<http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=12272>
Vulgar 'Women's Movement' Disguised as Workshop by Monique Stuart
Shocking "V-Fests" and "C-Fests" -- with both letters representing different terms used to describe the female sexual anatomy -- have been taking place on college campuses around the country. After watching V-Day and "The Vagina Monologues" take over my college, Roger Williams University, during the past three years, I was intrigued by this movement that claims to be ending violence against women by talking about their private parts.
Eve Ensler, author of the "play" "The Vagina Monologues," sparked a global movement when she decided to market her work as a tool to end violence against women and enlisted women celebrities like Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, and Winona Ryder, and many other Hollywood elites, to launch "V-Day." Set to occur every Valentine's Day, the 'V' stands for "Victory, Valentine, and Vagina," according to the V-Day website.
My continuing curiosity about this so-called "women's movement" inspired me to sign up for a V-Day Regional Empowerment Workshop at Pace University in New York City. In case you're wondering what exactly a "Regional Empowerment Workshop" is, don't worry you are not alone. I didn't really know what it was either. As it turns out, the workshop was a gathering of about 200 women devising new schemes to force this disgusting play into the public realm.
Upon arrival, attendees were greeted with a bag held closed with a pin that read "Born Again VAGINA," with the last word encapsulated in the Christian Fish symbol. Inside the bag was what they called a "P***y Purse," designed to look like a woman's most intimate of parts. It also included a spiritual directive to "Šlove your Vagina deeply and with reverence. It is the doorway to heaven." This is the new feminist religion being marketed to women in which they worship their vagina and their goddess-ness.
A founding tenet of this new religion is that all men are created evil. One college student at the workshop demonstrated her adherence to this doctrine when she stated, "It's really important to teach men how to stop being violent." Maybe she's starting to understand that women talking about their sexual anatomy all day isn't ending violence against women. Too bad she hasn't realized that vilifying all men isn't the solution either.
Another college student wanted the monologue titled "My Short Skirt," which argues that a woman should be able to wear -- or not wear -- whatever she chooses and shouldn't be judged, to be a mandatory reading at performances because of its relevance on college campuses. Teaching women self-respect and modesty is out of the question. Instead, "Eve's Army," as they call themselves, wants to send the message that women should be able to dress provocatively and men are faulted for thinking they are sluts.
A woman from North Kingstown, Rhode Island, was upset that the theater she rented wouldn't allow her to post the word vagina on the marquee, because it's on Main Street. Most women in the room then volunteered ways to get around that. Someone suggested picketing out front with signs that read, "Honk if you love vaginas!" A college student offered, "Try to couch it in a positive way, then attack it in the press." That sums up the whole movement. Couch it in a positive way, for example, ending violence against women, and attack it in the press, like labeling anyone against the play as pro-violence against women and anti-free speech. Ensler has taught them well.
After listening to the women in the room plan and plot how they are going to take over a town or college campus near you, Ensler finally arrived. I thought she would get right to the point: how focusing on a woman's intimate anatomy was going to end violence against women. I was quickly disappointed. She spent more time addressing pollution, her hate for our government, and her objection to war in general. She did talk about her favorite body part, though.
Ensler got to the heart of the matter, what she considers the heart of all matters, a woman's private parts. "The vagina is like the meter of your life, the motor, and if all works there it all works everywhere," she said. She claimed she wasn't against intellectualism, but she confessed how she just wasn't right with the world until she started living in her vagina, instead of her brain. Whatever that means.
Ensler holds herself up as the model of what she calls "a woman living in her vagina," while chastising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying that Rice is disconnected from hers. Ensler said, "Condi Rice epitomizes to me somebody who is disconnected from her vagina." Would you rather be living inside your brain, like Secretary Rice, or in your vagina, like Eve Ensler? That's a tough one!
For students looking to return to normal standards of decency, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute is launching a campaign to offer alternatives to this pornographic filth. The campaign is called "V-Day Unveiled: The Vagina Monologues Exposed." Ensler is understandably rattled, resorting to name-calling when she declared the Luce Policy Institute "crazy," but then explained, "I say crazy not to denigrate them, but kind of." If Ensler is the picture of sanity, I am happy to be labeled insane.
My day with the V-Day fanatics was certainly interesting, but I'm not looking to repeat it. Unfortunately, thousands of college students endure this every day on their campuses. There is something terribly wrong with a group of women sitting around, most dressed in T-shirts with "vagina" printed somewhere on them, and thinking up ways to push vulgarities onto the public and remain beyond reproach by cloaking it in a great cause. It's time to peel back the cover and call this movement what it is: not a step forward for women, but a step backward for society as a whole.