The Vagina Monologues Insult My Intelligence

You may remember recent reports that a second grade teacher had to prevent a parent from distributing vagina cookies to the class. I can’t deliver the story any better than the original, so here are a couple of excerpts:

Autumn Lily Speaker comes into the classroom with a pan full of treats. […] “I decided you can use these to teach the kids about the woman’s vagina today”. Baffled and completely caught off guard I slowly peel the aluminum foil off the pan to behold a plethora of sugar cookie and frosting vaginas. Not just any old vagina, but ALL KINDS OF VAGINAS.

[…]

[P]erplexed I give the parent the most professional look I can muster and quietly reply “I’m sorry Autumn, but I can’t give these to my students. This just isn’t appropriate.” […] Autumn bursts with the fury of a thousand angry Andrea Dworkin’s and starts yelling in front of the class about how ‘I should be proud of my vagina’ and ‘I am settling for a women’s role in life’. Utterly bemused and frozen from shock all I can do is stand and stare at the woman as the word ‘vagina’ is yelled in front of my second grade class about 987,000 times.

It gets worse from there. In a subsequent email, the parent implies that the children should learn how to pleasure the vagina and expresses hope that the teacher will be beaten by an abusive husband.

This is what the Vagina Monologues ISN’T. Actresses proclaim the value of their vaginas; the genitals themselves don’t speak. Presumably. (Photo credit: Mattias Johansson)

News of the altercation eventually landed on Huffington Post and I’m surprised that HuffPost would feature a story that opens the floodgates for criticizing feminists. I spent many years on college campuses and this incident reminds me of V Day. “V Day,” or Vagina Day, is the campus feminists’ replacement for the standard February 14 holiday. The feminists distribute vagina lollipops instead of vagina cookies and they urge “pride in your vagina” and the pleasuring thereof. (In other words, the mother sounds like she just came from campus.) V Day’s centerpiece is the performance of Eve Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues,” a piece that includes some value but also some pedophilia; however, proceeds are often donated to women’s support charities, which must be said in its defense. Also to be said in its defense: Roseanne Barr performed the piece in her underwear a few years back, so there’s obviously some sweet stuff for the men too… in addition to the lollipops. (Cool down. This is a humor blog, remember?)

Long story short: this is what a lot of college students are being taught and the cupcake incident illustrates the unintended consequences of this well-intended V Day programming. Just because it works in theory doesn’t mean it will work outside the university with young children, or with older children, or with adults, or with dead people. (I take that back. Maybe it would work with dead people because they lack brain function.) It’s not the real world’s fault that the intellectual idealist’s ideas fall flat when removed from the academic cloister. Them students don’t remember the lesson right when they leave skool and then the kiddies hafta suffer. The adults too.

The feminism that helps protect women on campus seems to have led at least this one mother to wish domestic violence on another woman. The Women’s Studies professors would be so proud.