A Second Hand Conjecture

I recall it being reported at the height of the sordid and tedious Monica Lewinsky scandal, that Bill Clinton personally felt he had not violated his wedding vows because in his view, receiving fellatio did not constitute adultery. Evidently Clinton had researched the topic at some length and found a kind of tortured reinforcement for his perspective in the Bible itself. At the time I thought it seemed a rather instructive example of the essential convenience of Clinton’s morality, as well as providing a further lesson that one can find divine justification for almost anything in scripture if they look hard enough.

But in 2003 it was revealed that the New Hampshire Supreme Court had grown to share Clinton’s view as a matter of law. And today, it seems the idea may have trickled into youth culture, as a survey of students at Montrose High School in Colorado revealed a majority of them didn’t consider oral sex to be sex at all. Which may of course provoke lament from those enrolled in the increasingly pessimistic venture of social conservatism, but causes even more distress for our shared language. That’s because if oral sex isn’t sex, what then should we call it? Fellatio, analingus and cunnilingus are cumbersome and particular words after all.

Having consulted the online thesaurus for advice, some social conservatives will perhaps be pleased to learn that in failing to find a suitable synonym it asks, “did you mean irreligious?” But this of course won’t do for the rest of us.

Taking a cue from the dictionary, we might call it “oral stimulation.” However, this may tend to unnecessarily confound the boundaries between a blowjob and an interesting conversation.

Therefore, I propose the use of “oral nonsex” for its utility in both complying with the children’s liberalized definition, and preserving the capricious nature of public morality for the prize of irony. Also, social conservatives disappointed by the purposes of redefinition itself, could be comforted with a gifted advantage over their adversarsies. After all, anyone contending that “oral sex is nonsex”, has a certain literal and yet ridiculous argument on their hands.

1 Comment »

Oh hells yeah.

1 Comment »

Jon Henke posts an interesting history lesson concerning the origins of the well-known abbreviation for Christmas:

Growing up, I sometimes heard – in church and from various religious scolds – that XMas was a secular attempt to “take Christ out of Christmas”, rather than, say, an attempt to save valuable space on signs.

Jon then links to an entry from snopes.com:

Claim: ‘Xmas’ is a modern, disrespectful abbreviation of the word ‘Christmas.’

Status: False.

Origins: The abbreviation of ‘Xmas’ for ‘Christmas’ is neither modern nor disrespectful. The notion that it is a new and vulgar representation of the word ‘Christmas’ seems to stem from the erroneous belief that the letter ‘X’ is used to stand for the word ‘Christ’ because of its resemblance to a cross, or that the abbreviation was deliberately concocted “to take the ‘Christ’ out of Christmas.” Actually, this usage is nearly as old as Christianity itself, and its origins lie in the fact that the first letter in the Greek word for ‘Christ’ is ‘chi,’ and the Greek letter ‘chi’ is represented by a symbol similar to the letter ‘X’ in the modern Roman alphabet. Hence ‘Xmas’ is indeed perfectly legitimate abbreviation for the word ‘Christmas’ (just as ‘Xian’ is also sometimes used as an abbreviation of the word ‘Christian’).

None of this means that Christians (and others) aren’t justified in feeling slighted when people write ‘Xmas’ rather than ‘Christmas,’ but the point is that the abbreviation was not created specifically for the purpose of demeaning Christ, Christians, Christianity, or Christmas – it’s a very old artifact of a very different language.

In point of fact, “XMas” is actually an abbreviation of an abbreviation. The Greek letters “Chi” (X) and “Rho” (R) were often used to represent Christ in ancient texts (since the original New Testament was written primarily in Greek), the most widely known example of which can be found in the Book of Kells.

That’s an ‘X’ not a ‘P’ on the top, and the “Rho” is found directly underneath. A clearer depiction of this page can be found here. Together, ‘XR’ means “Christ”, and therefore the abbreviation ‘XRMas’ would be the true and correct abbreviation for Christmas.

Of course, that would look really silly and would appear to be prompting people to pronounce the word “Chr-mas”, or worse “Exermas”, neither or which is desirable or correct. Instead, we drop the “Rho” to get “XMas” which seems more phonetically pleasing somehow, and has the added bonus of being even easier to display in great big signs for holiday shopping.

All of which leads to Jon’s wise admonishment:

Let’s add to this one more valuable lesson: Don’t take offense where none is intended. You’ll end up with a martyr mentality, objecting to XMas and imagining a “War on Christmas.”

No Comments »