Sense and violence

Eve Ensler has dedicated a large part of her life to ending violence against women. There are very few causes more important. Ensler believes that her play, The Vagina Monologues, is one of the best tools towards ending such violence. Is she right? Violence is inflicted on a person either by himself or herself or by someone else. That someone else can either be a woman or a man. So we have three potential sources for violence against women. Let's look at them and how Ensler's Monologues respond.

A woman's violence against herself is heart-rending. Whether it takes the form of an eating disorder, exercise-mania, or self-mutilation, it is a horror that should never have to happen. When it does happen it is usually because the woman is surrounded by at least two lies.

The first lie is that no one loves her simply for who she is, and not what she can do or provide. It is this lie that denies unconditional love, and the lonelier a person becomes the more this lie seems to be true. It becomes easier to forget that there can be people out there who will love unconditionally and that for everyone there must be at least one: whoever is ultimately responsible for your existence. You didn't have to exist, to be born, but someone somewhere, loved you enough that they thought you should be born.

The second lie, somewhat related, is that "you are worthless unless you look like this." The prevalence of a certain kind of image in our media preys upon human nature's natural vanity and convinces some women that they must look a certain way. I once read a sad comment from a woman that, "if fat were beautiful," women would be competing against each other in devouring ice cream cartons. It is troubling that so many have been convinced to pursue the appearance of "health" (whatever the magazines say it is) rather than true health for whatever one's body might be.

Such a concentration on looks still does less physical harm on the body than it does spiritual harm on one's identity. The glossy photos of our models isolate one aspect of a woman (her body) at the expense of all the others (like her character). With her character thus neglected, some women perceive that their characters do not matter at all. This is not to say that admiration of beauty is in itself destructive. It is no coincidence that the most powerful artwork of beautiful women is also the most "soulful." But today's media images sever body from soul, wrecking both.

Ensler's first monologues rightly proclaim the truth that a woman's body is not an object of disgust. There is nothing "dirty" or worthless about it. But by the end of the play, her body is still nothing more than an object! Ensler presents the very center of a woman's identity to be not her self, but her vagina: "I am my vagina." This simply continues the violent separation of body and soul. Reducing a man to essentially be his genitals is one of our most effective insults. Reducing a woman to no more than her vagina is, apparently, a form of highest praise.

As for violence to women by other women, although recent studies confirm that, "within the hidden culture of aggression, girls fight [their own friends] with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives," Ensler does not address this (Girls just want to be mean," The New York Times, Feb. 24, 2002). On the contrary, even when a 20-something woman seduces a 13-year-old girl in one monologue, this encounter of violence against innocence is praised: "if it was a rape, it was a good rape." Ensler's later monologues focus instead on the third source of violence: men.

Ensler would not have produced these monologues, presumably, if she hadn't thought she could change the attitudes of men towards women. The effectiveness of her play to end violence against women stands or falls on this. So our first question must be, who are the men in the audience?

When we get right down to it, there are really only two sorts of men. There are men to whom women are nothing more than fuel for fantasy, a means to an end. These take the soulless photos of women into their minds to make the bodies do what the souls would never consent to. Now in what way will their respect for women increase by imagining vaginas with feather boas or hearing 31 varieties of ecstatic screams? Ensler's play doesn't say.

There are, of course, other men who are making an honest try (with varied success), in the face of what's around them and within them, to treat women with respect, loving them for who they are and not what they can provide. What message do they leave with when the hero of the play is a lecher who can't stop staring at a vagina? The 'hero' does not see a woman, he sees a vagina. The woman in the monologue thought she was being worshipped. She was really only being used. Is that how men are to approach women? The second sort of men remain confused.

A defense often made for the Monologues' extremely sexually charged scenes is that they're meant to show that, "women enjoy sex just as much, if not more, than men." Well, I'd be rather surprised if they didn't. Pleasure is not an accidental property of sex, but was intentionally designed to arise naturally out of the union of two people's whole selves. Unfortunately, when a woman says, "women enjoy sex as much as men," there are men who take that to mean, "women enjoy sexual perversion as much as men." We have a perfect case study in these very pages.

On Feb. 20, "Scared to experiment" writes to Ask Angie in the Daily for advice on her boyfriend's proposal for a "m?©nage-a-trios." How is growing "comfortable" with screaming "vagina" in a theatre going to change this boyfriend's violent ways? How is it going to change the mind of this woman, seriously considering giving in to them?

I can understand Ensler's desire that women not appear "prudish" -- but the accusations of prudishness are coming from the fellows who want third partners! Must women really have to accept the label of "prudes" if they believe sexual love should be shared only by the two people actually in love?

What has happened? We have given men free license to "affirm" the value not of women but of "vaginas" as such, and they've grabbed the ball and run with it. Is this success? Ensler apparently believed she could "out-sex" men. That by turning female sexuality into a circus romp women could "level the playing field" and "win" respect. This liberation has had only the opposite effect. How do I know these things? Just who am I, anyway? I am no different from other men. I knew well the regime of Maxim's and Internet filth. I am a defector; I am no innocent refugee. I deserved Nuremberg. What I got was something closer to Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation, so how can I not speak out? The truth is that Lust is a tyrannical dictator.

"Lust" is not the "crime of thinking sex is good." It is the crime of thinking that sexual pleasure is the only good. For it inevitably leads to the belief that the only good sexual pleasure is your own. Thus we see girlfriends who wouldn't "give it up" and husbands who don't "meet needs" discarded.

Lust's weapons of choice are lies, manipulation, and greed. We see the mass destruction all around us. No negotiations are possible. You can't educate it. And sanctions, as any man will tell you, are futile, and usually do more harm. (There is a rumor floating that there is Someone who can dethrone Lust. It cost him his life two thousand years ago, but now He can intervene anywhere, so the story goes).

Whatever will stop men's violence against women, it does not appear to be the pitting of woman against man in sexual warfare. It will take a powerful force to stop the violence, but a force we have actually seen in "Scared to Experiment" herself. What could possibly motivate her to go against all natural tendencies and desires, at the expense of her own health and well-being?

In her words: "I want him to be happy." In other words: unconditional love. As much as we want to scold our friends who continue to allow significant others to push them around, our friends are only doing what comes naturally to anyone in love: sacrificing themselves for the other.

The major problem, of course, is that our friends don't expect the same from their partner and their partner doesn't know what real love is. The way to end men's violence against women, then, is not to portray men as weak and ignorant, but to call them out to love women as they would love themselves.

Women should demand such treatment as they give it. They should keep men in line not by shouting them down but by maintaining their own modesty, in the strong, self-preservative sense of that word. Men should know that a woman's sexuality is to be respected as an extremely personal, private, and valuable part of who she is.

Women should make it clear to men not that they have vaginas -- men know this already -- but that they will share them with one and only one person: the man who will love them for life.