Female students at a Catholic high school in northern New Jersey have taken a “no-cursing” pledge at the request of school administrators, though some question why no such demand was made of male students.
Lori Flynn, a teacher who organized the campaign at Queen of Peace High School in North Arlington, told The Record of Woodland Park there is no double-standard. She says that while males weren't asked to take the vow, they have been asked not to swear when girls are near.
Flynn says school officials want “ladies to act like ladies.” And Brother Larry Lavallee, the school's principal, says girls have the foulest language.
Many girls said they would try to follow the pledge they took Friday morning, even though they believe it should apply to all students.
Sixteen-year-old Kaitlin McEnery said the pledge is a “good idea,” but believes that “putting it into action is the problem.” And classmate Dana Cotter, 16, thought that male students should join the pledge because “boys should be more like gentlemen.”
Teachers said they hoped that if the girls focused on cleaning up their speech on campus for a month, their improved manners would take hold and rub off on the boys. They timed the initiative to Catholic Schools Week and the old-fashioned romance of Valentine's Day, promising lollipops as rewards and handing out pins showing a red slash through a pair of pink lips.
“It's unattractive when girls have potty mouths,” said Nicholas Recarte, 16.
Says the boy who you just KNOW refers to women as sluts and cunts while hanging with his boys, and who sings along with Rap music peppered with profanity, violent imagery, and misogyny, at the top of his lungs.
Okay look I saw an episode or two of "The Jersey Shore" and I have to admit that it might not be a bad idea to curb some of the foul language in Jersey, but why in the hell is it ONLY the girls? After all I'm pretty sure Paulie cussed like a drunken sailor right along with Snooki these last six seasons.
And once again I find myself wondering WHY in this day and age women subject themselves to this kind of treatment by a patriarchal religious tradition that blames THEM for the downfall of mankind and refuses to treat them as anything more than second class citizens?
Gryphen, PLEASE tell me the above picture is a come-on for a TV program and not from the school in your article. (I don't know because I don't have TV service of any sort in my house.)
ReplyDeleteIf it IS from the school, I think they have a lot more to worry about than the girls' mouths. Talk about "Come and Get It" looks! Geez, I've seen hookers with less provocative stares and postures!
As for why the girls subject themselves to this crap? They are brainwashed from birth. They have it crammed down their throats by everyone in their family so they think it is normal and correct.
Fortunately, there is hope for them since we now have instant availability of information capable of countering what they are taught and some of them will break free - or at least, begin to think for themselves.
I went to a Catholic high school in California where the girls had to wear uniforms but the boys were only
ReplyDeleterequired to wear slacks and shirts with a collar.
lol I went to 12 years of Catholic school. I never cursed until I got in my 40's and now I curse like a person who is making up time. I speak Fuck PAtois...those of you who enjoy the writings of Tom Wolfe know what I mean. The word can be its own language, used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc etc. (I am a girl) I only do it with close family and frineds as I have a professional job....but occasionally.....
ReplyDeleteYou know, I never swore (and I was in public school) because I was taught that swearing was bad and that expresing yourself with real words was a sign of intelligence. The worst word I said, even to myself, was damn. That was me was 55 years. Then along came SP and her gang of hate-mongers, and the lying made me so angry that I started swearing. The first time I said 'damn' out loud, I thought my husband was going to faint. I to try not to swear (he does not swear either,) but this is certainly a double standard. But hey, it's like the GOP putting all responsibility for pregnancy on the female. In all this talk of ending abortion, has ONE man or woman stood up and said that males need to keep their pants zipped until marriage? That males need to be financially responsible for EVERY life they help create? That males who rape shoud NOT have access to these forced pregnant women and the babies they must now carry? Nope...males reign and don't you littlle 'ladies' forget it.
ReplyDeleteI so don't like flat statements!
DeleteMales used to be taught that the pecker stays in the pants and I STILL feel that way about it. What generation are you in? Talk to today's parents about THAT point!
I believe you should look into the laws pertaining to male support of children.
As for the question of those who rape NOT having any say in what the mother of their kids do? Are you new to this site? You must be, otherwise you would know that the vast majority of the people HERE, at least, agree one hundred percent and even go further in many instances.
For the last line? NUTS! MANY of the men here feel strongly about female and male equality and actually work towards universal recognition of that idea.
The GIRLS have the foulest mouths? Excuse me? They ALL have the foulest mouths. It's a sign of this generation. While the pledge might be a good idea, it is ridiculous to single out the girls.
ReplyDeleteBecause they AREN'T women yet, and are subject to parental rule. That said. you bet I would have been the teen girl sending a foul-language filled letter to his principal about the double standard. Hell, I would have been the elementary school girl doing so.
ReplyDeleteJust as I am now the recovering Catholic who disses the RCC every chance I get for the pain and suffering they cause and the homophobic misogynist, pedophilic perverts they are.
Gryph, you should include the last line of the article: "A pitcher on the school's baseball team, Recarte said he can't help shouting obscenities from the mound after mishaps, and he didn't expect that to change."
ReplyDeleteActually I don't think it's a bad idea. It all has to do with self-respect and respect for others both of which have been in short supply in this country in recent years. And, if it works for the girls, then extend the opportunity to be a better person to the boys as well. Paying attention to the words one uses is a good thing and should be encouraged and thinking about the impact of one's words on others will eliminate a lot of the bullying that is so epidemic in our lives today. I say "Brava" to the teacher and to the students willing to undertake the challenge of the pledge!
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Of course, it's better for girls to be less foul-mouthed than boys!!!!!!!!!!!!
DeleteOf course, it's better for girls to have more self control than boys. It's the girls that won't get the birth control, will have all the babies god bestows, and will support their off-spring on less pay than men, while the darling spoiled boy/men trade them in for a younger trophy wife.
"And, if it works for the girls, then extend the opportunity to be a better person to the boys as well."
DeleteWhy not for both? How can a rule for only part of the population (of the school) be fair? How can they expect it to work without causing even more problems as a by-product, which basically pits the girls against the boys??
Anons at 5:30 am and 6:04 am. Of course i think it should work as well for boys as girls and I think boys can be asked to take such a pledge. But the teacher started with the girls. I don't see any sexism or meanness in it. It's a starting point, that's all. I'd like us all to be more civil and more considerate of one another. Just think. Fewer people might want to walk around with loaded guns if we were all a bit nicer to one another.
DeleteBeaglemom
little hint: telling girls that boys are above the rules IS bullying.
Deletescrew that noise...there is nothing wrong with cussing, being nice to people has nothing to do with cussing. i let my daughter cuss as much as she wants and she's still a caring girl that does not bully. i hate this bassackwards line of thinking
DeleteBeaglemom, that 'starting point' would be like passing equal rights for one gender first, seeing if it works.
DeleteWho do you decide is first? What does that say about how we feel about the other gender? It doesn't cost anything to enact a rule for both sexes, so what else is the reason?
By not including boys, the message is that they don't have to comply, only that you'd hope they do. Choice for guys- no choice for the gals.
Anon at 10:33 am. If I were the teacher I would have proposed a pledge for both boys and girls. I am not the teacher but I'm glad that she did what she did. That does not preclude her or anyone else on the school faculty from extending the pledge to the boys. Whether it's boys or girls is not the main point. The main point is that talking with greater civility is a good thing and something that should be encouraged.
DeleteBeaglemom
".. talking with greater civility is a good thing and something that should be encouraged."
DeleteTotally agree, Beaglemom. But I still think it is worse to impose rules on only one segment of the population and not the other- even a good rule. In this case, cussing, I think it does more harm than good.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, civilly of course!
Again, Men can't control themselves, it is up to women to civilize them by behaving better...old story.
ReplyDeleteA fucking shame.
ReplyDeleteToo bad it's not a God damned fucking shame.
DeleteIt's not un-lady-like to swear. It's a gift from god.
ReplyDelete“It's unattractive when girls have potty mouths,” said Nicholas Recarte, 16.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, little Nicky, you were put on this earth by god to judge and control women. Any day now you'll be in the bliss of the Catholic breeding program. But, of course, with only the most attractive women and with all the viagra your Catholic employers will cheerfully pay for.
Because, little Nicky, you have been schooled to believe YOU are God's chosen sex.
Jesus Fucking Christ! (This, coming from a married mommy with two children) This is as effective as purity/abstinence pledges. And this is what they want public dollars for, to finance these fanciful sexist, misogynist moral crusades.
ReplyDeleteWhen asked why the young Catholic men were not required to take the non-cursing oath, one nun replied, "Fuck 'em."
ReplyDeleteThe pledge for girls only and statement puts responsibility on the girls for the boys behavior.I hate double standards.
ReplyDeleteFuck those fucking fuckers!
ReplyDeleteSigned a grandma that was raised Catholic, and still in recovery from it.
Good Idea??? I thought all people were created equal?? Why is it always the female who is at fault? If it's a good idea, than the whole school ,girls and boys should have the same rules! All or nothing! I used to never cuss I did have a bad habit of saying sh-t ( cleaned it up to cr-p)when I was younger, but now I cuss like a salior at the TV when idots come up with things like this and all their right wing BS
ReplyDeleteSomething a *good* catholic girl should NEVER say or even think:
ReplyDelete"Fuck a bunch of misogyny."
BBB
Looks like we are all "on a roll" today! Fuckyeah!!! Oooops! That wasn't very ladylike... ;)
DeleteWhich church?
ReplyDeleteThis church?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/04/alex-gibney-s-mea-maxima-culpa-sex-lies-and-the-catholic-church.html
Yeah... That's the one.
When I see "potty mouth" and "Catholic school" in the same paragraph it's the pervert priests and nuns that I'm wondering about. I'm not joking. Don't continue if you are easily shocked.
DeleteHere is another link about the movie from yesterday. Andrew Sullivan. http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/02/04/nostra-maxima-culpa/
Here is how it begins. It is a long quote, but where do you stop without destroying the author's intent? This quote is just an introduction to the horrors described by the rest of his post about the movie. This movie and all the other evidence proves the guilt from the popes on down the ruling hierarchy. There is much more including video links at Andrew's post.
"Alex Gibney’s new documentary on the child-rape epidemic in the Catholic Church that raged for decades (and maybe centuries), Mea Maxima Culpa, debuted tonight on HBO. I’ve watched it twice. It is both an inspiring testament to faith and truth – as well as a devastating indictment of pride, power, and lies. The former come from four boys who attended St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee in the 1970s. The latter comes from the Vatican and everyone in its power structure then and ever since. It really is a story about how the real church finally stood up to a hierarchy that has betrayed us and committed crimes of such gravity and magnitude they beggar belief.
The story begins as long ago as 1974 when four boys put fliers on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot of the church run by the man who raped them. They simply said “Wanted” with the priest’s name (the more explicit flyer in the video above came later). Instead of being listened to, the kids were disciplined. Eventually, in Murphy’s psychiatric record, Gibney finds Father Lawrence Murphy confessing to raping over 200 boys over a long period of time. He raped them in their dorm rooms; he raped them in the confessional, using the small window as a glory hole and granting absolution based on rape or masturbation. The detail I cannot quite recover from is that he picked out for abuse those deaf boys who had parents who could not use sign language – so that even if the boys had the courage to say what had happened to them, their parents would not understand. It’s things like that that simply chill you, haunt you, force you to confront the pre-meditated, profound assault on human souls that the Catholic Church, from the Pope on down, enabled, perpetuated, and lied about for so long – and still hasn’t been held fully accountable for."
Go read the whole thing.
This church.
DeleteMore from today.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57567706/ireland-admits-involvement-in-catholic-laundry-slavery/
"Ireland admits involvement in Catholic laundry slavery
DUBLIN Ireland has admitted some responsibility for workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once kept thousands of women and teenage girls against their will in unpaid, forced labor.
The apology comes after an expert panel found that Ireland should be legally responsible for the defunct Magdalene Laundries because authorities committed about one-quarter of the 10,012 women to the workhouses from 1922 to 1996, often in response to school truancy or homelessness."
I'm all for girls being more ladylike as long as boys are more gentlemanly.
ReplyDeleteBut asking the girls to take this pledge and not the boys does send a message. And the "boys not swear when the girls are present" is NOT adequate or equitable. It just invites them to make slut jokes when the girls are not present. Which is what they do anyway.
So, if I were a girl at this school, I would refuse to take the pledge unless the boys also took it.
Sorry, but it does not good for girls to behave like ladies if they are still treated like, regarded as and referred to as sluts by the boys.
The boys at that school are already infected with a false sense of superiority. The girls need to learn to recognize that they are being abused because they are girls. The girls need to understand that the first step in stopping abuse is to get away from the abuser(s).
DeleteAnd, yes, telling girls that boys are above the rules of polite behavior is ABUSE.
Since this thing has gone viral, I can't find the article that stated the boys are also included in this. No, they weren't originally, but at some point, someone said "What about the boys" At that point they were also "invited to sign up" along with any girls that hadn't yet taken the pledge.
ReplyDeleteAha - this isn't the article I read, but it has much of the same info
http://www.app.com/viewart/20130205/NJNEWS10/302050036/NJ-Catholic-school-opens-no-cursing-pledge-boys
I don't think that 'double standard' means what that teacher thinks it means.
ReplyDeleteGood lord. And this is who they have teaching these unfortunate children?
Misogyny 101: School Asks Only Girls Not To Curse
ReplyDelete...Now, as someone who has never been the stereotypical version of what most people think women and girls should act like, I’d like to weigh in. Firstly, I don’t buy into the binary male/female paradigm at all. If I want to curse, I’ll curse. If I want to wear a shirt and tie instead of a dress and heels, I will. If I want to play football with the boys, I will. In other words, this is 2013, not 1913, and I’ll do anything I damn well please. It is time for this misogyny to end, and the increasingly blurred lines with regards to gender presentation and behavior just might help do that.
Also, this pledge sends a disturbing message (as if the misogynist message weren’t bad enough) to high schoolers who might be gender non-conforming. It tells them that they don’t fit, that having characteristics of both genders is unacceptable, that, for the rest of their lives, they will have to choose a side. I know from experience how painful this is. There are a lot of bad messages from this gender separation pledge, and what is even more disturbing is that some of the students seem to support this nonsense. One male student says:
“It is unattractive when girls have potty mouths.”
Well then! Wonder where he got that from? Likely his gender biased parents. Sad, but true. Also, after the pledge, the idea that boys could cure was re-enforced. Lori Flynn said:
“Gentlemen, you are not to swear in the presence of ladies.”
Hell, this craziness even came complete with school-distributed pins with lips with red lines slashed through them, as if the female population should be punished for doing something the male population is allowed to do. The whole thing is just sick in my opinion, and likely to get sicker.
You know what? What if I don’t want to be a “lady?” Being female bodied does not give these people the right to slap a label on us. My body does =/= me. This pledge is clear gender bias, with a lot of clearly disturbing underlying messages, and that is jut the tip of the iceberg of the potential damage done here. In short, this butch, gender non-conforming lesbian says that Lori Flynn and her pledge can fuck off (I had to drop at least one, right?).
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/02/04/misogyny-101-school-asks-only-girls-not-to-curse/
fuck that shit! we need more women cussing not less!
ReplyDeleteFuckin' A!!!
DeleteIt's a private Catholic school, thus they can do whatever they want. Private vs. public. There's a reason that parents send their children to these anachronistic dungeons of "learning". It's all about control.
ReplyDeleteI blame Samuel L Jackson and those motherfuckin snakes on the plane!
ReplyDeleteIt seemed so obvious to me... I thought all along it was those mother-fuckin' snakes.
Delete“It's unattractive when girls have potty mouths,” said Nicholas Recarte, 16.
ReplyDeleteHow refreshing! A male chauvanist pig with double standards. His momma must be proud!!!!
"And Brother Larry Lavallee, the school's principal, says girls have the foulest language."
Really? Advice on child rearing from a "brother" who (supposedly) doesn't procreate. How Pathetic!
Makes me wonder what caliper of women "Brother" hangs around with? What's wrong with this picture?
The parents of these students allow this kind of abuse on their daughters, and whine and kvetch that they pay good money to send their children there AND pay taxes for public school. Gotta love the hypocrisy!