As I noted in a previous post, Clark University, which has become a hotbed of radical homosexual agitprop and Christianophobic propaganda, supports Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, a play which celebrates lesbian rape. In one scene, a twenty-four-year-old woman gets a thirteen-year-old girl drunk and rapes her. This is presented as a good thing. The victim later says, "If it was rape, it was a good rape. I'll never need to rely on a man."
Then I looked at what Women for Faith and Family has to say about The Vagina Monologues at its website. This Catholic organization explains that, "It is extremely difficult to know how one might address such a matter as 'V-Day' in the most productive way - not least because to even name this performance involves our using the very language that the perpetrators intend to desensitize us to. Thus, ironically, we are forced to participate, at some level, in the very degradation and violence against the human person to which we object. I believe this is part of the plan. It considerably compounds the difficulty of criticizing it... That is by no means the only irony - or contradiction - involved in the V-Day movement (of which performance of the V-Monologues is the keystone). As you doubtless know, V-Day projects claim to be fighting abuse of women. But the verbally pornographic 'monologues' are themselves abusive of women - they attack the concept of womanhood itself, and destroy the integrity of the human person. Thus it actually contributes to violence against women, while claiming to be fighting it".
1. Reducing women essentially to one body part is hardly pro-woman. It distorts sexuality, objectifies women and, ironically, promotes attitudes towards women and sexuality precisely like those that lead to sexual violence against women.
2. This performance does not even represent real 'voices of women', as it claims in order to give it a ring of authenticity. The author, Eve Ensler, says she based her contemptible creation on her personal interviews with 200 women - indeed, the V-Monologues are usually represented as the authentic voices of women 'telling their own stories' (e.g., Father Timothy Clancy, SJ's editorial enclosed).
But Ensler herself acknowledges that she freely interpreted her 'data'.
3. The stated goal of V-Day is to stop all violence against women, and the income from the plays allegedly is given to agencies that help stop 'violence' (the "V" in "V-Day" also stands for violence) against women. But this, too, is a sham. Ensler employs a full time staff of ten to manage her "V-Day" movement; and donations are often given to dubious (or worse) groups (a set-up similar to Catholics for a Free Choice).
a. Planned Parenthood groups have produced the play (e.g. Planned Parenthood, Eureka, California: the web-site notice is enclosed).
b. In at least one instance a battered women's shelter that had been selected to receive a donation from the V- Monologues refused to accept it after learning what the performance was about. (Reported in Texas A&M's News Source - Feb. 12, 2002: 'V-Day stirs controversy'.)
c. The liberation of Afghan women is one of Ensler's causes. However, as we have seen recently, the 'aid' to Afghan women has included provision of abortion services. While we were not able to establish that Ensler's 'V-Day' has actually given any aid at all to Afghan women, it is clear that not all 'aid' is beneficial.
4. The V-Monologues promote particular sexual pathologies: lesbianism and pedophilia. One 'voice' - that of a 13-year-old girl - vividly describes how she was seduced by a 24-year-old woman. She says, 'if it was a rape, it was a good rape'. This section reportedly led to objections even by feminists sympathetic to the production, leading one reporter to wonder whether this scene might be expurgated from the version being performed on more than 543 college campuses this year. Whether or not the producers do self-censor this scene (as may be likely especially in the context of recent pedophila scandals), it is entirely consistent with the rest of the production.
Vagina Monologues is destructive, pornographic, deforming agit-prop deliberately and cynically aimed at young women - in particular at young Catholic women - a form of victimization that it is perilous to ignore. It contradicts at the deepest level the truth of creation; it is profoundly anti-Catholic, anti-God; and a contemptible assault on the very nature of the human person".
One has to wonder if officials at Clark University are really concerned about violence against women. Women for Faith and Family is right in saying that The Vagina Monologues is destructive, pornographic agitprop which objectifies women and "promotes attitudes towards women and sexuality precisely like those that lead to sexual violence against women."
Is Clark University at least partially responsible for the climate which led to the sexual assault of a young woman on its campus?
It is my contention that Clark University has encouraged Christianophobia (see here) while attempting to demonize moral opposition toward homosexuality. See here.
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