Translation, if you believe that heterosexual relationships are the norm, you are not only discriminatory, but you may be a danger toward homosexuals and lesbians. One Clark student left a comment at this Blog which serves to illustrate the logic at work here. The student wrote, "..knowing that 'corrective rape' or the practice of a man raping a lesbian to 'cure her' exists leads me to believe that there is a link between heterosexism, homophobia, and rape or sexual assault."
But Clark University isn't concerned with all rape apparently. In fact, the university, which has become a hotbed of radical homosexual agitprop and Christianophobic propaganda, supports Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, a play which celebrates lesbian rape. In one scene, a twenty-four-year-old woman gets a thirteen-year-old girl drunk and rapes her. This is presented as a good thing. The victim later says, "If it was rape, it was a good rape. I'll never need to rely on a man."
At their website, Women for Faith and Family explain their concerns over the Vagina Monologues: "It is extremely difficult to know how one might address such a matter as 'V-Day' in the most productive way - not least because to even name this performance involves our using the very language that the perpetrators intend to desensitize us to. Thus, ironically, we are forced to participate, at some level, in the very degradation and violence against the human person to which we object. I believe this is part of the plan. It considerably compounds the difficulty of criticizing it.
"That is by no means the only irony - or contradiction - involved in the V-Day movement (of which performance of the V-Monologues is the keystone). As you doubtless know, V-Day projects claim to be fighting abuse of women. But the verbally pornographic 'monologues' are themselves abusive of women - they attack the concept of womanhood itself, and destroy the integrity of the human person. Thus it actually contributes to violence against women, while claiming to be fighting it".
"1. Reducing women essentially to one body part is hardly pro-woman. It distorts sexuality, objectifies women and, ironically, promotes attitudes towards women and sexuality precisely like those that lead to sexual violence against women.
"2. This performance does not even represent real 'voices of women', as it claims in order to give it a ring of authenticity. The author, Eve Ensler, says she based her contemptible creation on her personal interviews with 200 women - indeed, the V-Monologues are usually represented as the authentic voices of women 'telling their own stories' (e.g., Father Timothy Clancy, SJ's editorial enclosed).
"But Ensler herself acknowledges that she freely interpreted her 'data'.
"3. The stated goal of V-Day is to stop all violence against women, and the income from the plays allegedly is given to agencies that help stop 'violence' (the "V" in "V-Day" also stands for violence) against women. But this, too, is a sham. Ensler employs a full time staff of ten to manage her "V-Day" movement; and donations are often given to dubious (or worse) groups (a set-up similar to Catholics for a Free Choice).
a. Planned Parenthood groups have produced the play (e.g. Planned Parenthood, Eureka, California: the web-site notice is enclosed).
b. In at least one instance a battered women's shelter that had been selected to receive a donation from the V- Monologues refused to accept it after learning what the performance was about. (Reported in Texas A&M's News Source - Feb. 12, 2002: 'V-Day stirs controversy'.)
c. The liberation of Afghan women is one of Ensler's causes. However, as we have seen recently, the 'aid' to Afghan women has included provision of abortion services. While we were not able to establish that Ensler's 'V-Day' has actually given any aid at all to Afghan women, it is clear that not all 'aid' is beneficial.
"4. The V-Monologues promote particular sexual pathologies: lesbianism and pedophilia. One 'voice' - that of a 13-year-old girl - vividly describes how she was seduced by a 24-year-old woman. She says, 'if it was a rape, it was a good rape'. This section reportedly led to objections even by feminists sympathetic to the production, leading one reporter to wonder whether this scene might be expurgated from the version being performed on more than 543 college campuses this year. Whether or not the producers do self-censor this scene (as may be likely especially in the context of recent pedophila scandals), it is entirely consistent with the rest of the production.
"Vagina Monologues is destructive, pornographic, deforming agit-prop deliberately and cynically aimed at young women - in particular at young Catholic women - a form of victimization that it is perilous to ignore. It contradicts at the deepest level the truth of creation; it is profoundly anti-Catholic, anti-God; and a contemptible assault on the very nature of the human person".
Why would Clark University promote such a play?
8 comments:
Let's get this straight. Heterosexism leads to "corrective rape" so it is bad but lesbian rape is a good thing for officials at Clark? If they didn't feel that way, they wouldn't permit Ensler's pornographic anti-women play on campus.
This part of the article by Helen Hull Hitchcock is most damning: "The V-Monologues promote particular sexual pathologies: lesbianism and pedophilia.."
That's exactly what Clark University is doing - promoting homosexuality, lesbianism and pedophilia.
All the while bashing those who maintain a Christian world-view.
Clark University's student newspaper The Scarlet, in their silly piece attempting to dismiss the legitimate concerns raised at this blog, suggested that the phrase radical homosexual agenda is "a tired phrase."
Is it? What do you call it when a college campus caves into homosexual propaganda and supports a play which portrays lesbian rape as something good and positive.
It's not the phrase that is tired. It's the climate of homosexual propaganda and anti-Catholicism that is tiresome.
Often, those who produce "The Vagina Monologues" will say that they have dropped the lesbian-rape scene. This is very often untrue. But, as Helen Hitchcock writes, "Whether or not the producers do self-censor this scene (as may be likely especially in the context of recent pedophilia scandals), it [the scene] is entirely consistent with the rest of the production." And, as Hitchcock says, "Vagina Monologues is destructive, pornographic, deforming agit-prop deliberately and cynically aimed at young women - in particular at young Catholic women - a form of victimization that it is perilous to ignore. It contradicts at the deepest level the truth of creation; it is profoundly anti-Catholic, anti-God; and a contemptible assault on the very nature of the human person".
And since this vulgar play which is anti-women is celebrated as part of Ensler's V-Day, any production implies agreement with the rape scene which is included in Ensler's original production which has been performed at many campuses across the country.
1921Diner, some will no doubt argue that Clark permits this play, which dishonors women by objectifying them, because it doesn’t want to "suppress educational issues and intellectual debate." But academic freedom, like any other freedom, is not without limitations.
The late Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, who was a classically-educated Jesuit scholar and a brilliant philosopher, explained that, "The trouble with this understanding of academic freedom [that which permits anything and everything]is that it takes for granted as a truth what is a falsity, indeed a complete illusion, namely, that academic freedom is absolutely immune from any reasonable bounds, limitations or restrictions. No human freedom is absolutely immune to restriction. Freedom is no longer freedom when it is reduced to being the unhindered pursuit of one’s whims and desires. This is especially true of freedom exercised in the field of philosophy where conflict with the authentic and infallible teachings of the Church is foreseeable. A true understanding of academic freedom, therefore, is in order so as to distinguish it clearly from academic license.
Academic freedom derives from the rational nature of man. It is rooted in the intellectual activity of man whereby he is called to a dominion and stewardship of the universe through a conquest of truth. Positively, then, academic freedom is a generous guarantee to the unimpeded access to the evidence of truth in any given science. Thus, academic freedom is always bounded by the canons and axiomatic truths of each discipline of learning. Thus, again positively, academic freedom is both purposive and responsible. It has its own built-in rules; its requirements are conditioned by pre-defined directions towards the truth of its particular science.
The moral right to academic freedom arises from the inviolability of the proper action necessary to its scientific achievements of truth, founded on man’s connatural inner dynamism of the human intelligence’s hunger for truth. Negatively, academic freedom means at the very least the immunity from [unreasonable restrictions], both from within and from outside the academic community, of the right to communicate the results of one’s researches through lectures and publications, and the right to be immune from unreasonable restriction in the pursuit of the teaching profession."
Clark University isn't allowing The Vagina Monologues on its campus out of respect for "academic freedom" or out of concern over "violence against women." The play encourages violence against women.
No, The Vagina Monologues is an exercise in vulgarity and anti-Christian propaganda which demeans women.
Of interest:
http://www.ewtn.org/library/
ISSUES/CASECENS.TXT
Whoever writes this needs to get their bias out of their words and facts into their articles. Clark doesn't promote any sort of violence, hate, or discrimination. There is no anger at heterosexuals. There is no supposed acceptance of rape only being among heterosexuals. Clark takes any sort of discriminatory or hurtful action against others and tries to deal with it on a situational basis.
No anonymous, YOU are the biased one. Your blind loyalty to this institution keeps you from seeing the truth. Clark is Christianophobic and its "Vagina Monologues" is degrading toward women.
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