ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Correspondent (Israel) for the Continental News Service writing under the headline "Dateline - Middle East". Free-lance writer for the past sixteen years writing on various subjects - Near East culture and crafts, archaeology, history and politics; religious history and rites, etc.. Norman A. Rubin has been featured in publications world wide - Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem Dateline, Esra, Israel - Coin News, Minerva, Oriental Arts, etc. England - Ararat, Good Old Days (White Birches Publications), Letter Arts Review, Queen of All Hearts, etc. USA - Spotlight, Japan - International B, Hong Kong - Archaeological Diggings, Australia etc. - Norman A. Rubin can be found on the Web - asianart.com with articles on Japanese Ghosts and Chinese Snuff Bottles - bibarch.com on the subject of musical instruments in the Bible, etc.. For comments on his writing, Norman A. Rubin (Israel) can be addressed to talabar@zahav.net.il [August 2003]
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (24) Darkness In Death And Dissolution (Short Stories) Retribution through the power of the judge of hell upon the act of murder. [2,447 words] Death The Intruder (Non-Fiction) The rule of Father Death in the time of the Great famine in the Renaissance period. [1,688 words] [History] High Tension (Short Stories) The short story tell of an elderly woman who thinks light bulbs leak. The copy will give the background to her life and the reason why she thinks light bulbs leak. [1,901 words] Islamic Metalwork (Non-Fiction) The History and background to metalwork in the Muslim world. [2,193 words] [Art] Leonardo Da Vinci, Science And Engineer (Non-Fiction) Leonardo da Vinci was known as a 'Renaissance Man' - a man who sought to develop skills and acquire knowledge of human endeavor. [2,112 words] Murder By The Numbers (Short Stories) - [2,227 words] My Uncle Louie, The Goniff (Short Stories) A humourous piece of a man who finds hard luck in the committing of criminal acts. Always falling foul of the law. [1,847 words] Pretty Mary Ellen (Short Stories) A missing little girl disappears and found dead after being violated by a sexual maniac. [1,588 words] Scorn, Thy Name Is Woman (Short Stories) This is a story of murder committed by a meek little man upon his nagging and complaining wife when the cup of his misery of her wagging tongue overflowed... [2,360 words] Simple Jack (Short Stories) A backward youth had been jailed for the accidental death of his mother he committed by crushing her in his arms. The mother was in pain as she was suffering from terminal cancer and the youth held he... [3,144 words] The Curse Of The Moloch (Novels) The novel "The Curse of the Moloch" is about a serial killer by the name of Jeremiah Micaiah, whose victims were women with reddish hair. He was born, through rape, in a coal-mining district. Brought ... [70,061 words] The Curse On The Bones Of Quzma, Son Of Salimu (Short Stories) A short story. [1,557 words] The Devil's Curse (Short Stories) A group of lumberjacks, sitting around the warmth of a fireplace, listening to a tall tale spun by an elder. The story is about Mad Mike, a logger and his chase by the devil in the ferryboat on the ri... [1,824 words] The Elves And The Preacher (Short Stories) A modern version of the fairy story which tells of a goodly cleric and how he copes in difficult times... [1,603 words] The Empty Room (Short Stories) Loneliness in a furnished room except for memories. [2,359 words] The Enigma Of Woman (Non-Fiction) Love and Women are the brightest solution to all enigmas. [1,683 words] The Evil Eye (Essays) The evil eye is paranoia whose victims are diagnosed on the basis that they see plots everywhere and constantly expect the worse. [1,440 words] The Ghost Story Of Yotsu-Ya (Short Stories) The reader is brought to Japan during the era of the emperors - The story, based on Japanese folklore, tells of the unfaithfullness of Yotsu-ya, a warrior in the code of Bushido, towards his wife Oiw... [1,961 words] The Human Form Divine - Norman A. Rubin (Non-Fiction) Ancient sculptures, statuettes and figurines of wide-ranging artistic interpretations of the human form were a way in which man translates the revelation of his many gods. These representations, mode... [2,659 words] [Mystical] The Marching Man (Short Stories) A holocaust survivor driven to madness in search of his family lost in the melee of the second world war. [2,001 words] The Spirit Of The Buccaneers (Short Stories) Fantasy piece which tells of a travel writer during a trip to Eastern Canada. He is trapped in a fierce rain shower and is forced to take shelter in a large stone mansion, which turned out to be a pir... [3,621 words] [Fantasy] The Watch Cat (Short Stories) The story of a black alley cat who adopted an Israeli family and became their 'watch cat'. [1,123 words] Under The Full Of The Moon (Short Stories) A love goddess looking for new seed for the renewal of life. [1,771 words] [Erotic] When Mad Mike Cried (Short Stories) The story of a hard-boiled detective who shed a few tears at a funeral of a friend when he remembers the incident of robbery and death... [1,832 words]
The Word Is In The Law Norman A Rubin
The prude in the legal authority becomes a censor, whose function is to protect his fellow man against images, which they consider indecent and imoral, depraving and corrupting - especially against descriptions in words and sometimes in the innocent sight of pseudo sexual activity. However the existence of even the most strignent censorship had never prevented the writing, staging and presenting of erotic material to the public at large. In fact, the prudes among the enforcement officials with the power of the law had aided in making the notice of sex and its words and actions interested to the curious to the point where the tempted enjoyed the display of sex in both plays and and through descriptive words in books and magazines.
Some of the taboos in the authority of the law were laughable to the point of ridiculous. There were some outlandish laws in the pioneering days of America. For example, it was against the law in a small town in Ohio for a woman to undress in front of a man’s picture. And in the Kentucky frontier it was an act of law breaking when the woman of the house after laundering would hang out to dry both male and female underwear on the same line.
It is equally ridiculous when a husband kisses his wife he is fined for the act; yet in a small Texan town a young man was fined recently for lewd behavior, namely kissing his beloved while they were sitting on a bench in the town’s park. When there was water shortage in Boston in the sixties the authorities applied the Blue Laws, an antiquated set of laws of the Puritan era. The law prevented the good citizens from washing their cars as it was forbidden according to this law to wash one’s horse in the middle of the street. (A bit of curiosity - How were the authorities able to enforce another ruling that stated it was forbidden to bathe without a doctor’s prescription?
During the late forties in Lebanon of the lands where belly dancers who rotate their pelvises for the interest of tourists as well as the local machos, the authorities decreed the prohibition of the new American dance, the twist as being too unhibited, frankly too sexy to be performed in the country; and at the same period, The London Dance Institute followed suit. In Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) the astute communists in the beginning of their rule were promoting an austerity law that will prohibit private or commercial dancing and beauty contests to stop western decadence.
In the city of the bean and cod, various Misery Martins were at one time scrutinizing books and plays for the feared words, direct or in the form of euphemism, for the organs of sex and their functioning. The phrase 'Banned in Boston' became a euphemism for a well-written book or play, albeit with a naughty word or two. Yet at the same period, in Scollay Square of that fair city, two burleque theaters featured daily shows that exhibited in the strip tease the fair bubbies and plump bottoms (and sometimes a bit more) of the various royalty of burlesque as they gyrated their way to fame and fortune. At a later date, both the venerable Old Howard and Globe burlesque houses famed in that fair city closed its portals in face of the increasing competition from the spirited display of nudity.
"With timid steps and tranquil downcast glance, Behold the well-paired couple now advance;
One hand holds hers, the other grasps her hips, but licensed to no neighbouring part to slip."
In the 1860's the newspaper the Washington Union dared not advertise due to stringent regulations, shirts and men's drawers under a bolder heading than 'Gentlemen's Belongings". In 1898, the Philadelphia’s Ladies Home Journal followed suit and annnounced that it would in the future avoid all reference to women's underwear.
But regulations also applied to their English cousins. In 1936 a woman lunatic took off all her clothes in St. Paul's cathedral. The Daily Express, Daily Mail, and Daily Telegraph, and other periodicals in their reports of the incident described her as unclothed or unclad. Not one single daily newspaper was able to face the horror of printing the decent old English word 'naked'.
Following the 'Lady Chatterly's Lovers' trial in 1960 subsequent printing of the word 'fuck' in two British newspapers, the Guardian and the Observer: In their cover of the preceedings printed the word 'fuck' without recourse to the dash or asterisks. Later authors, editors and publishers felt free to follow suit.
But, as late as May 1962, shocked British Post office officials refused permission to a Crime Club to advertise on its envelopes a book called 'Bloody Instructions'. They reasoned that the word 'Bloody' might offend quite a number of people.
The Postal Services in the USA were no better. In proceedings against the magazine 'Esquire' in 1943-44 the 'snoopers and smutt-snuffers' of the U.S. Postmaster General objected to its use of the words backside, behind, and bawdyhouse.
"So isn't a pity, when we common people chatter Of these mysteries to which referred, that we use for such delicate and complicated matter Such a very long and not so ordinary words."
The lawmakers of struck down even the word ‘illegitimate’ New York who in 1925 laid down, "That in any local law, ordinance or resolution, or in any public or judicial proceedings, or in any process, notice, order, decree, judgements, record or other public document or paper, the term bastard or illegitimate child shall not be used, but the term 'born out of wedlock' shall be used in substitution therefore, and with same force and effect."
According to the 'Daily Telegraph' of Jan. 17, 1963, "the University of Califonia Language department was asked to make a study of possibly odjectionable three-letter combinations, not merely in English, but in seven commonly used foreign languages too! As a result the following prefixes were banned from Californian automobile licence plates: SEX, WED, BRA, ALE, BAD, BAG, BAH, BED, DAM, GOD, HAG, SAG, SOP, and so forth.
Today the British Ministry of Transport discreetly bans the use of combinations on the registration plates on vehicles. In London words on plates jump from EUC to GUC; Wolverhampton from EUK to GUK; Birmingham from BOC to DOC and from BOK to DOC; Leeds from AUM to CUM; and other cities and towns of the fair land followed suit.
Even to this very day in a town somewhere near Los Angeles a councilman suggested banning Tarzan books from young peoples's libraries, because of a complaint that Tarzan and Jane were unmarried when they lived in their treehouse. And their British cousins through a Nursing Association laid down the rule that skirts of nurse's uniforms should be below the knees as "patients would see the girl's stocking tops when they bended down to tuck in the sheets."
Even the law took a hand in determining the type of swimsuits suitable for the ladies. A by-law of 1910 in Broadstairs, England decreed that for the sake of decency and order, every person (female) above the age of ten years shall wear a suitable swim costume or dress from the neck to the knees." And the police in Britain continued to hold up the law towards indecent dress; in 1959 they arrested a man for sunbathing in his shorts in Hyde Park.
And if one wants to be interested to the reason why young men to turn to criminal ways should read the report of an American prison doctor in the late forties who remarked that he felt rolled stockings had a direct bearing on crime incitation. The good medic made it clear in an article to good women that they could not copy these unholy styles and be innocent of a share, though directly or indirectly and unconciously, in the crime wave. He even reproached mothers for sending girls of ten into the streets with bare feet.
Ad infinitum to the taboos towards the sphere of sex as they continue forever more. "We have no words in English.... which is not either a long abstraction or an evasive euphemism, and we are constantly running away from it, or dissolving it into dots and asteriks."
READER'S REVIEWS (1) DISCLAIMER: STORYMANIA DOES NOT PROVIDE AND IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR REVIEWS. ALL REVIEWS ARE PROVIDED BY NON-ASSOCIATED VISITORS, REGARDLESS OF THE WAY THEY CALL THEMSELVES.
""During the late forties in Lebanon of the lands where belly dancers who rotate their pelvises for the interest of tourists as well as the local machos, the authorities decreed the prohibition of the new American dance, the twist as being too unhibited, frankly too sexy to be performed in the country; and at the same period, The London Dance Institute followed suit." Perhaps it wouldn't be too much to ask for a period? This sentence is way too long, and poorly constructed. The biggest problem is, it has soooooo many friends. The content of your piece is good, but the structure and spelling errors sure did frustrate this reader." -- Sylvia.
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