Wednesday, March 08, 2006

"Conservative Women Fight Back"

(Cross-posted at The American Street)

I have a meager appetite indeed for the opinions of the people I've come to think of as The Loveless Ones. The farther I can stay from the issue of their cramped and crabbed and tightly clenched minds, the saner my brain and calmer my liver. I'm not saying I hide from discourse inimical to my prejudices; it's just that sometimes people say and do things that are so ugly and uncharitable and ice-hearted and spiteful that unless I look away sharply and hold my breath and count to ten I will melt to an enraged little grease spot. I'm reminded of Homer Simpson's retort at the gun shop: "Seven-day waiting period? But I'm angry now!"

Today's Washington Post Style Section features a piece on one Monique Stuart, a 24-year-old who appears to have carved a niche for herself in conservative circles and scored a gig at the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute as the Official In-House Scourge of The Vagina Monologues.

Stuart appears to be even more monumentally stupid than even this job title suggests. "The play," she asserts, "defines women as their sexual organs," leaving little doubt about the acuity of her literary judgment and the accuracy of her interpretive skills. (She attended Roger Williams U.: Perhaps someone from the English Dept. might like to step forward and Take Responsibility...) She does claim to have seen the play, apparently several months after having formed an implacable onus against it on the word of conservative author Christina Hoff Sommers, although I'm utterly flummoxed how anyone who has seen or read it can possibly come to her conclusion.

Perhaps the funniest mental image engendered by the article is this one:
During winter break of her senior year, she retyped "The Vagina Monologues," replacing every use of the word "vagina" with "penis," and called the result "The Penis Monologues."
As she is a stripling of tender years, her senior year in college can only be a couple bends back in the rearview mirror, which leads me to wonder even more about her mother wit: it took approximately three minutes this morning to find an online copy of the play (probably a copyright violation), and search-and-replace "vagina" with "penis." Given the technology available even in the dark days of 2003, retyping the entire play seems quixotic to the point of numbskullery.

But this is the kind of dedication and intellectual application that earns one a place of honor at the ineffable (and unpronounceable) Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute.

Here's a typical result of the crude search-and-replace method for devaginating The Vagina Monologues:
Women love to talk about their penises, they do. They really do. Mainly because no one's ever asked them before.
Golly yes, that is an eye-opener, isn't it? My word.

The point being, replacing "vagina" with "penis" yields a result that is sophomoric Dadaism -- unless you reedit the entire play and replace every female character with a man.

Michelle Malkin linked approvingly to the Post article this morning with the one-liner: "Conservative women fight back." (No link, sorry. You can find it yourself.)

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

She does claim to have seen the play, apparently several months after having formed an implacable onus against it

Yes, it's sort of like an onus monologue.

roxtar said...

I'm not one to flee from a literary challenge. For my project, I have chosen "Trees", by Joyce Kilmer. Ahem.

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a penis.

A penis whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A penis that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A penis that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a penis.

This, and others will appear in my soon-to-be-published compendium, "Ozymandias, Penis of Penises."

Anonymous said...

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the penis
that was in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
it was delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Neddie said...

...when I put the penis in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish penis and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my penis to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain penis and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my penis all perfume yes and his penis was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Penis.

Bobby Lightfoot said...

Ahhh ha ha ha ha!!!

You ALL oughtta be in New York. Kilmer! This Is Just To Say!

"Penis, penis, penis
Penis, penis, penis
Penis, penis, penis

All you need is penis
All you need is penis
All you need is penis, penis
Penis is all you need"

Anonymous said...

These comments are so funny I laughed my penis off.

Kevin Wolf said...

In all penis seriousness: They're staging the Vagina Monologues here at the college where I work.

Perhaps I will simply streak down the aisle in the midst of the performance, thereby correcting the gender / organ / PC-quotient.

Hey, it's been some time since the ol' dlinka took the air. (Yes, the verif really said dlinka, god lovvitt.)

Anonymous said...

Dlinka is that Russian cartoon rabbit who's always dropping people from her blogoll.

She's like that other cartoon character, the German one. The one who gives you flat tires when you aren't looking. Can't remember the name.

Oh right, Die Fledermaus.

Anonymous said...

Y'know what. I'm going to be serious for just a minute here. I read the Vagina Monologues, at the house of a soon-to-be ex. And it was an eye opener. I won't say it was the best thing she ever did for me; far from it, in fact. But leaving me alone for half a day or so, at a loose end and unable to move independently, I learned a bit.

Unlike the subject of your ineffably fine post, Ned.

Anonymous said...

i have a little penis
i made it out of clay
and when it's dry and ready
penis i will play
oh, penis, penis, penis
i made it out of clay
when it's dry and ready
penis i will play

Anonymous said...

"Thou shalt not write a play about that which I am ashamed!"

The Viscount LaCarte said...

I am penis
Hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
No one's ever going to keep me down again...

Anonymous said...

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his penis?

harmfulguy said...

I tried to read the linked article, I really did. My problem is that ny time I read something where a conservative woman refers to Ann "Man Hands" Coulter as an inspiration, my eyes glaze over.

It terrifies me that this happens often enough to have noticed.

axrwrrkr: A Scandinavian designer of advanced wood-chopping tools.

Anonymous said...

God. Michelle Malkin's blog is Boring. If you need some good conservative female entertainment -- no one beats Atlas Shrugs.

And. I can't get: Have a little Penis! I made it out of clay!

Out of my head! Thanks a lot!

Don't know why I capped the "P" -- must be out of respect!

roxtar said...

Atlas Shrugs makes my eyes bleed. Could she possibly squeeze more shite onto her page? And aside from that, she's an ignorant penis.

Bobby Lightfoot said...

Envy, Blue Girl. Envy.

Hee hee. Sometimes a Freud is just a Freud.

XTCfan said...

Ah, c'mon, cut Stuart a break. I mean, look at her picture: the lavender cable-knit sweater, the pursed lips, the lack even of any kind of picture for her Windows desktop -- she's a shallow, repressed person who obviously is deeply, profoundly conflicted about her animal lust for Ann Coulter, and so she's doing anything she can (such as trying to be as publicly stupid as Coulter) to get Ann to notice her.

Just remember, as John Stuart Mill said, "Although it is not true that all penises are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are penises."

Anonymous said...

My penis has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R, my penis has a second name it's...

oh never mind.

Anonymous said...

No penis is an island, entire of itself; every penis is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a penisor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any penis's death diminishes me, because I am involved in peniskind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

uunegu--the sound a penisor makes while being washed away by the sea.

Orlando C. Harn said...

.....
I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the penis I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working penis – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the penis looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.
.....
But I did not want to shoot the penis. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that penises have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot a penis and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the penis was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the penis had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.
....


- Excerpts from my investigation of the Orwell essay at http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/