I think perhaps it’s time to flesh this topic out a little.
The thing about this play and the controversy over it that disturbs me the most is the hidden agendas, the straw-man arguments, and the subtle running assumption that to accept openness about female sexuality means to accept crudery and the glorification of statutory rape and masturbation.
My primary objection to this play is very simple: it makes it perfectly clear that masturbation, rape, and homosexual sex are perfectly acceptable and a natural part of female growth, when we know they are not; not outside of our fallen nature anyway. Ensler says the play isn’t meant to be politically correct or reverent; that’s fine, but if she isn’t concerned about courtesy (and perhaps she is right not to be), then she shouldn’t be surprised when level-headed people condemn a play that glorifies statutory rape. She says she is simply reflecting women’s real experiences, and she’s right As Christians we know that rape and lust can be as evil as racism. Can you imagine what would happen if I wrote a series of monologues glorifying racism and genocide because that glorification “reflects the real experiences of certain individuals”? I’d get shot, and I’d deserve it.
Still, merely the fact that a play glorifying sexual sin is popular doesn’t concern me that much: literature pushing evil acts has been celebrated in the past, and new such literature will be praised in the future. What scares me is the constant, unchallenged insistence that a rejection of a work pushing both sexual sin and healthy sexual openness is automatically a reject of both sexual evil and healthy sexual openness.
I say I don’t like VM because it pushes statutory rape, and I am asked why I reject sexual openness and positive thoughts. I don’t reject sexual openness and positive thoughts about female sexuality and genitalia; what I reject is the implication that to honor those things necessarily means honoring sexual sin. I can fight violence against women and support sexual equality and openness without glorifying sin, thank-you-very-much, and Eve Ensler should be able to too. She simply chooses not to because she wants the causes of sexual openness and the cessation of violence against women to be indissolubly linked to sexual sin. All of us here need to proclaim that positive, healthy talk and thought about female sexuality does not necessarily entail, and indeed, is the antithesis of, support of sexual sin.
I reject this play because, as I said before, we are here to establish God’s kingdom on earth. We must fight both sexual sin and violence against women, not compromise one for the sake of the other, as accepting this play does.
There is another, much more subtle, much less certain reason why I dislike this play. This last reason is merely my speculation, I am not as certain about my position expressed in this paragraph as I am about my position articulated above. I support openness and positive talk about female sexuality; I’ve already said that. But the talk in these monologues is not merely open and positive: it is loud, crass, crude, irreverent, and sometimes (anatomically)inaccurate. The women in the show scream with every sentence "I am loud, obnoxious, assertive, and crass, hear my genitalia roar.”
Remember the classic criticism of feminism: “Feminists hate womanhood and want women to be men.”? That seems to be what is at work here. Ensler sees men who are loud, crude, obnoxious, and obsessed with their genitalia, and she writes a play in which women act in the same way. But that isn’t true woman hood; it isn’t even true manhood. A play meant to raise up women should either present false womanhood (even that which reflects real experiences) in a bad light or present true womanhood in a good light, but presenting a false view of womanhood that amounts to an imitation of an equally twisted manhood doesn’t do it. As I said, this last point is simply my speculation, but I can’t shake the feeling.
God bless.
