Mark wrote:
>The salacious English-language jokes about the island of Lesbos and >its
>denizens are old and rather tired. Admittedly, when Herodotus >speaks of
>Lesbian workwomen, it's impossible to not roll your eyes, >but Herodotus
>himself was never party to the joke. I remind everyone this list is about
>Indo-European studies.
I think that you all are ironically being unfair towards lesbians in your
impossible attempts to be politically correct. Salacious is hardly a term to
be used for my very subtle wordplay on Lesbian as a language rather than a
sexuality. It can hardly be offensive to anyone other than those who find
lesbianism or homosexuality itself offensive when I only have gone about
subtlely defining lesbianism with linguistic terminology. Even Mr Spock
would appreciate the logic of the pun.
These people who have their own prejudices should not be part of a heady
list such as this if they are going to fly off the handle everytime Lesbian
is alluded unovertly to mean something sexual. Lesbianism should not be
considered salacious and untouchable in a supposedly scientific and unbiased
forum.
As a gay man, I take more offense to immature and unscientific shyness that
is brought on by the word lesbian than to the quite tame joke I or others
may supply.
If we can all finally agree in the modern world that there is nothing wrong
with lesbian behaviour and that this is quite natural and scientifically
known to be a normal part of sexuality in most bisexual animals, then why
should we shy away from even alluding to an occasional pun just because it
involves sex. Is this all in fear of offending biggots, because this
certainly doesn't offend me.
In the end, of course, the focus of this list is not on sexuality but
on language. So if people will stop responding incessantly about a trivial
matter, we could get back into the topic of linguistics - something we would
all enjoy.
Now you have received my tongue-lashing. You may carry on now. :)
______________________________________________________