A few years ago, I saw The Vagina Monologues and while I enjoyed it (I like seeing an actor play a number of different roles in monologue form, a la Eric Bogosian or Anna Devere Smith), I didn't come away from the experience ranting and raving either. Something about the whole phenomenon struck me as slightly... off. So I found myself agreeing with much of this opinion piece in today's Chronicle.
I mean, this sounds really, really bad.
he queen of the V-word, Ensler can't seem to shake her obsession with the term. Here are a few gems from her speech at the Apollo Theater:"Are there are any registered vaginas in the house?"
"Step into your vaginas and get the vagina vote out!"
According to one attendee who reported on the event for the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper, Ensler rattled off supposedly relevant words beginning with the letters in vote: "Voracious! Vociferous! Vitamin! Vehement! Oppose! Out of office! Overcome! Overflow! Orgasm! Talented! Tantalizing! Turn out! Texas!"
She apparently couldn't come up with any words beginning with e, though, and resorted to finishing her speech with, "Vulva! Vulva! Vulva! Vote!"
Ensler's Vagina Warriors also performed, lamenting that they don't have any place to bury their daughters' afterbirths and envisioning a world in which they would be "forever unafraid of being raped by the clean-cutting bulldozers of capitalism."
Oy. It's the subtly nauseating undercurrents of The Vagina Monologues run amok.
That said, the part of this article I strongly disagree with:
It's not new that active feminists tend to be ultraleft politically. From their perspective, you are not a friend of American women unless you support abortion rights, socialized health care and more social-welfare programs. Ronald Reagan's appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court never counted. Just as Condoleezza Rice, Gale Norton, Elaine Chao and other female Bush appointees don't count. They are not the right kind of women.
Yeah, well, call me weird, but I don't think somebody can support interfering in one of the most agonizing and private decisions a woman and her partner have to face, support making medicine a big business and let people die because they don't have enough money for a cancer test or treatment, and propose policies that hurt families and benefit corporations lopsidedly... and still call herself a friend to American women. Nice try anyway.
I think we can all agree with her conclusion, though...
Increasing voter registration and turnout among women is important. But the only part of a young woman's body she should vote with is her brain.
