The Vagina Monologues

“The Vagina Monologues” just won’t die. When I first read of the play more than a decade ago, it sounded bizarre. When I saw the playwright, Eve Ensler, interviewed on TV, she was another kooky, man-hating feminist and her play was becoming a rallying point for NOW (National Organization for Women) types and “Women’s Studies” majors across the country. When I spoke disdainfully of it last year in front of a young, female colleague, she asked, “Have you ever read it?”

“No,” I admitted and she offered to lend it to me. I promised to check it out, but not to read it all if it didn’t grab me. It was interesting the way train wrecks are interesting and so short that I read it all. It was even more bizarre than the newspaper descriptions because most of its content couldn’t be published in a newspaper. Women chanted several dozen slang terms for that part of their anatomy - way more than I’d ever heard. Then they described what their vagina looked like, smelled like, what it would say if it could speak, and what it would wear if it could get dressed up. It reminded me of puerile conversations sixth grade boys would have about their anatomy when out of the earshot of adults. But these were grown women.

My wife didn’t want to read the book last year, but I persuaded her to watch an HBO film of the play I rented from Netflix starring its author, Eve Ensler. Her impression was the same as mine - bizarre. Then a local theater company decided to produce it at the Magic Lantern in nearby Bridgton, Maine - a community whose newspaper carries this column. I thought it would be interesting to watch local women willing to shout the C-word to an audience and see if the audience would join in the chant. Again, it would be interesting the way a train wreck is. I bought tickets, but then gave them away when the date conflicted with a trip to Ireland.

Last weekend, a theater company in North Conway, New Hampshire produced it - another community whose newspaper carries this column. My wife said, “Nah. I’ll stay home. You go.” It was a very small venue at M&D Productions, but nice enough and quite reasonable at $15. They even served wine which I could take into the theater with me - very civilized. Most of the actresses were my age - late middle age - and so was the audience - mostly women and about 80% late middle aged. The script was modified with local writers adding monologues, but the flavor was the same. Women offering feminist laments about bad treatment of them and their vaginas by the world at large - especially by men, of course.

Being familiar with the script, I was more interested in watching the audience. Most laughed in that way some junior high school girls will when they’re shocked at outrageous sexual comments made by junior high boys. They don’t consider the remarks funny, but laugh because they don’t know how else to react. It seemed that some of the men laughed because they thought they were supposed to and it would have been impolite not to. I smiled at one performance by a local woman mimicking a triple orgasm. She bettered Meg Ryan’s performance in “When Harry Met Sally.”

The play’s nadir was a monologue by an actress playing a 13-year-old girl describing her seduction by a 24-year-old woman.

“Vagina Monologues” explored many aspects of vaginas except what I would consider their most important one - procreation. Vaginas are, after all, vehicles for pregnancy and birth. Ensler said in a revised version of TVM: “I had been performing this piece for over two years when it suddenly occurred to me that there were no pieces about birth. It was a bizarre omission.”

Um, yeah.

Radical feminists’ disconnect from the maternal is the essence of what’s bizarre about them. Ensler went on: “Although when I told a journalist [about] this [bizarre omission] recently, he asked me, ‘What’s the connection [between vaginas and birth]?’”

Uh-duh. It’s hard to imagine any journalist asking that question. I know there are dumb ones out there, but still. Ensler then described how she was present at a birth and what she saw. I’ve been present at four and it wasn’t a bad piece of writing.

TVM’s forward was written by feminist guru Gloria Steinem, who seems to deny that women have a maternal instinct at all. In his television special “Boys and Girls Are Different: Men, Women, and the Sex Difference,” ABC’s John Stossel asked Steinem: “Aren't women, in general, better nurturers?” Icily, she answered: “No. Next question.” In TVM’s forward, she referred to the women’s movement as an alternative to the “patriarchal/political/religious control over women’s bodies as a means of reproduction.” Is Steinem referring to abortion here? I learned elsewhere that she’s had at least one herself and described it as “a pivotal and constructive experience.”

Constructive experience? Abortion?

Given that vaginas are the vehicle for 40 million-plus abortions in the United States alone, and given that abortion is the single most important issue on the radical feminist agenda, it’s very interesting that it's completely ignored in what has become the iconic feminist play. Maybe that’s because the worst and most horrible violence perpetrated on a vagina is by a woman’s own choice.

Coo-Coo On Campus

America’s universities have gone crazy. Decades of dubious African-American Studies, Queer Theory Studies, Womens’ Studies, Gender Studies, and the like have produced a nearly uniform dippiness in students, faculty, and administration. That students and their parents would spend upwards of $50,000 per year to study such things is bad enough, but that’s their business. That government spends our tax money on them in the form of grants and subsidized loans is far worse.

Those applying for admission to the University of California are asked to identify themselves as either “male; female; trans male/trans man; trans female/trans woman; gender queer/gender non-conforming; and different identity.” They’re asked their sexual “orientation,” which assumes they were born either homosexual or heterosexual, but it also asks: “what sex were you assigned at birth, such as on an original birth certificate?” This is reflective of the assumption among progressives that homosexuals are born that way, but men and women are not.

According to the progressive mantra, sex has nothing to do with genitalia, chromosomes, anything physical or scientific, and has little to do with reproduction either. Rather, it has everything to do with feelings. Feelings trump logic, history, biology, evolution, and creation. 

Speaking of feelings, students attending at least twelve campuses experienced panic attacks recently, triggered by seeing “Trump 2016” and “Build The Wall” drawn in chalk on a sidewalk. According to campusreform.org, the “victims” who read these messages have been offered counseling. Administrators have banned political chalking entirely. Students complained about how much water is wasted to hose off the chalk.

He's talking about seeing "Trump 2016"in chalk on his campus

There was some craziness when I attended what is now UMass Lowell in the 1970s. A professor recruited me to attend a class called “Sociology of Women and Sex Roles” because no men signed up and she wanted some male perspective in discussions. I didn’t have to do the reading and I only had to show up twice a week though the class met three times. I had a full-time job on the second shift and couldn’t make the third class. One of the books we discussed was “The Bitch Manifesto” which was still being studied in 2007 according to a quick net search. I wouldn’t be allowed in today without first renouncing my heterosexual-white-male-privilege.

It got crazier in the 1990s when my wife finished her undergraduate degree in Social Work at the University of Southern Maine. I accompanied her to a graduation party in Scarborough where several lesbian graduates lived, one of whom was her friend. Upon arrival, attendees were assigned badges declaring whether we were gay, straight, or bisexual.

In 2010, I wrote what I considered a tame review of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues but I it got me fired from one of the papers carrying this column. The publisher received so many complaints about my use of the word “vagina,” he said he couldn’t defend me anymore. It didn’t seem to help when I explained that those readers’ taxes subsidized the play when it was produced annually on multiple campuses of the University of Maine, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of other campuses across the country. I was hired back a few weeks later when the controversy died down.

Science departments used to be anchors of sanity at universities. They’re infected now too by millions in government grants for dubious research on alleged human-caused climate-change. I hope I live long enough to see the day when it’s finally exposed for the power-grabbing hoax it is. I also look forward to Mark Steyn’s day in court, the legal preliminaries for which have dragged on for almost five years. Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, author of the infamous hockey-stick graph purporting to demonstrate anthropogenic global warming, has sued Steyn for defamation after he accused Mann of fraud. Steyn refused to apologize and wants a trial to further expose Mann’s specious research. Given Steyn’s brilliant mind and biting wit, that promises to be the best legal theater since the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Mark Steyn

I wanted to get this out before Maine Attorney General Janet Mills comes after us climate-change “deniers.” Together with sixteen other Democrat AGs around the country, Mills is on a witch hunt to criminalize research into what they all insist is “settled science,” as if there were any such thing.

Political correctness on campus has gone way beyond ludicrous. One longtime friend who is very loyal to his alma mater was pushed over the edge when its administration dictated which Halloween costumes were allowed and which were not. He’s a thoughtful guy and has been left-of-center for the many decades I’ve known him. Now, however, he’s supporting Donald Trump in hopes that he would counteract it. I was shocked.

Around, around, and around it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

Addendum: Response by Michael Mann in Conway Sun, one of the papers carrying this column:

Fit To Print?

Something is wrong when a family newspaper won’t publish in this space a book passage that public schools assign to fourteen-year-olds. Last week, a father was arrested at a school board meeting in Laconia, New Hampshire for “disorderly conduct” for exceeding the board’s two-minute speaking limit when commenting on the passage in question. Someone videoed the incident and posted it on Youtube with text of the passage superimposed on the screen. Otherwise I couldn’t have known what it was to which the father, William Baer, so strenuously objected. If you want to read it, you’ll have to watch it:

Hence, the dilemma. Most people won’t ever read it and therefore won’t know what the salacious passage describes: rough sex between a teenage boy and girl. As a teacher and columnist, I was frustrated several times by just this kind of conundrum. Because newspaper standards didn’t allow it, I couldn’t show parents and taxpayers what schools were actually doing with both their children and their tax money. In the book I’m writing, however, I’ve been able to describe appalling examples to which I could only refer obliquely in columns. Once, an editor was ready to dump my column after I wrote a critique of “The Vagina Monologues,” showings of which are paid for by taxpayers at hundreds of public colleges. I considered the column quite restrained compared to the play I was describing.

During his turn to speak, Mr. Baer seemed surprised by the two-minute rule, which he claimed was just for that meeting. Eventually, he passed out copies of the licentious passage to school board members and challenged them to read it, but by that time, the chairwoman, Sue Allen, told him his two minutes were up. He sat down, but after a subsequent speaker accused Baer of wanting to dictate what students could or could not read, Baer spoke up again from his seat claiming the man’s comments were absurd. “No one’s talking about censoring the book. No one’s talking about banning the book or burning the book or anything…” he said. Chairwoman Sue Allen talked over him to ask that he be respectful of other speakers, none of whom had the floor at that time. Baer continued talking and a police officer walked into the seating area and asked him to leave. Baer remained seated and the officer took him by the arm, led him out of the room, then handcuffed him before taking him outside to a cruiser.

Never having seen a police officer at numerous school board meetings over the years when I was teaching in nearby western Maine, I assume the board arranged for the officer to be there for that night. The Laconia Daily Sun had reported two days before the meeting that Mr. Baer intended to ask the board members to read the passage in question and quoted him saying: “I'd like to see them read this. To see them squirm.” However, the video shows him asking the superintendent to read a copy of the notice that went home to parents indicating that the book “depicts high school relationships, some of them unhealthy.”

Jodi Picoult

Baer considered that insufficient warning and after reading the passage, I have to agree with him. He would have been better off using his two minutes to read the passage aloud himself, but maybe he was too embarrassed. It’s that graphic.

Media from all over the United States and Europe reported on Baer’s arrest but none that I read printed the salacious passage. I can’t help but wonder if he’d still have been arrested for reading it aloud without exceeding the two-minute limit. Perhaps not, but most if not all present would have been uncomfortable listening to it.

Baer listens after sitting down

No one can make a judgement about the whole incident without first reading the passage, but it can’t be printed or recited in polite company. Baer had asked the Laconia Daily Sun to print it but, according to the Sun's article: “Editor Ed Engler declined, saying he thought some of the description[s] rendered were not suitable for publication in 99 percent of daily newspapers in America, ‘Maybe 100 percent.’”

Baer claimed the Manchester Union Leader also refused to print it, and asked: ‘It's not fit to print, but it's okay for my daughter to read it and discuss it? My goal is to have everyone in the United States read what's on page 313 of that book ["Nineteen Minutes" by Jodie Picoult],” he declared, ‘except my daughter.’”

Baer's 14-year-old daughter addresses board

Teaching fourteen-year-olds for most of my career, I saw many girls reading books by Jodi Picoult. Book critics claim the rough sex act described in “Nineteen Minutes” is not gratuitous but integral to the story line about a fictitious school shooting. I’m not a novelist and I haven’t read the book, but I doubt the scene was necessary.