Dads Against the Divorce Industry

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DA*DI offers contemporary reports and commentary on culture; its aberrations and its heroes.


The Machismo Monologues

Gerald L. Rowles, Ph.D.
March 23 , 2003

One senses that the feminists are becoming overwhelmed with estrogen fumes as they lose their grip on the media headlines to U.S. male combatants in Iraq. This despite the fact that the popular media is relentlessly ferreting out every female enlistee in Iraq for photo op features. If the pursuit of Osama bin Laden were as withering as the pursuit of the female trooper, the evil one would have been bivouacked in an American prison long ago.

One of the stranger indications of estrogenitis arose in a column by Suzanne Fields entitled A new front in the war (of the sexes). After devoting the first few paragraphs to the 'major' role which women are playing in today's military, Fields speculates thusly:
You don't hear much about how the male soldiers feel about their distaff partners, but back on the home front men are reverting to big-time piggery as women invade traditional male turf. You can hear the snorts, grunts and oinks throughout the pop culture.

"Thirty years after the feminist revolution, if you look at the rap videos on MTV or BET," writes David Brooks in Atlantic magazine, "you find that 'ho' and 'bitch' are just about the nicest words used to describe young women."
Speaking of 'nice words' describing young women, how about the last seven years of wide spread performances of 'The Vagina Monologues' and the third year anniversary of Pennsylvania State University's celebration of 'C*ntfest'. Consider whether these latter day feminist arts and intellects have elevated the feminine culture:
"The original Vagina Monologues includes a scenario entitled 'The Little Coochi Snorcher that Could.' This is a reference to a 13-year-old girl/vagina who calls her genitalia 'coochi snorcher.' In this scene, a 24-year-old woman plies the child with alcohol, then sexually seduces her. ... in the original text, the little girl declares, 'Now people say it was a kind of rape.... Well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape........The Coochi Snorcher eulogized her orgasm: 'She [the 24 year-old woman] gently and slowly lays me out on the bed....' In the end, the child gratefully concludes, 'I'll never need to rely on a man.' " - The 'Monologues' Ride Again by Wendy McElroy 8/3/00."
"I just want all people, but particularly women, not to be bound by so many negative words about the female body," Tarah Ausburn said. It's time to reclaim c*nt, she said. "Vagina comes from a word meaning 'sheath for a sword,' and I find that offensive and heterosexist," she said. If women reclaim the word c*nt, Michelle Yates said, it won't have to hurt when someone uses it. "It would be a beautiful day for a woman to be able to say, 'Thank you. Thank you for calling me a c*nt,'" Yates said. - C*ntfest brings empowerment to Penn State
So much for atavistic chivalry.

Reading the Fields column created a bit of cognitive dissonance, because up until this latest twist she has appeared to be a male advocate - for the most part. But what seems to characterize the majority of female columnists is their periodic estrogenitis; or choice of moods about men. Unlike the George Wills and the Cal Thomas's, who speak from their fundamental, ethical belief systems with a constancy that is bedrock, these female authored contretemps seem to champion men when the authors feel confidently empowered, but regress to the feminist mantra when men seem to be getting an edge in the gender wars.

Similarly, when a female columnist predicts the end or abatement of feminism, my reality-check mechanism vibrates like a tuning fork (that's not a phallic reference) - particularly when that columnist is pro-abortion. Similarly, when Wendy McElroy wrote that the Iraq War may kill feminism as we know it, the dissonant vibrations set in like a 7 point quake. In this heuristic, McElroy reasons:
"Islamic feminism tends to be pro-family and not inherently anti-male. In her book In Search of Islamic Feminism, researcher Elizabeth Fernea reports that many Muslim women call themselves "feminists" but want to distance themselves from Western feminism because of its perceived antagonism toward men and the family. Haifa Abdul Rahman, deputy secretary of the General Federation of Iraqi Women, observed: 'We see feminism in America as dividing men from women — separating women from the family. This is not good for anyone.' "
Before some men giddily celebrate the notion advanced by McElroy that western feminism will meet its comeuppance at the hands of 'Islamic Feminism', they should first perform a reality check. When in its history has American feminism capitulated to other cultural mores? The operative answer is never.

Look at any democratized culture, from Germany to Australia, and you will find the same entrenched feminist institutions as those operating in the U.S. The exceptions are found in those cultures which are ruled by tyrants, or alternately, those whose religious convictions remain rooted in traditional Catholicism, with the latter losing ground daily.

Radical feminism of the kind we have too-long experienced in this country is not only militantly self-defending it is also aggressively predatory. And it is not about to be impeded by some Islamic upstart. While Fields and McElroy were alternately decrying male chauvinism and ruminating on the redefinition of feminism, the radical feminists were launching their first salvo in lip-smacking anticipation of Iraqi emasculation.

Since you probably don't have a map of the middle east laid out in front of you, let me point out that just one state to the east of Iraq is the state of Pakistan. The intervening distance is the equivalent of that between Chicago and Denver. And guess who's come to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. The Vagina Monologues. Yep, the same.

Eve Ensler, the play's author, enthusiastically gushed, "It was very difficult doing this in the U.S. at first. It wasn't like 'Yeah! The vaginas are here!' There is no place in the world where there aren't walls to be broken down." The UK Globe and Mail reported, "Hibaaq Osman, a Somali Muslim who is the special representative for V-Day, said she had been keen to put on the play in an Islamic country." "I know if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere," said Ms. Osman, who rechristened the Pakistani capital "Vaginabad."

So much for a new Islamic breed of western feminism. In a country where there has been real oppression of women, as opposed to the hysterically manufactured and marketed American patriarchal variety, how long do you think it will take to have Islamic women hating their male oppressors?

And how long will it be before Iraqi and Pakistani men are rapping about their hos and bitches? About thirty years, give or take.

Suzanne Fields bemoaned the fact that although elite collegiate women at the upper end of the social scale have ushered in feminism, with their resulting career successes, women at the lower end of the scale are the ones having a tougher time of it. "They're the ones who pay the price of resurgent male chauvinism as reflected in rap music."

In saying that, Ms Fields reveals her own elitism. She overlooks the real first feminists, the welfare mothers whose 'career success' was sponsored by the U.S. Government. That career was known as AFDC, and it created career single-mothers whose salary promotions were only contingent upon their baby-making abilities. Those elitist, Murphy-come-lately baby-makers have had a lot of catching-up to do. But they are making progress, and are better paid than their welfare counterparts. It's just called no-fault divorce instead of AFDC.

And where was rap born? In the ghettos and urban desperation of the AFDC legacy. But it has rapidly caught on in the elite single-mother suburbs of the no-fault divorce legacy. It doesn't take a doctorate in psychology or sociology to determine that the lyrical hos and bitches are the offspring of those combined fatherless legacies; women who have been 'empowered' to be as sexually promiscuous as the mythical patriarchal male, while simultaneously 'triumphing' in eschewing, or fearing, men and commitment.

After all, who is it that is defining themselves by their genitalia. Are today's women not vaginocentric? Or would it be more complimentary to call them c..., uhh, no thank you.

So when Suzanne Fields snivels about the revival of the sleeping male chauvinist, she fails in her elitism to understand who awakened him. And, she completely, if not conveniently overlooks the larger picture. Those rappers are just performing The Machismo Monologues. You know, 'a strong sense of masculine pride', an assertion of their masculinity and a challenge to thirty years of feminist emasculation. Not to mention a frank assessment of the current state of unbowdlerized femininity.

The difference with the Machismo Monologues is they're not talking through their penises. Oink yourself, Suzanne.



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