So, with V-Day growing closer, I thought I'd take this opportunity to point you towards this lecture by Christina Hoff Summers about the Vagina Monologues. The main thing to get out of this:
I have so many objections to the play it is hard to know where to start. I’ll limit myself to three. 1) It is atrociously written. 2) It is viciously anti-male; and 3) and, most importantly, it claims to empower women, when in fact it makes us seem desperate and pathetic.
I'm no mysogynist, and haven't ever seen the Monologues, but if that's what I have to look forward to, then I think I'll pass. Especially because of a scene that irritates every last one of my sensibilities and yet doesn't seem to get much play in the press:
Unless you count Ensler’s creepy segment about Bob, the only romantic scene in the play takes place between a 24-year-old woman and a young girl (who in the original version was 13-years-old, but in more recent versions has become 16.) The woman invites the young girl into her car, takes her to her house, plies her with vodka, and seduces her. What might seem to be a scene from a public service kidnapping prevention video shown to schoolchildren becomes, in Ensler’s play, a love story.
. . . Yeahhhhhh. There are so many things wrong with that I can't even count them.
So, once again, I think I must point out that I'm no mysogynist. I mean, seriously ladies, I've no objections to your "empowerment," whatever that means, and if you want to be proud of your genitals, then more power to you. But there are countless better ways for you to celebrate womanhood than this.
Local Update
So, apparently the local GLBT group and College Feminists get together at NU to put on this show. Among the highlights leading up to it?
Every year during winter quarter, the College Feminists sponsor a production of the Vagina Monologues, which is directed, produced and performed by students. Before each performance a Vagina Carnival takes place and Rainbow Alliance typically organizes a booth with safe (queer) sex paraphernalia and other information addressing the intersection of gender and sexuality.
Hm. If I held a "Penis Carnival" . . . I wonder how that would go over?
1 comment:
Actually - I did hear about an event being held somewhere as a rebuttal - called the "Penis Parade".
Anyway, as someone who has seen the monologues - they're not really all that bad. But to me it's just kind of a gimmick and it runs its course quickly. Like, the first couple of ones you kind of laugh and whatever because you're not used to hearing girls talk about their vaginas, but then after awhile you're like - ok this is just pointless.
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