Say NO to Vagina Monologues

“Vagina Monologues’” Creator Eve Ensler Quizzes 6-year-old Girl about Girl’s Vagina: Why Are Oprah and Faith Hill Supporting Ensler?

On pages 103-104 of the 10th-anniversary edition of The Vagina Monologues, in a chapter titled, “I Asked a Six-Year-Old Girl,” Ensler asks the following questions based on an interview with an unnamed girl (only the answer to the last question is provided below):

• If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?”
• If it could speak, what would it say?”
• What does your vagina remind you of?”
• What’s special about your vagina?”
• What does your vagina smell like?”
• [answer:] “Snowflakes.”

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth and father of five children, said it is astonishing that Ensler and her vulgar play are being celebrated given TVM’s past and current promotion of adult predatory behavior against minors:

“Imagine if an adult homosexual man were to quiz a six-year-old boy about his penis — or a straight man were to ask a little girl silly questions about her private parts – for use in a play! Would such men be praised by the media and famous personalities?”

Stop the Monologues Project Director Donna Miller, the mother of a teenage girl, said, “I find it horrifying that an author would sexualize a six-year-old girl –– particularly when that same author has a record of writing favorably about adult/child sex, at least for lesbians.”

Miller noted the hypocrisy of a movement whose stated goal is to “stop the violence against women and girls,” while it celebrates a lesbian rape-seduction, underage drinking, and a bisexual adult asking highly inappropriate sexual questions to a six-year-old.

The Vagina Monologues book, on pages 80-82, tells of a lesbian rape-seduction in a story titled, “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could.” In the monologue, a 24-year-old woman plies a 16-year-old girl with alcohol before seducing her (statutory rape in many states).

Is Tom Hanks Un-American?

Culture-Splitting Battle by Marc Rudov

Quick … name one person, in all of world history, born as the result of a homosexual union. You can’t. It’s biologically impossible.

Yet, we are seeing a neverending, culture-splitting battle to equate homosexual unions with those between men and women. No matter how you slice it, they’re not equivalent, and that’s why most states specifically codify marriage, per se, as a union between man and woman. Heterosexual unions, joined by marriage, are the bedrock of our society — providing necessary structure, stability, and continuity.

Personally, I have no objection to civil unions. My only problem — for religious, biological, and sociological reasons — is calling a gay union “marriage.” It makes no sense to me. Let’s remember also that marriage, even between men and women, is a licensed privilege and not a right.

In November 2008, California put this issue to a vote via Proposition 8, which reinforces existing law to prohibit gay marriage. In that election, 52.3% of voters — including 70% of blacks — supported keeping the ban.

These results reinforce the publicly stated policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who are against gay marriage, as are the Roman Catholic Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

More American Than Obama?

Yet, today, actor Tom Hanks called Mormons un-American because they supported Prop 8: “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American, and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed, and people can see who’s responsible, and that can motivate the next go-around of our self-correcting Constitution, and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So let’s have faith in not only the American, but Californian, constitutional process.”

First of all, we don’t have a “self-correcting” Constitution — either in Washington or Sacramento. If we as a populace want to add to or remove from our Constitution, we must vote on it. That’s exactly what happened in November 2008.

Second, calling someone un-American is a serious charge, and it presumes the accuser a “benchmark” American. Obviously, Tom Hanks thinks he’s more American than those against gay marriage. Is he more American than Barack Obama? Logic should hold. I’d like to witness Hanks telling the new black president, to his face, that he’s un-American.

What does it mean to be un-American? In my opinion, someone is un-American if he or she wants to see this country fail and/or is actively trying to destroy it — with words or actions.

So, let me understand this, Mr. Hanks: People who deeply believe in the sanctity and uniqueness of traditional marriage and family, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are trying to destroy America? The evidence is all around you, Mr. Hanks: the dilution and dismantling of traditional marriage and family are destroying America.

Sell More Tickets

Why did Hanks single out the Mormons? Using all logic, he should have condemned blacks, who, one could argue, put Prop 8 in the victory column. Why didn’t he? I’m purposely baiting you here. Hanks knows that the Mormons are “safe” to attack — they’re nonviolent proxies for his fake wrath, and he’ll gets points in Hollywood for bashing them.

I have a deeper question: Why did Tom Hanks speak out at all on this matter? He’s not gay; Prop 8 doesn’t affect his life in any way, shape, or form. Why does he care? Simple: he’s a mercenary and believes that speaking out will sell more tickets and, consequently, fatten his wallet. And, that is why gays should be offended at his hypocrisy and disingenuousness.

There’s more to Tom Hanks’s hypocrisy, though. Again, let’s play out the logic. If Hanks is so outraged and offended by codified discrimination, on any piece of paper, in any of the 50 states of America, why doesn’t he publicly protest Roe v. Wade, the Freedom of Choice Act, and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) — all three of which unconstitutionally discriminate against men? After all, Tom Hanks is a man, and these pernicious “codifications of discrimination” affect him and all men directly. Answer: being politically incorrect would make him lose ticket sales and, therefore, poorer.

The NoNonsense Bottom Line

I reject the transparently hypocritical, disingenuous, ludicrous claim of Tom Hanks that Mormons are un-American for supporting Proposition 8. A plurality of Californians — across all religions, races, and ethnicities — decided that marriage must be preserved as a union between one man and one woman. On that same day, by the way, voters in Florida and Arizona decided likewise.

Accusing others of being un-American, for financial gain, certainly could make Tom Hanks un-American, but I do not feel superior or phony enough to be the judge.

About the Author

Marc H. Rudov is a globally known radio/TV personality, relationship coach, and author of 100+ articles and the books Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze, or Jumper Cables (ISBN 9780974501727) and The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth (ISBN 0974501719). Mr. Rudov, the 2008 recipient of the National Coalition of Free Men’s “Award for Excellence in Promoting Gender Fairness In The Media,” is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto and The O’Reilly Factor.

Rudov’s books, articles, blog, radio/TV archives, and podcasts are available at TheNoNonsenseMan.com.

Copyright © 2009 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.

Review of "Save the Males"

Men: The New Victim Group

by Stephen Baskerville

“The last thing we need in America is yet another victim group,” writes columnist John Leo, “this one made up of seriously aggrieved males.” Yet he devotes the column to the dangers of male-bashing.

Men seldom complain about negative “stereotypes,” from fear of appearing petty. So Kathleen Parker has performed a valuable service in her fine book about the increasingly male-hostile culture created by extreme feminism. The relentless venom against males and masculinity – and its impact on women and girls – is presented in readable prose with vivid, often humorous anecdotes. In popular culture, men are portrayed as bumblers, deadbeats, pedophiles, rapists, and batterers. Even boys are deprecated beyond a joke, with feminist teachers declaring “I don’t like boys” and feminist curricula trying to make them girls, plus T-shirts urging that they be pelted with rocks.

The consequences reach beyond New Age Men in aprons and Lamaze classes. By far the most serious fallout is the systematic destruction of fatherhood – “patriarchy” in feminist jargon. Single motherhood is more than celebrated in the popular culture; it is enforced in the courts. Public ridicule may be sufficient for public figures like former Vice President Dan Quayle, who do not subscribe to the fashionable orthodoxy that children can be raised just fine without fathers, but handcuffs and jail cells are available for private men who refuse to accept that their own children are just fine without them.

Criminalizing Fathers
Parker shows how families with fathers are more than a cultural ideal and social necessity: They also “keep government in its place.” She exposes repressive measures against “deadbeat dads,” including privacy and constitutional rights violations of “Americans accused of nothing,” and how this dishonest campaign is actually causing the problem it is supposed to be addressing. While Parker’s emphasis is on culture, she transcends the trendy but superficial “he said/she said” approach and highlights government power: How easily “stereotypes” result in not merely unfairness but incarceration.

To appreciate why this book is more than the mirror image of feminist “whining” requires recognizing a fundamental distinction between unfairness and injustice. It may be unfair that a woman can decide to abort a child or not and that a man with no “choice” about the child he fathered must then pay child support. But (even aside from the immorality of abortion) it is not necessarily unjust, and it does not in itself threaten a free society. Criminalizing innocent fathers by seizing and holding their children through divorce laws that allow them to the “treated like criminals by family court,” leveling false charges of ill-defined “abuse,” confiscating their homes, gagging their voices, forcing them to confess to crimes they did not commit, demanding that they pay for it all under the guise of “child support” – and all this on pain of incarceration without trial – constitutes government repression. It threatens not only the families and social order but the privacy and freedom of us all.

Though sugar-coated on Oprah and Dr. Phil, what this book exposes are the consequences of a political ideology that, like most ideologies, promotes hate. Not only has this permeated every corner of our society and culture; its ideologues are now set to assume unprecedented political power. Save the Males offers an important contribution to understanding what we may expect.

Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (Cumberland House, 2007).

Maybe Oprah should hire Paul Harvey

by Robert Franklin

Her viewers might want to know “the rest of the story.”

Oprah’s guest on this show was Brenda Slaby, an Assistant Principal in the West Clermont (Ohio) School system who, in 2007, left her 2-year-old daughter in the car alone for eight hours. It was August, the car was closed and the little girl died of hyperthermia.

Of course it was an accident; Slaby told Oprah what she’d told police the day of the incident – that she’d been trying to do too much with her life, was too busy, too harried and little Cecilia tragically paid the price. Slaby was, as you might expect, terribly distraught. Oprah empathized and used Slaby to promote her new mantra “slow down,” and derive an uplifting message from the tragedy. Slaby said her daughter’s death had made her find a higher purpose in life – “it’s the kids who matter.” Here’s a link to the Oprah online piece.

But now for the rest of the story.

This was not the first time Slaby had left Cecilia alone in a closed car, nor was it the second, nor the third. Apparently it was at least the fifth time. School Director Debbie Wolf grew so concerned about Slaby’s behavior that she sat her down and reminded her that children “should never be left in a car alone.” And, prompted by Slaby’s repeatedly leaving Cecilia in her car, School Director Laura Carr even wrote a piece for the school newsletter saying the same thing.

The video surveillance camera in the school parking lot that day showed Slaby unloading her car within feet of her sleeping child and walking past her at least six times while unloading before finally parking.

Oprah tells us none of the above. But now for the real kicker which Oprah also doesn’t disclose. Although the police knew all of the above, had statements by teachers and school administrators about Slaby’s behavior and recommended that charges be filed against her, Clermont County Prosecutor Don White never charged Slaby with a crime. Rebuffing community demands that she be charged with manslaughter and child endangering, White refused with the remarkable claim that in Ohio, actions committed negligently aren’t crimes.

Say what? In every jurisdiction I know about, negligently causing the death of another person constitutes manslaughter. It turns out it does in Ohio too and that White were lying when he claimed otherwise. It also turns out that White knew it. In 2000, he charged Jerry and Bonnie Bittner in a much less egregious case of leaving a child in a closed car, prevailed at trial and sent Jerry to jail for 1 year on the endangering charge and 4 years for manslaughter even though it was Bonnie who had actually done the deed.

From Welfare State to Police State

From Welfare State to Police State

Welfare reform in the United States has shifted the role of welfare agencies from distributing money to collecting it—not from taxpayers but from divorced fathers. Despite the stereotype of the “deadbeat dad” as a wealthy playboy squiring around his new trophy wife in a bright red Porsche, federal officials have acknowledged that most unpaid child support is uncollectible because it is owed by fathers who are as poor as or poorer than the mothers and children.

Click here for PDF article here

Gender Wars and Unspoken Words

Gender Wars and Unspoken Words by Terrence Blacker

Article here. Excerpt:

'When it comes to the age-old question of men and women, their relative strengths and weaknesses, a strange species of madness seems to have recently taken hold. Everywhere, not only in the media but also in academic and political life, the complexities of gender have been ironed out, reduced to a series of reassuring but stupid assumptions. The female principle is essentially generous and virtuous; masculinity is its opposite: selfish, untrustworthy.
...

The revered and apparently intelligent actress Meryl Streep has this week been speculating on why the film Mamma Mia! has become the highest-grossing release of all time in the UK.

Me too: trapped on an aeroplane recently, I endured 30 minutes of the film's mindless feel-good guff before switching over to Hellboy II. It is popular, I concluded, for the same reason that Busby Berkeley films did well during the Depression: it offers fluffy, escapist optimism for hard times.

Not according to its star. "I knew it would do well because it was aimed at an audience that has been neglected in recent years in film offerings – women," said Meryl Streep. "They are the last group anybody ever cares about."

Hillary Clinton’s Messiah Complex

Hillary Clinton’s Messiah Complex by Carey Roberts

It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton views herself as a member of the God Squad, divinely anointed to shepherd the masses to greater gender consciousness.

“Hillary acts as though she has been chosen by God,” recounts Edward Klein, author of The Truth about Hillary. “I find her to be among the most self-righteous people I’ve ever known,” explains former New York Times reporter Bob Boorstin. And during her senate campaign Hillary glowed approvingly whenever Black preachers declared her “a woman of God.”

But how many persons know how Mrs. Clinton’s messianic streak may lead to her political undoing?

During her childhood Hugh Rodham treated Hillary as Daddy’s favorite, sparing her from many of the chastisements and chores he imposed on her hapless brothers. As brother Tony remarked enviously, “Little Hillary could do no wrong.”

Hillary’s teenage involvement with the local Methodist church only reinforced her emerging priggishness. By the age of 17, Hillary’s “messianism and sense of entitlement” were already evident, reveals Carl Bernstein in A Woman in Charge.

During her college years, Hillary Rodham’s self-righteous streak fueled her many political pursuits. Those culminated in her 1975 marriage to Bill Clinton, a man she fully expected to one day become president.

But after Bill lost his 1980 re-election bid for the Arkansas governorship, a distraught Hillary began to speak at church meetings around the state. One day she traveled to a church in North Little Rock to deliver a homily on “Women Armed with the Christian Sword – To Build an Army for the Lord.”

Hillary’s unconventional blend of Christian faith and feminist ideology was taking shape.

Five days after his 1992 inauguration, Bill named Hillary to head up his Task Force on Health Care Reform. But her political miscalculations soon turned into an electoral fiasco. On November 8, 1994 the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress, and Hillary was banished from the West Wing of the White House.

Smarting from her self-inflicted wounds, Hillary invited a group of New Age savants to Camp David. As recounted by Bob Woodward in The Choice, one of her guests was Jean Houston, a psychic who had conducted LSD experiments and claimed to communicate regularly with Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom.

What transpired that weekend – equal parts group psychotherapy and feminist consciousness-raising – may rank as the most bizarre episode ever involving a First Lady.

Hillary’s healthcare debacle was emblematic of the female crucifixion, Ms. Houston believed. Speaking as if a witness to the Second Coming, Houston told Clinton she was carrying the burden of 5,000 years of female subservience. Driving her point home, Houston compared Hillary to Joan of Arc, the French woman who was burned at the stake in 1431 for heresy.

The best was yet to come.

In April 1995 Houston came to the White House, this time to conduct a séance. Seated around a circular table in the White House solarium, Houston instructed Hillary to close her eyes and engage in a conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Hillary readily complied and was soon comparing Eleanor’s epic struggles with her own. Houston intoned that the First Lady’s woes were caused by self-important men who refused to accept women as equals -- ignoring how HRC’s clumsy attempt to overhaul the healthcare system had exposed her political naiveté.

Now sounding like Daddy’s little girl, Hillary asked why people kept saying things that hurt her feelings. The pity party was just getting started.

Over the next year Jean Houston continued as Hillary’s spiritual and political mentor, constantly urging her to continue the fevered crusade on behalf of women’s rights.

But some would ask, What’s wrong with a candidate who casts her candidacy in the aura of historical inevitability and views every issue through the moralistic lens of right and wrong?

For starters, Hillary comes across as arrogant.

Friend Sara Ehrman once warned about Hillary that “God is on my side can be arrogance.” Former Moynihan aide Lawrence O’Donnell believed Clinton’s haughtiness was her most prominent difficulty.

And remember Hillary’s recent encounter with CBS News anchor Katie Couric? Asked how she would feel if she didn’t become the Democratic nominee, Hillary acidly shot back, “Well, it will be me.” [www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/071129 ]

Lloyd Bentsen, who served as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, observed how Hillary’s “holier-than-thou” attitude often lead her to demonize her opponents – remember Hillary’s paranoid remark about the “vast right wing conspiracy”?

Let’s not forget all those who ended up on Hillary’s fabled enemy list: Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Kenneth Starr, Senators who doubted her, and even the Washington Post. Biographer Carl Bernstein notes how “Hillary’s willingness to demonize her enemies had left [Daniel Patrick Moynihan] with lasting caution about her.”

Enemy lists, paranoid fantasies, a supercilious attitude, and self-righteous crusades – shades of Richard Milhous Nixon.

© 2008, Carey Roberts