Copy. I did this because the term H**d Editor might trigger those who have had an unfavorable experience giving or receiving h**d and/or had their writing disparagingly edited. There is no conceivable reason, I reasoned, for persons to reflexively gag and/or relive a bad case of tooth rash and/or the criticism of a publisher/English teacher whenever they hear my title.

Along similar lines, it is my pleasure to announce that our hard-hitting periodical will henceforth be referred to as the Bay Area Account (BAA). This conversion came about after we decided to cancel the person who both the city and our periodical were named for when it was brought to light that the man from Assisi in question had once evicted a leper from a church. 

We will, however, on very rare occasions (as I have above), print a facsimile of a banned word or phrase, and this under the long-held axiom that, when you put the fu***ng asterisks in, nobody knows what the word is and so do not say it in their heads and are therefore free from the writer’s insensitive act of inflicting said word upon the ever-so-delicate susceptibilities of readers in the first place. 

Case in point is an editorial I recently rejected. It was professionally written by a former sufferer of substance use disorder (specific substances, as the term implies, no longer matter) and is also a person or individual with prior justice system involvement but who nonetheless refused to incorporate the harmless-sounding euphemisms we demand be incorporated in order to conform to our standards. Rather, he insisted upon using words like ju***e and ex-**n under the assumption that, because he is or has been either/or, his right to not only legitimately appropriate these two hurtful titles but so too inject them into the brain veins of others is incontrovertible. And when we refused to publish his editorial despite the very real truths he exposed and that we are too chicken***t to utter ourselves (let alone print), he wrote me a letter claiming that our hard hitting had morphed into glib snobbery and then accused us of having no b**ls.

My first thought was: Frack. He directly referenced a naughty body part without couching the reference in a harmless-sounding euphemism (organs with sperm-producing capabilities, say) that means exactly the same thing and conjures the exact same images but that we have nonetheless capriciously decided is vaguely triggering to certain someones in a harmful sort of way. This is not to confuse what we (again capriciously) deem a harmless-sounding euphemism for testicles (or indeed any of what we have judged to be harmless-sounding euphemisms) with the myriad of organs with sperm-producing capabilities so ubiquitous in peoples bedrooms, porn, or even romance literature, and this because we have also, under the dictates of sexual positivity, collectively mandated that everything that has to do with balls, nuts, stones, rocks, gonads, huevos, the Castro, et al is perfectly acceptable under a different context and moreover positively artsy in the same manner that our abhorrence to violence, including gun violence and/or sexual assault, gets a pass when we are being entertained by our favorite Hollywood clichés. This latter, of course, is contingent upon studios warning us before the introductory credits of the film if an actor will be smoking so we can both prepare ourselves to be lit up by the trigger and also foil our toddlers from seeing it and sucking down a Kool immediately after in their playpens when they think we’re not looking.   

And it has indeed just occurred to me that pla***n should also be out, as the word may trigger a person or individual with prior justice system involvement who had been an involuntary tenant of an actual penitent***y to remember it in an unflattering way. We will therefore hereafter refer to them as coops where persons or individuals who may or may not be children play, and I will happily add here that there is no nobler endeavor on the planet than censoring words and phrases to save individuals from feelings of discomfort despite the dubious connotations of the word noble, which…. 

But I digress. Along with the changing of the name of our newspaper we are now in the process of convincing individuals in charge of our municipality to follow our lead by modifying the name of the city itself, of which we have some ideas. Our first, in a shout out to those nostalgic for the previous designation, was Frankville, but then figured that being frank is, in itself, often triggering. So, after bandying a myriad of titles about with the conscientiously erudite (including AI), we came up with the innocuous meaning “Mittens,” as in Mittens, California. So, if the name melds as mellifluously with your extragenital zones as it does ours, I suggest you urge your representatives to adopt it.