Word: tabooing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...menstrual blood, and it is the source and symbol of a universal taboo. In most cultures, menstruating women are shunned as dangerous or vaguely contaminated. Throughout history, they have been isolated in menstrual huts, forced through purification rituals and sometimes beaten if they ventured into male company during their periods. Exactly why is a mystery. Some think the taboo arose from a general repugnance of having sex with a bloodily discharging woman. Others see it as caused by primitive man's sense of awe-and fear-at the sight of blood that does not clot and signifies neither illness...
Psychic Slap. In her new book Menstruation and Menopause (Knopf; $10), Feminist Paula Weideger goes a step beyond Menninger. To her the taboo represents man's historic fear and envy of woman and a desire to keep her from gaining equal status. Argues Weideger, an M.A. in psychology and a staff associate of New York City's Women's Health Forum: "The taboo fills certain psychic and economic needs of men. It is alive, it is flourishing...
...with, the story does not lend itself to a willing suspension of disbelief. The setting is a Polish ghetto town about a century ago. Yentl (Tovah Feldshuh) is an extremely bright girl who relishes reading and discussing the Talmud and the Torah with her learned father. It is strictly taboo for a Jewish woman to be studying these sacred texts. Yentl is precocious and prone to dispute with her elders, like the young Jesus...
Obscenities do not have the same power among college students as they have in ordinary life. Constant use, frequently in playful and affectionate circumstances, have emasculated them of any dark, taboo properties they might once have had. Pauline Kael has observed that college students really cannot conceive of the vicious injury inflicted when they as demonstrators taunt policemen and National Guardsmen with the casual obscenities of the collegiate vocabulary. They do not realize that for most people these obscenities are still functional weapons...
This week's cover story deals with a subject that is both sensitive and difficult but demands attention: the continuing efforts of homosexuals to win greater acceptance in society. The story draws heavily on reporting from TIME correspondents across the U.S. Once all but taboo, the subject of homosexuality is now being treated with increasing-and increasingly open-concern in psychological, clerical and political forums as people like our cover subject, Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, struggle for what they regard as full civil rights. It is a struggle that often alarms the "straight" world...