A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, I saw a car with a license plate number that started with the letters “F-A-G.”
Granted, every country and jurisdiction is entitled to its own vehicle registration practice. In federal countries such as Canada, Australia and the US, each state or province has its own local and unique license plate design. Vanity plates are even allowed in most of them.
Understandably, car owners who show their affection for their beloved vehicles — along with their status — jump right at the idea of getting themselves a vanity plate — a license plate that carries a number they chose.
This is simply a result of the interaction of the market forces of supply and demand, and there is nothing wrong with it.
However, even in jurisdictions where vanity plates are allowed, not every alphanumeric combination is deemed acceptable. Whenever a license plate is considered offensive to taste or decency, or susceptible to trademark infringement, chances are very good that it would be banned — or revoked if already issued. Alphanumeric combinations such as DAMN and CRAP would be banned for blasphemy and profanity, while something like COKE would be banned out of potential legal concerns. One could safely say that all these are on the long list of banned combinations of possibly every jurisdiction.
While motor vehicles offices across Taiwan do have an undisclosed list of banned registration numbers and alphanumeric combinations, there seems to be less concern for “violation of good mores” in this country due to the relatively stark format that license plates are supposed to follow.
Nonetheless, the vehicle registration office in charge of the vehicle that I bumped into was apparently insensitive to details. The word “fag,” as defined by most mainstream dictionaries, is a vulgar slang term that refers to a gay man, and it usually comes with a usage label that says either “derogatory” or “offensive,” or both, with the lexicographer making every effort to remind the user of the potential risk associated with the use of the term.
Despite the term being a clipped word for faggot, it should not have been allowed to appear on a license plate that gets to roam through roads and streets with the car carrying it, especially in a country like Taiwan — a nation that prides itself for being the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage.
As LGBTQ rights are a key component to human rights, vehicle registration authorities must be in sync with the times by being more sensitive to details.
From now on, the local vehicle registration authorities could try constantly updating their list of banned registration combinations by checking their database against both the bilingual term bank (which is run by the National Academy for Education Research) and the list of their counterparts in other countries — English-speaking countries in particular, thereby rooting out all potentially impermissible license plate alphanumeric combinations. Only in this way could true bilingualism and internationalization be achieved in all aspects of life in this country.
Pierre Hsieh is an assistant professor at Feng Chia University.
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