Every once in a while something that seems to illustrate the current astrology perfectly gets written about on Planet Waves, and then a little more information about it comes to light or a better example surfaces, or both. Such is the case with the One Billion Rising example I used in today’s Daily Astrology post below. It has some problems.
The idea of one billion women (and men) dancing around the world all at once is still a fantastic image of collectively raising the vibration. But Eve Ensler and her V-Day foundation are problematic, and in a sense, what they’ve come to be about runs counter to the astrology’s message to ‘stand out’.
For one, check out the Wiki page about feminist criticism of The Vagina Monologues, which includes this passage:
The Vagina Monologues has been criticized by a number of people in the pro-sex feminist, gender egalitarian, and individualist feminist movements. Harriet Lerner, renowned in the field of women’s psychology, points out the “psychic genital mutilation” embedded in the play’s title, which ignores the clitoris and labia, and should more accurately be called “The Vulva Monologues.” Pro-sex feminist Betty Dodson, author of several books about female sexuality, saw the play as having a negative and restrictive view of sexuality and an anti-male bias. She called the play “a blast of hatred at men and heterosexuality.” Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy agreed, stating that the play “equates men with ‘the enemy’ and heterosexual love with violence.”
In other words, The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day Foundation that was built on its success essentially perpetuate violence despite claiming to be against violence. They do so in part by putting forth a viewpoint that ‘men are violent’ while ignoring male victims of sexual violence (consider the abuses by the Catholic Church prompting Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announced today, or the circumcision of baby boys). And unfortunately, The V-Day Foundation is becoming a form of corporate exploitation of violence under the guise of an anti-violence message, according to some critics.
Now, about the astrology: given how unassailable The Vagina Monologues has become (critics of productions on college campuses often find themselves shunned at best, fired at worst; it is very difficult to critique Ensler and The V-Day Foundation without being labeled a misogynist), does joining One Billion Rising actually constitute ‘standing out’? Or is it actually an example of conformity by women?
I’m not suggesting that people should not join in the event — I still think that millions of women dancing worldwide is a wonderful thing. But it’s worth asking whether conforming to an essentially corporate endeavor built on an anti-male, anti-heterosexual-sex agenda is truly daring or creative.
As one of our commenters noted under the Daily Astrology post, “a Pope who has been very criticized for his ‘old’ views just did an extremely ‘modern’ action.” In a bizarre twist, we’re seeing a Catholic Pope ‘stand out’, apparently in relation to the rape of little boys by Catholic priests: sexual violence toward young men. I’m not praising Benedict XVI per se since I don’t have all the facts yet, and Eric will have more to say about the Pope’s decision and the astrology in tonight’s Daily Astrology and also in tomorrow’s Planet Waves FM. But it is worth noting how striking the move is.
It’s also worth noting where you truly stand on the issue of healing both halves of the perpetuated divide between genders when it comes to sexual violence. It’s worth considering how you can truly stand out. Just how creative you can get with something as simple as a camera or a dance or a poem or set of paints right now? What do you have to say?
Yes, you’re right, Amanda; hadn’t thought about the timing and all the Nessus stuff, very interesting. Looking forward to Eric’s podcast.
hi lizzy —
““consider the abuses by the Catholic Church prompting Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announced today” – Amanda, this isn’t exactly why the Pope resigned – these things surfaced publicly in 2011. The official reason is because he’s 85 years old and feeling his age.”
i know that is not the explicit reason given.
but when you take into account that popes have consistently held their appointment until death for the last 600 years, that pope benedict was directly involved in how these scandals evolved within the church when he was a cardinal (eric is planning to get into this in greater depth in his podcast tonight, hence i did not get into it in this post), and the astrology (sun conjunct nessus), there are indicators that the sexual abuse scandals and ratzinger’s role in dealing with them are likely a big reason *why* he is “feeling his age.”
astrologically, with all the nessus action the past two weeks, the timing is uncanny if nothing else. and astrology usually suggests that it’s more than just “uncanny.” 🙂
actually, the satirical publication The Onion put it best in their headline today: “Resigning Pope No Longer Has Strength To Lead Church Backward”
Sorry, African candidates for the position of Pope!
Ps (some hours later..) though this scandal, and others besides are thought by many to have influenced his decision…
Found out today that there’s the possibility of not one, but two African Popes, waiting in the wings…!
We have something going on in our small community south of the Mason-Dixon line that seems to be playing out a similar theme. I’ve had no one to talk about this with, if only because it involves sodomy, something no one likes to talk about.
A county supervisor plead guilty to a forcible sodomy charge brought against him by an ex-girlfriend. Admittedly, I haven’t been following the case closely (and how to do that anyway with the crummy excuse for reporting we have on our hands?), but it could easily be a way for a woman to expose her ex to scrutiny without admitting her own complicity (a kind of “I’m calling the cops on your ass” simply because sodomy is illegal and she didn’t like the way he acted about . . . dinner or whatever).
The board of county supervisors has censured the guy and local community members have taken a petition to oust him, which seems pretty improbable given that he hasn’t violated the public trust. What gets me is our sexual assault resources non-profit calling on him to resign.
This is a complicated personal issue that because of all the p.c. rhetoric that’s been laid down in the name of “feminism” is getting the same kind of whitewash that we might have seen with nonconsensual rapes prior to the feminist movement. Everyone pointing fingers at the guy gets to anoint themselves with holy water without thinking of the ways they take advantage of situations/institutions themselves to batter someone down on the other side.
I don’t care about the supervisor, personally, but it lowers my opinion of all those well-funded non-profits that jump in with their knee-jerk reactions when it’s politically beneficial. As if we needed more self-serving, inflexible organizations cloaked in moral sanctity.
I’ve long resisted describing myself as a feminist. In my idealistic way, I felt feminism had changed the landscape so dramatically, everyone, whether they admitted it or not, had been altered too. Maybe what I was really reacting against was the fear that feminism could lead us to more boxes, not to more freedom.
“consider the abuses by the Catholic Church prompting Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announced today” – Amanda, this isn’t exactly why the Pope resigned – these things surfaced publicly in 2011. The official reason is because he’s 85 years old and feeling his age.
Here is a twist on Ensler – from one of my favorite sex blogs. Explicit nudity followed by article on a “Reclaiming Cunt” piece in some new iteration of tHE mONOLOGUES. If this is true, that would be news – a fun moment –
http://sexpornerotica.com/reclaim-the-cunt
Is this from a parallel universe?
“This features a sex worker who describes the variety of moaning women express as they receive pleasure. Eve Ensler asked us to moan, so, we moaned.”
I am listening to you men. I have listened to many men in the course of my work. I doubt the men I’ve met are the silent invisible ones you speak of Eric. But some have made a journey back from those reaches.
What you write breaks my heart, Eric. I wanted to focus my work with men when I began. Men called me forth with their pain and fear about being who they are, feeling what they feel. Yet I found the way in too challenging to the unhealed places in me, and so I’ve shifted to mostly working with women, for now, helping the sisterhood wake up.
Luckydiver, you’ve got me thinking I need to see the play again, or at least read the book. It’s been 10 or 12 years. I do not remember any male bashing in the productions I saw in Maine. I remember women telling their stories about their bodies, their sex. Breaking silence. It was my own silence I was starting to break perhaps. What I focused on.
I do know that different productions create very different plays. A multigenerational production in a tiny theater the size of a living room had me weeping throughout, even when laughing. Those women knew the story inside out. A college production I saw a year later was played for laughs, camp… It was appalling. They didn’t get it. They were perhaps angry, or thought they were supposed to be. They didn’t know what it was like to feel cut off for so many years.
I am listening to you all, listening. What I know doesn’t amount to much. It’s the listening that matters. I am happy to be reminded.
“I am tired of my penis being considered, by anyone, a potential weapon that could be used in a felony. Some will think that it’s good to turn the table on men so they get a taste of their own medicine, but this is not my medicine.”
So am I, Eric. And it has never been my medicine to turn the tables. That’s not medicine that’s poison.
I’d really like to thank you for posting this “second thoughts” piece because it validated a pretty strong response I had to the Vagina Monologues when the show was gaining enormous publicity in the late nineties. At the time, I was working as an aide to the CEO of a TV network. The job itself allowed me to have wide exposure to many people within the entertainment industry as well as the political sphere, and that experience completely stripped the veil off of the manufactured PR images that many of these people were careful to cultivate. Eve Ensler was one of the people that came through the office as she was seeking corporate funding to expand the reach of the monologues.
I should disclose that I have never seen the Vagina Monologues as a whole; I have only seen snippets of the production and read some of the writing because the whole thing actually struck me as incredibly toxic once I learned more about it through my work situation. I won’t bore anyone with the laundry list of my objections, but I will say that I was astounded that this play was touted as being a feminist work and expressed my opinion to the network folks, who looked at me like the cheese had totally slipped off my cracker.
I don’t dispute that Ensler has done a great deal to shed light on many of the injustices experienced by women, but I also feel that there is quite a self-serving element to her personality and a lot of inconsistency between her stated activist ideals and her acceptance of certain corporate funding. At the time, I asked a male colleague of mine who went the play for his thoughts, and he told me that he wished he could have disappeared during the show because of the level of one-dimensional representation of men. I don’t think that is what feminism is or should be about; life is far too complex to reduce it to such a black and white battleground.
I agree that on one level this small.
But what is not small is how we think about our approach to what we see as a problem. I take issue not just with Ensler’s choice of language, her message and her sub-par writing, but with this particular kind way of thinking of problems and solutions. Any particular issue is not subject-specific; we are learning to approach issues as we approach them, in real time.
I have a problem with Tampax as a corporate sponsor when dioxin in bleached tampons and toxic shock are not addressed as examples of violence.
Re intentions — yes. I’ve learned to be mindful of the various laws of “unintended” consequences. We need to be aware of the problems that our supposed solutions create.
Many, many men are still living with the toxicity of the “men are worthless” school of feminism, who still here the words “chauvinist pig” echoing every time they hear the word “male.”
The men who have been damaged by faux feminism are not seen as a constituency or even as a population; they are invisible. Tremendous damage has been done to the self esteem of boys who were raised in the 70s under these theories, and I for one am sensitive to perpetuating anything with the same or similar emotional or thematic vibration.
I am tired of my penis being considered, by anyone, a potential weapon that could be used in a felony. Some will think that it’s good to turn the table on men so they get a taste of their own medicine, but this is not my medicine.
Amanda, you are why I am here too :o)
Your previous article on the astrology is right on. Very inspiring. It is time to move forward in every way, and not alone! Stand out, yes, but not alone.
thank you diva carla, for adding your voice to the song today! fantastic points.
and i share your pet peeve about “vagina” when “vulva” is meant — as well as the understanding that there are hugely more outrageous things to be upset about in the world, and to speak out about, and take positive action on, and to find a way to bring visibility, voice, love and healing to.
Points well taken. I agree with a lot of them. And I see V-Day, and One Billion Rising as necessary and good.
A pet peeve of mine is saying vagina when what you mean is vulva. This peeve pales beside the legal, codified violence women world-wide experience as a rule of daily life. It pales beside routine male genital mutilation in this enlightened era and country. It pales against the violence of medicalized birth. It pales beside hate crimes and hate speech and hate thought directed toward anyone, including self, who is “different” sexually.
15 years ago, nobody could say Vagina outside a doctors office. Half a year ago, we discovered that women can’t say Vagina in the State House in Michigan. The power is in the VOICE. If we can have a discussion about Vaginas, Vulvas, Penises and Foreskins in public, then we have a toe-hold for making the discussion of sex normal. That’s the first step to healing the violence that is paired with sex in this culture we live in, and around the world.
I maintain that calling attention to violence against women calls attention to the entire issue. How did the violent men get that way? It was passed through the mother (read Joseph Chilton Pearce). Where does the buck stop? It stops when violence against women stops. The woman, the mother is the keystone to changing “a society that extols violence as a virtue, and where warfare (where most rape happens) is considered normal and even desirable.”
Eve Ensler has her platform, her voice, her constituency and her detractors. It’s a focused message and there is the power. Let her voice be heard.
And let it galvanize everyone else who has a contribution to make to the conversation. Let the leadership inspire their tribes, give voice to the unspoken, and sing it loud. This is a song we sing in multipart harmony, not dissonance! and we must sing together, for it is dangerous work!
You do this Eric, here at Planet Waves and beyond. That is why I am here.
Thursday night, my vulva and I will be dancing at one of two venues in my little community, along with other people who love to dance, and who love justice. Some have vulvas and some penises. They’ll be of all ages. One billion rising is good. Now that we’ve got their attention, let’s get them thinking.
Inelia Benz has written a lovely article about the mistakes we so easily make with intentions. It is called “Impeccable Intention and Our Capacity to Manifest.” In it she describes how we unintentionally manifest lower vibrations. I think it’s worth a look. I certainly remember when I quit smoking (for example), and what an evil bitch I was to my family for a very long time. Wish I’d understood a little more about this back then. http://www.ascension101.com/en/home/ascension-blog/72-february-2013/308-impeccable-intention-and-our-capacity-to-manifest.html
One problem with the “men’s violence against women” approach is that it ignores the interplay of everyone involved in many situations where violence is an issue. The problem with pointing out any shared responsibility is that you can get accused of blaming the victim.
Yet we have all seen these patterns — violent households that people (“victims”) refused to leave; people who are serial victims, in relationship after relationship; and other patterns. This is not just about men doing things to women — there is plenty of violence in some same-sex partnerships as well.
Ensler’s version of the discussion also leaves out how there are other forms of violence than physical striking, which tends to favor men who tend to have larger bodies; the emotional spectrum of violence is subtle, it’s nasty and it’s real. And that is not about men doing things to women; that’s a problem that humanity faces.
As well, from what I have read, Ensler treats the epidemic of violence like it has no cause; as if it simply materialized out of the ether. And that community organizing and women doing “extraordinary things” is gong to be the answer. Solving this is going to take some of the most ordinary actions possible — like raising respectful children. But it’s much larger because we live in a society that extols violence as a virtue, and where warfare (where most rape happens) is considered normal and even desirable.
Meanwhile, who are these supposedly more violent people and who taught them to be that way? How did it happen, really, and what prevents some people from acting out their rage? If we go there, we have to look at families, and looking at families means looking at both mothers and fathers for their contributions to the problem.