From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow
The book tells the hisotry of correcting for political correctness.
The most famous is Intercourse, Pennsylvania, named in the early nineteenth century to commemorate commerce, not copulation, but long a favorite of souvenir makers. Not far away is Blue Ball, named not for congested testicles but for the Blue Ball Tavern, an inn with a blue ball on its sign. Another Lancaster County inn, with a sign exemplifying the maxim “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” inspired the name of Bird-in-Hand, a village gleefully ridiculed as a reference to male masturbation. And then there are ambiguously suggestive names like French Lick (in Indiana), a French settlement near a salt lick patronized by animals craving sodium—toponyms best avoided by list makers wary of being accused of a dirty mind.
We must be careful these days least we politically correct ourselves away from the LGBT rule. A Gory Hole today in San Francisco is recognition of a gay inspired business model. Tomorrow it may be a politically incorrect name. Squaw's Tit mountain is an old Indian name, perhaps celebrating the life giving property of the female.
No comments:
Post a Comment