to be continued…

How has a beloved national holiday celebrating love and romantic attraction become a platform for feminist politicking? It all began in 1998 in New York City, with a star-studded performance of Eve Ensler’s play, the Vagina Monologues. For the uninitiated, the Monologues is an off-Broadway ode to a particular portion of the female anatomy. In confrontational and often crude terms, Ensler’s play attempts to reclaim the word vagina as a marker of female empowerment.

Building on the message of Ensler’s play, various feminist groups, including the Ms. Foundation, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women, have declared every ensuing February 14, “V-Day.” The goal, according to organizers, is to raise awareness about domestic violence worldwide. But the problem here is the medium, not the message.

If you are already an enthusiast of feminist theatrics, and if you are irate that the word vagina is not normally spoken in polite company, then you will likely welcome V-Day celebrations. And you will see plenty of them. The stated goal of the V-Day College Initiative is to encourage “colleges and universities around the world to mount benefit productions of the Vagina Monologues on their campuses on or around V-Day to raise money and awareness to stop violence against women.” But this V-Day is not for the faint of heart.

First of all, it relies heavily on feminist myth-making and false facts to publicize its message. One of the most egregious is Gloria Steinem’s claim, featured in the foreword to the Monologues, that the symbol of the heart really represents women’s nether regions, and that “it was reduced from power to romance by centuries of male dominance.” This likely comes as news to anthropologists and historians, who have found not a scintilla of evidence to support Steinem’s claim.

Facts clearly are not a primary concern for V-Day supporters. “Women should not have to spend their lives surviving or fearing violence against them,” the V-Day website states. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with this sentiment. But many V-Day “facts” are feminist fictions. The Initiative’s literature perpetuates misleading statistics about domestic violence and alarmist sentiments about men’s propensity for abuse. As Christina Hoff Sommers has pointed out, the V-Day website’s claim that “22 to 35% of women who visit emergency rooms are there for injuries related to ongoing abuse” is simply wrong. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that, in fact, one half of 1% of women visit emergency rooms for injuries related to domestic abuse. Many scholarly researchers also have debunked V-Day organizers’ unsubstantiated claim that “somewhere in America a woman is battered every 15 seconds.”

V-Day’s centerpiece, the performance of Ensler’s Monologues, is also suspect. For example, the original version of the Monologues featured a plot line about a “good rape”—a tale of a 13-year old girl who is the victim of statutory rape. How could rape be “good,” you might ask? In the play, it is committed by an older lesbian, and is, therefore, acceptable by feminist standards. One wonders if the reaction would have been so blase’ if the rapist had been a man.

With such questionable lessons to be drawn from Ensler’s play, it is no surprise, as libertarian feminist Wendy McElroy has noted, that V-Day planners are exercising strict control over all Monologues performances. Participants are warned that “in NO event may any college or university mount a production of the Vagina Monologues WITHOUT being part of the College Initiative.” Similarly, authorized participants are warned that they must follow a “new script” prepared for this year’s festivities. “No other version of the play is acceptable for your production. Do not use the book of the play or versions of the script from previous College Initiatives.” Those that do “could be subject to legal proceedings.”

Dr. Hewlett began researching her book when asked by the Harvard Business Review to interview successful women of the “breakthrough generation” who profited from the Equal Rights legislation of the 1970s. She interviewed ten successful women—including Diane Sawyer, Donna Shalala, and Jessie Norman—and rather surprisingly found that all ten of these highly successful women, rather than expressing satisfaction at their unequivocal success, were regretful and childless.

“I was fascinated by one central thought,” said Hewlett. “Was this a choice? Did these women at age twenty-eight snap their fingers and say, ‘Hey, what I want is the big career—family is not for me?’” Unfortunately, that was not the case—not one of these women chose to be childless, but felt regret at being forced to sacrifice their family in favor of career. According to Dr. Hewlett, the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to be without a partner and childless.

Dr. Hewlett noted that one headhunter she interviewed plainly stated that, “You know, we are not so interested in women. What we really want are men in skirts.”

It is this downplaying of the distinctions between the sexes that have mislead many career-oriented women. “Women are different than men, but the model they have for success with a family is a male model,” said Hewlett. “

The current feminist paradigm of emulating men in the boardroom and the bedroom results in disappointment. As Dr. Hewlett said, “We’ve gone from fearing our fertility to squandering it.” However, it doesn’t have to be that way, and women in their twenties have plenty of time to balance career and family in efforts to avoid disappointment later.

Dr. Drew agreed, “We are in massive denial. The American populace is in denial about what makes us happy, what makes us grow, and the differences between men and women.”

..to be continued..