I’m working with a group of girls this year on all sorts of social etiquette, college, career, etc stuff and this spring my focus with them is the broad topic “Awareness” to include self-awareness, cultural awareness, religious, racial, etc. My intern (I love having a competent intern!) and I are putting together all sorts of awesome stuff to throw at them.

We work with 10 girls and they are currently reading Luna, a story about a transgender teen.

Last week they did a self assessment about how they view themselves/personal backgrounds. We used it to discuss which words they didn’t like hearing to refer to themselves and which words were acceptable. When was it acceptable and who did they feel it was acceptable to hear it from… and then we put up images of people and played the game of “what can you infer about this person” (pushing the point that you really don’t know much about someone and can easily offend with your choice in words).

This week we’re doing the media’s influence. We’re planning to piss them off. We have about 95% minority groups within our group of girls and we’re going to start with the 1759 Encyclopedia Britanica entry on “Negro” followed by some other early American scholars take on Native Americans, African Americans, and gender roles. Then we’re going to show some movie clips. We’re going to jump ahead to the 1950’s and read the Good House Keeping’s take on what a good wife should be.

We have some other things planned to accompany, I want to do a food piece with them to go with one of my favorite quotes “Diversity is the spice of life” and my brother likes to add “while you don’t have to like every spice you should be open to trying them all!” I want them to try a bunch of foods from around the world.

We’re going to take them to the Holocaust Museum in DC in March.

More is always better, especially with information!

“Any deliberate insult, not characterized as libel [which is covered by another article], inflicted in public, oral or written or in a graphical image, or in someones presence oral or by certain acts or by sending or offering a writing or image, is a simple insult, punishable by a maximum prison sentence of three months or a fine of the second category.”

The second part of that article conditionally exempts insults intended to criticize the way public interests are handled.

Article 267 states that the maximum punishment is increased by a third if the insult is inflicted upon:
- public authority, or a public institution
- (government) officials executing their rightful duties [this includes police officers]
- the head of state or a member of government of a friendly state. [In the 1960s this was used against demonstrators shouting "Johnson murderer!"]

Punishment of simple insult is rare. Most people probably don’t even know that that is possible. Fines for insulting a police officer are much more common, as the police uses this as an instrument to retain stricter control in situations where the public order or public peace is endangered, such as places where there are many drunks, hooligans, or riots. So, if you are having a dispute with a police officer and you call the officer a dickhead, you can expect to be fined for that.

History
The Dutch Penal Code has its origin in the French Penal Code, introduced under Napoleon. In Wikipedia, I found that insult was made a punishable offence in France in the Law of July 29 1881 on the Freedom of Press. Translation of a quote: Any outrageous expressions, terms of contempt or abuse that do not include an accusation of a fact is an insult. The French term is injure. Insult of a public official is called an outrage in French (pronounce ootrAhzh).

US Law
Some information on the US situation can be found in Wikipedia, articles Insult and Fighting words. In the article Insult, I read “Many states and local municipalities enforce prohibitions against rude, offensive or insulting speech, leaving citizens, law enforcement officers and courts to decide what is and what is not an insult.” However, because of the constitutional freedom of speech, statutes and regulations that are too broad are considered unconstitutional by the courts.

Wikipedia linked to What is the Fighting Words Doctrine?. Two quotes:

“…Mr. Johnson was convicted of violating a city ordinance that makes it unlawful to “verbally abuse or make derogatory remarks” to a police officer. While the court admitted that on its face the ordinance sweeps too broadly, it noted that it was nonetheless constitutional because it could be interpreted to apply only to fighting words.”

“Although from its very inception the fighting-words doctrine has been redefined and recharacterized, nearly 60 years of legal debate on the issue demonstrate that the doctrine continues to play a role in modern jurisprudence.”

Johan Lont´s last blog post..jclont: I can follow two more twitterers before the block of ‘following’ pics on my profile is full.

I must admit that I had not tried to look up the expression in a dictionary. But if I had, would it have helped me to understand (http://www.google.com/search?q=define:gay&defl=en)?

Johan Lont´s last blog post..jclont: Sex is in essence a form of communication, a dialogue. That idea is not based on any form of research, it is just my personal perception.