I
don't know if you remember the Bobbitt trial. Lorena Bobbitt, June 23, 2008 Today is the day in 1993 where Lorena Bobbitt took a kitchen knife to her sleeping husband after he was supposed to have raped her and slashed off his penis. She then drove away and threw it in a neighboring field. They were later able to sew it back on and he had some limited success in using it afterwords. John Bobbitt even stared in a really bad porn movie afterwords as he cashed in on his 15 minutes. It was quite a news story. The word Bobbitt got added to the english language as a popular culture addition to Websters meaning violent emasculation. What I remember most about it was sitting in the newsroom before my show on CKQB, the Bear in Ottawa and listening to the news guys laugh about it, and struggle to say the word penis. Now newsrooms all over are notoriously irreverent, but those guys have got game, and are able to keep a straight face reading the most outrageous news story. This story however, had them doubled over. You could hear them snickering like kids and kept blowing their practice news reading over the word penis. I guess most people (with sex therapists being the exception) don't say the word penis very often. Rolling my eyes, I had the guys practice saying 'penis, penis, penis, penis" over and over until they could state it without cracking up. It was a lesson to me in the language of sex, and that even hard boiled news guys could be uncomfortable about terminology. It also taught me that if you have something to say that's uncomfortable trying practicing it over and over again until you get it right. Finally, it shows me now quickly the sexual paradigm changes and how much more open the media is about using sexual words than they were even 15 years ago. And finally, it gives you a healthy respect for a woman scorned holding a butcher knife. 
