Here are some e-mails on our annual lament that the radical feminists are trying to siphon the romance out of Valentine’s Day, mainly by insisting that Eve Ensler’s gross, man-hating, and ludicrously written play The Vagina Monologues is staged on college campuses from coast to coast. (See “Oh No–It’s ‘V-Day’ Time Again, Feb. 4.)
From L.W.:
“It was with special interest that I read your entry on the perversion of a once–well, still, in some places–sweet holiday, which I shall persist in calling ‘Valentines Day’ and not ‘V-Day,’ no matter how many college campuses rule otherwise.
“[M]y jaw really hit the floor when I clicked on the link in your blog featuring T-shirts, jewelry, caps and, yes, tea. The ‘Vaginas Vote’ pin and the ‘V-Tea’ nearly had me laughing out loud, after I couldn’t help (somewhat unwillingly) picturing that organ actually walking up to a polling station, and wondering just what ‘V-Tea’ would taste like (I don’t think I want to know).
“I actually did laugh out loud when I saw the picture of a young man, obviously well trained in political correctness, wearing a black knit cap with ‘Vagina Warrior’ emblazoned on it. I laughed, and then sobered up when it occurred to me that a man’s public display of such an article could easily be misconstrued. Would he even get the chance to ‘explain’ before he was beaten up by a horde of angry women who saw him as a potential rapist, or a bunch of men who saw him as a…well, fill in the blank?….I have to believe, for the sake of my sanity, that other women wonder what the public reaction would be to the wearing of ‘Penis Warrior’ caps or T-shirts to protest violence against men–and yes, such a thing does exist!–or if, God forbid, someone should actually start marketing ‘P-Tea.'”
Fortunately, real men don’t drink tea. (Sorry, Brit Inkies!) But you’re absolutely right. Not only does wearing a bunch of “Vagina Warriors” paraphernalia imply that you believe that women are defined by their reproductive organs (shades of the Greek and Roman philosophers who believed that women’s possession of wombs made them unable to think), but it could be construed as downright offensive in a man. Ah, sexism comes full circle!
From L.M.:
“I’ve never heard ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ but from what I have read about it, it seems to focus not only on, ahem, anatomy, but on grievance.
I am now reading Millionaire Women Next Door by Thomas Stanley (one of the authors of The Millionaire Next Door). Stanley finds that self-made millionaire women deliberately avoid nurturing grievances, although some of them could write a book on their poor upbringing and lousy ex-husbands. And these women aren’t hell on heels, either. They are some of the most generous members of society. They became millionaires in part by developing their minds are working hard. In a phrase, ‘Winners focus on the future.'”
Exactly. But the radical feminists prefer to focus on the past–every sort of past grievance real and imagined. And some of the grievances may indeed be real: sexual abuse, rotten husbands, and so forth. But obsessing on such incidents and nurturing the attendant grudges doesn’t get anyone anywhere. And it’s just what you don’t need if you intend to become a millionairess–unless you’re Eve Ensler, of course, and can figure out how to make some money off it from your gullible sisters who seem to have neither taste nor judgment when it comes to evaluating dramatic productions.