On HN it's important to not to react reflexively, but rather to pause long enough for one's reflective circuits to kick in [1]. Then one can assess what's actually going on instead of snapping to the grid of the nearest pattern-match. That lets one consider the options for making a valuable contribution.
In this case, a quick look makes clear that this is a serious article full of interesting historical material. It's true that there's (presumably) a crude double entendre in the title, but that's there for historical reasons. It's not gratuitous. Unless I missed something, the article doesn't exploit it, and indeed is entirely respectful of Miss Shilling.
Commenters here need to be reflective enough to handle that sort of distinction. It's not difficult, if you're playing in the key of curiosity, which is the intended spirit of this site [2, 3].
On HN, it's best to leave shallow provocations in place and respond to what's interesting. We generally edit shallow provocations out of titles to help with that. This case was an exception, because of the historical angle. We could have replaced that specific name with some euphemism that would be nicer for contemporary ears, but that would be anachronistic and, I think, anti-intellectual. We try not to be Bowdlers here [4].
What I did instead, with the help of a reader who emailed, was put the term in quotes and capitalize it—to try to convey that it's a name with a specific historical meaning—and rely on the intellectual maturity of the readers for the rest. The latter is not always the best bet, but it worked out pretty well in this thread.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime#Performance_conventi...
Undoubtedly.
Its probably also worth pointing out to our American audience that the beauty of double entendres is that any "blue" meaning is clearly in the mind of those hearing them, nowhere else!
After all "Miss Shillings Orifice" is simply a carburettor part named after Miss Shilling. Any association with bodily orifices (and that one in particular) is in the mind of the listener who should hang their head in shame for having such a dirty mind :-) What *would* your mother think!
> Terri Paddock, Managing and Editorial Director of WhatsOnStage, commented: "In general, we're seeing fewer pantomimes mounted in recent years. As of today, we're listing 125 pantomimes in our nationwide database for this Christmas as compared with a peak in 1996 of 244.
https://www.whatsonstage.com/england-theatre/news/panto-stat...
The former is a professional show - although 125 just for professional seems low given that I know of at least 3 professional pantos within 10 miles of my house which covers a population of about 100k population
Professional UK panto income increased 30% from 2012 to 2016 with about 3 million people watching a professional one each year - about 1 in 20 people.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
Also dunno about double-entendre. Seems a little bit depressing to me that a woman struggles through sexism to provide a life-saving invention then it ends up getting made into a vagina joke.
For the record, am English.
It’s also sad that you cannot appreciate an intelligent form of art that is not, in itself, sexist. There are plenty of plays, films, and tv series, where the double-entendre is “pushed” by women (x) , and there are plenty of women who thoroughly enjoy the practice (x) (I’d argue most, but maybe I just move in working-class circles). I’m sure that, if you dig in the annals of engineering, sooner or later you’ll find something nicknamed after penis jokes. Is that sad? It’s just humans being humans.
(X) fnarr fnarr!
That and the picture of Lord Kitchener, maybe with a cup of tea and a really shit cupcake.
[1] PS: I can see it's very authentically english that everybody corrected me on this. I can just imagine the conversation at a pub, with me trying to work out how to escape through methods short of suicide.
Actually, a woman whose family tree is almost entirely composed of German, Dutch, and Scandinavian people. No doubt they hanged quite a few English peasants too, after being literally invited to rule over the country; but, you know, pedantry and all that.
I understand the sentiment, but I would counter: there is nothing more British than turning something utterly non-British into a symbol of britishness (fancy some tea?), so trying to measure purity in this field is not very productive.
So since the empire collapsed after WW2, everybody has been casting around for some kind of identity, more and more frantically as more and more bits of the empire have sloughed off. Since Brexit, it's got a bit weird, with all politicians making all statements in front of massive union jacks, and I expect it will get weirder still when Scotland leaves.
Hopefully, the national conversation will arrive at the conclusion that heterogeneity is no bad thing, and we should simply devolve power (cultural as well as economic) to a local level rather than trying to enforce a kind of Disneyfied Boris-Johnson style 'Britishness' on everybody, but I'm not holding my breath.
Of course, the mechanism eventually broke, because of the slaughter of WW1 put the lie to the dream and the rise of continent-sized superpowers put it materially out of reach. Since then, coopting lower classes into upper-class ideals has been unfeasible. A replacement emerged in the heyday of socialist movements (everyone eating the same food, working in the same factories), but then died off, as that way of life also disappeared. What followed is not homogeneous, I agree on that, but I think you’re discounting the strength of what was there before.
Ummmm
Big Ben is the bell in the Elizabeth Tower. It was made in the Whitechapel bell foundry and could not be more English!
> a woman struggles through sexism to provide a life-saving invention then it ends up getting made into a vagina joke.
The joke is that the joke is wholly [1] in the dirty mind of the listener. I find it very odd having to explain this to somebody from the UK.
[1] Fnarr Fnarr!