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Heroism Someone said that being an astronaut required heroism. How many people would turn down the opportunity of going up in space shuttle if it were offered? The risk is there but the payoff is huge. It's also often said of children with terminal diseases that they are heroic. Certainly, there's a lot to be said for being stoical in the face of disaster, and more to be said for taking adversity with a smile. However, to call it heroism puts it alongside selfless acts that have traditionally being referred to as heroic. Take the example of someone who saves complete strangers from a burning house; or the example of a friend of mine some years ago who swam out to sea in strong currents to rescue a stranger, something life savers do every day. These are selfless acts and can truly be called heroic. This trend to water down the language in this way has consequences that I consider to be undesirable. Another example of this is the word rape. The women's movement says it's simple: no means no and anything else is rape. This really is an insult to rape victims. Consider the following scenarios: In one case, a girl is at home in bed. Someone climbs in through the window, rapes her and attacks her when she tries to scream. He escapes through the same window. In the second case, a girl is at a party, gets drunk and gets chatting to a bloke. She goes back to his place. In the morning she finds herself in his bed and he has obviously had sex with her. She was too drunk to remember anything but accuses him of rape. These situations are not the same and to say they are is an insult to the innocent victim who got raped in her own bedroom. The purpose of this deliberate watering down of the language is that it means people don't have to understand, or even think, about a situation. If it's labeled rape then it's wrong, which means in practice that it's always the man's fault if the woman says it is. This extends into marriage. If the man forces himself on his wife then it's rape. There are a number of problems with this. One is, in most cases, it's his word against hers. Another is that it attacks the sanctity of marriage, but this has connotations which I'll discuss later.