On prudery

[oloriel]

Hurrah, mini-rant! Because I can't be arsed to write a longer one. EDIT: Actually it turned out fairly long after all. Eh well.

Triggered by - of all things - the "22 words you didn't think Tolkien translated" list I mentioned in my last-but-one entry and a comment on today's Sinfest comic. The comment goes "They changed in the same phone booth!
Isn't that against their religion, or something?"

No. No, it isn't. Not necessarily.

What "you guys" - those surprised that there is actually an Elvish word for *gasp* penis, or coitus, or even urine - or those who think that a naked religious boy and a naked religious girl changing their clothes in the same room are *gasp* breaking some kind of religious rule - or those who, for reasons I absolutely cannot grasp, think that "vagina" is offending delicate sensibilities because *gasp* it's a totally neutral scientific term whereas "hoo-hah" or some variant thereof isn't because it's slang-ish - what "you guys" don't get is the difference between religiousness and prudery. (I was half-tempted to write "21st century Americanness" instead of "prudery", but thought better of it because this might just be an unfair stereotype.)

I know various more or less religious people who would be completely unphazed by a naked body unless it showed up in a totally inappropriate place (like, a teacher showing up naked in front of the class) or in a totally inappropriate way (like, child pornography). Sweden, for God's sake (hah!), is on the whole a thoroughly Protestant country, yet every Swedish sauna - completely harmless to Swedish eyes - would make various a-religious people I know blush and cover their eyes. Some beloved children's movies originating in Sweden are probably X-rated in parts of the US even though their content is perfectly compatible with "religion" (meaning, in this context, Christianity, because apparently us Christians are a particularly prude bunch). There actually is a note in the English introduction to the Ring*Con programme going "If you go to the sauna, please remember that Europeans are less ashamed of their bodies and that sauna is usually of a co-ed nature. Don't be alarmed, just enjoy life as they do." Those of you who have read A room with a view (1908) - or seen the movie (1985) - may remember that the boys are going for a swim and a frolic in the woods with the pastor, and they swim *gasp* naked because it's a pond in the woods and who cares?
Statistically I'm sure you could prove that there were more religious people in the 80s, and yet there seems to have been less general prudery in the 80s. Meanwhile I have met, mainly via LJ or online RPGs, atheists and agnostics who also happen to be what I, being vaguely religious and European, consider extremely prudish. Perhaps the majority of atheists/agnostics/what-have-yous are in fact very liberal and I just met the prudish ones because of LJ demography, I wouldn't know.
At any rate, in my experience, religion and prudishness are not necessarily related. Oh, I can imagine that religious hardliners are also prude. But they're not the only ones. Or rather, there's different kinds and places for prudery.

News flash.
A penis is just another body part. Nakedness is a natural state of man(or Elven-)kind. Sex is necessary for procreation since people are neither plants nor, I dunno, cnidaria. People of different sexes being naked in the same room with no focus whatsoever on their nakedness might be a problem if they weren't related/ didn't know each other well and were past puberty. That is already debatable with the SinFest characters, who look like they're 10 or something and might as well be brother and sister. Besides, they're changing their outfit, not feeling each other up or kissing or anything. HARMLESS. Nakedness in a non-sexual context is not actually a problem.

One of the good things DesperateFans bred was a quote going "Naked is naked, but nekkid is when you're naked and up to something". Accordingly, the problem would be nekkidness. Nakedness? Not so much. This differentiation should actually be introduced to general language use.

Same goes for Elvish words for penis, coitus, whathaveyou. Firstly, at that early stage in Elvish meta-history, it all was very much inspired by Finnish legends (hence, funny words like hakka and titte and pukko) and Anglo-Saxon tradition (where a lot of naked swimming and wrestling as well as general debauchery take place), so obviously words for these things were necessary. You'll note that there's no Elvish word for say, the appendix (that is, the vermiform appendix, you know, the thing you may or may not still have dangling from your intestines) because neither the Anglo-Saxons nor the merry Old Finnish knew about appendicitis (although people doubtlessly died randomly after feeling a pain in their guts and getting a fever) and Elves don't get ill all that often (whereas they do get drunk, horny, or, in some sad cases, raped). Now if there were an Elvish word for BDSM (I mean, outside fanon), that would surprise me!

Actually this reminds me of another pet peeve in fandom: the occasional discussion of slash.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind that people discuss slash. I don't mind that some people like slash and some don't. Both kinds of people have a right to their opinion, and as long as neither tries to convert the other side, all's well.
But whenever the slash discussion comes up, sooner or later someone will utter something along the lines of "But Tolkien was a Catholic! He wouldn't have approved of homosexuality, so he wouldn't want any of his characters being written into homosexual relationships!"
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Yeah. Because his works contain murder and mass murder, war, incest, rape, torture, blasphemy, theft, kidnapping and other nice things, and surely he approved of all of those. He wrote about them, after all. But homosexuality? God forbid. Even those depraved Fëanorians could surely not have been lusting after other men.

Here I sit, headdesking. Are those people thinking at all? I mean, at all?

Anyway. People should just stop making a drama about perfectly natural things. And they should stop confusing religiousness with stupidity prudery.

Graaah.