Occasionally we come across an interview where one slut-feminist questions/agrees another, nothing serious is asked ofcourse, perish that thought. No, we have the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Aus. Gov's very own Pravda. A media outlet paid to serve it's master. One thing for absolute certain is that you will not hear any uncomfortable questions asked of anyone in power apart from the opposition ofcourse, they don't foot their ludicrous propaganda bill or pay those layabouts to produce as little as possible or to produce the same inane trash as covered in this article..
Listening to the ABC allows for the total stupidity and ignorance of the audience, you would be better served listening to the personal opinions hurled at the umpire at the local football game. That would at least be more more honest..
We have the usual discussion that only scum-feminist and enabler, Ensler, always encourages and that is ofcourse a comprehensive discourse on the "vagina", a topic close to her ...erm nether region. It is one topic she never seems to tire from. Apart from the fact that Ensler's "Vagina Monologue" play breaks copious laws, such as child abuse, sexual assault, rape and child rape as well as plying a teenager with alcohol to get at her 'Coochie", was apparently enjoyed by a large selection of voyeurs and other weirdos who assumed that it actually had something to offer besides child abuse and a protracted inspection and verbalism concentrated on a multiple-use organ. But there you go, sometimes people are entertained by naval gazing, go figure....
Ensler never fails to amaze or discourage the fact that it's the little things that consumes small minds. Her responses in this interview on the ABC produces what one expects from a slut-feminist, whenever given the opportunity to rant and rage, introducing more lies and misinformation while claiming in the same breath that all women, you guessed it, are victims, by the billion..
The bigger the lie, the bigger the amount, the better (Goebells)..
So where does Ensler introduce the sexism and misogyny you ask, how about here -
And I think what happens to women a lot, I think particularly when they’re powerful, is the way the media, the way the world reduces them is to focus on these very shallow, these very superficial, these very insignificant aspects, as opposed to the brilliant and wise and visionary things that they’re saying.
And I think that’s very clever because it gets women then to focus on these very insignificant things about themselves. Like their body and being skinny and worrying about ageing and worrying about fat and worrying about … so then women end up spending their days fixing this little country [themselves] as opposed to fixing the world.
I would question the "brilliant, wise and visionary" comment till some other time when I have more room. But check out what Ensler is actually saying. Women are easily distracted over what again ?
"body, weight, size and clothing"
... say what, really. Now which sex is more interested in that then the other, I wonder. The mass stupidity displayed by Ensler and the pathetic interviewer from the ABC, is what passes as something that I cannot even begin to describe, but the article below does try..
Sorry, guys. I need to get you to stop watching football for a moment. Really. It’s important.
It’s about an interview I saw on the state funded, national broadcaster; the ABC here in Australia. That the interview did no harm to the feminist movement shows how indestructible the feminist cause is. Indeed, had any other movement whether political, religious or social in nature offered up anything like this logic it would have been treated with ridicule and contempt.
However, because we are dealing with feminism, the babble becomes sacred babble and must never be criticised. Like religion in the middle ages, feminism is the one true word. The meanings should not be questioned, but simply one should be in awe of its all encompassing correctness. Even when it is wrong, it is correctly wrong. In fact, it is wrong to point out any wrongness, in case that wrongness is seen as evidence that feminism isn’t completely correct. And that, of course, would be wrong.
What’s that got to do with football? Please, read on and all will be revealed. It could be the end of violence.
Eve Ensler wrote a play called the Vagina Monologues and, following this, helped begin the V-Day Movement to end violence against women and girls. She came to Australia last month to deliver the annual Australian Human Rights Centre lecture in Sydney.
The ABC interviewed Ensler on its news analysis program,
Lateline (Ensler, We don’t own our bodies: Ensler, 2012). The ABC describes this program as “…a provocative, challenging and intelligent window on today’s world.” They continue to say, “Lateline engages the foremost experts or commentators… to bring you penetrating insights from a range of perspectives (ABC, 2012).”
The foremost expert or commentator who interviewed Ensler was Emma Alberici, who has some twenty years experience in journalism.
This, dear reader, is what passes for “an intelligent window” in Australia today.
The Play
The word “vagina”Alberici begins the interview with a general question about her play. Ensler opens up with how “everyone” was scandalised with the word “vagina” in the 1990s. She claims that “you could say ‘Scud Missile’ on the front pages…” but, apparently “if you said vagina the whole world went crazy. “
The next part is worth quoting verbatim:
“And I think part of the reason of doing the play was that so many women I had interviewed had not only, not said the word vagina, they never saw their vaginas, they didn’t know what they looked like, they didn’t know how their vaginas functioned, they didn’t know what gave them pleasure. They didn’t even know their vaginas were their own.”
In the 1970s I attended college in Scotland. In my class, a Computer Science course, the gender mix was 50/50. Every single woman on that course knew the word vagina, and a whole lot of other words for the vagina. Twenty years later, when Ensler wrote her play, and the word vagina has mysteriously vanished from the western woman’s vocabulary?
I’m glad that Ensler points out that they had never
seen their vaginas. I immediately became aware that I have never seen my own anus.
The real question, of course, is: so fucking what?
To what level should a woman understand how her vagina functions? For example, should she be able to discuss in detail what part Bartholin’s glands play?
And why? Does Ensler know how her thyroid glands work? Does she understand how wax gets in the outer ear? As long as she knows which end to stick over the toilet, where to put the tampon, etc. does it really matter?
Ensler’s final statement, that women “…didn’t even know their vaginas were their own,” is feminism at its finest. Alberici doesn’t ask “Who did they think their vaginas belonged to?” Or, “Were they just renting them?” Or “If I kicked them in the vagina, who did they think would feel it?”
Ensler tries to paint herself as the radical who is not afraid to break taboos. And to do this she will use any word she chooses, no matter how upset the establishment gets. The fact is that when the play was written and first performed in the nineties, the word “vagina” was seen as a proper and polite term to describe female genitalia. You could have “The Vagina Monologues” on a bill board and in neon lights. It may have been titillating, perhaps, even risqué, but certainly short of scandalous in Western society in the nineties.
The use of scandalous words
Ensler informs us that in China the play was banned because the Chinese only had vulgar and derogatory words for vagina.
Speaking of scandalous and vulgar words, the Vagina Monologues uses the word “cunt” 30 times. Now that word, all by itself, ensures an “Adults Only” rating in Australia. You can say it in a play with that rating, but you won’t be having “The Cunt Monologues” in neon on Main Street.
But Alberici doesn’t ask if it was the translation of “vagina” or “cunt” that caused the Chinese such problems.
In fact, the Shanghai Drama Centre was told by the Chinese authorities who banned the play that “…it does not fit with China’s national situation (USA Today, 2004).” Did Alberici ask Ensler if she was surprised that a Western play written by a “Human Rights Activist” was banned in China in 2004? No, she just lets Ensler give us the sacred babble.
The rape and domination of women by women
There are two serious aspects about her play that Alberici should have raised with Ensler, particularly given the “Human Rights Activist” tag.
The first is a section of the play which deals with the seduction of a girl by woman, which involves the woman giving the child alcohol as part of the seduction. In one version of the script I found the girl is sixteen (Ensler, Vagina Monolgues Script – The Dialogue, 1996). However, there have been reports of other versions of the script where the child was aged as young as thirteen (Swope, 2006).
In January this year a 29 year old female teacher was found guilty of the crime of having sex with a sixteen year old female student in Melbourne, Australia (Lowe, 2012). Also, note that the legal age for drinking alcohol in Australia is eighteen. In other words, Ensler’s play is describing an act that is illegal in Australia,
as well as immoral anywhere.Ensler’s monologue describes the seduction from the point of view of the child. It concludes:
“You know, I realized later, she was my surprising, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation. She transformed my sorry-ass coochie snorcher [vagina] and raised it up into a kind of heaven.”
In other words, this manipulation into a sexual act was good for the child.
This blasé attitude is also seen in another monologue in the play, where Ensler’s heroine dominates women during sex. The dialogue explains:
“Sometimes I used force, but not violent, oppressing force, no. More like dominating, ‘I’m gonna take you someplace, why don’t you lay back, enjoy the ride’ kind of force.”
So clearly, according to Ensler, domination and child sex abuse are alright when done in a feminist context. When men rape its rape, when women rape it’s “salvation,” so “lie back and enjoy the ride”.
Alberici does not ask one thing about this. How’s that for “a range of perspectives”? That’s the “let’s ignore it completely” perspective.
Utopia
A world without violence against femalesNow, Ensler got together with a group of friends, presumably in what became the V-Day movement, to end what she called an epidemic of violence. Specifically, she states “not manage it, not contain it, but end it.”
Given that this Utopia has never been achieved in all of human history for any group of people, including royalty, you’d think that Alberici would have one penetrating question at least about how all this would be achieved. Nope. None seemingly sprung to our expert reporter’s mind.
Ensler goes on to expound explicitly on her Utopia:
You know, see a world where women were safe and free and could wear what they wanted to wear and walk where they wanted to be and be who they wanted to be and live the lives they wanted to be without fear of attack, or harassment, or rape or innuendo or whatever it is that makes you feel less than you want to be as a woman.
Does Alberici ask Ensler why men are missing from her Utopia? Does she ask if Ensler thinks the other half of the world’s population simply does not experience violence? Does she ask Ensler about the statistics that show that men are three times more likely to be killed in a homicide (World Health Organisation, 2002)?
Does she ask Ensler why she deems innuendo as significant as rape? In an interview that discusses “rape and torture survivors”, are we now going to have “double entendre survivors”?
The suppressed girl cell
Alberici, whose interviewing technique could be called leading the cheer squad, provided another feed for another Ensler monologue.
“You talk about something you call the ‘girl cell’ and you talk about the fact that has been suppressed over time not only in women but in men. What do you mean by that? And you also say that that’s parts of the reason we see so much conflict and disaster in the world?”
There is a girl cell? One that exists in women and men? How can an educated journalist say that out loud?
Doesn’t that make it a human cell? Or is that just me questioning the sacred babble?
It’s been suppressed? Really? Not only are women in the big world being oppressed, but at the cellular level there is gender specific oppression!
Now, I’m guessing here that it is the oppression, and not the girl cell itself, that is responsible for conflict and disaster. But really, the earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and twisters were all caused by the suppression of the girl cell?
And conflict, too? Wars are not, as previously thought, manifestations of a desire for power or resources, or defence against marauders. No, just suppressed girl cells.
Now, if you’re waiting to know what the girl cell actually is, I’m here to tell you that I have no fucking idea. The transcript goes on for pages, and Alberici asks her twice, but Ensler talks about everything and anything else without so much as a hint of what a girl cell might be. As for the subject of suppressing them, Ensler is equally busy explaining something else.
Maybe this is why Alberici doesn’t ask Ensler any hard questions. Maybe Ensler simply doesn’t
do hard questions.
Why do men commit violence?
Ensler herself does tyr to ask some hard questions: “How did a man end up in a gang rape of a five year old girl?” She continues to emote, “How did a man…cut out a woman’s baby out of her belly…and destroy it? What was going on in that man that allowed that to happen?”
And the Great Ensler’s theory:
And it has to be that through the processes of patriarchy and colonialism and enslavement and poverty, impoverishment, that people end up getting further and further and further removed from their hearts and from their empathetic selves.
Where is the penetrative journalism we are promised by Lateline?
In December 2011, Heather Glendinning killed her two children and then herself in what was described as the most gory scene the Western Australian police had ever seen (WA Today, 2011).”
Earlier last year, Sidonie Thompson, a fourteen year old girl, was killed by her mother, Kim Patterson, with an axe. Kim Patterson then took her son to the Brisbane Storey Bridge where she jumped to her death (The Telegraph, 2011). How terrible would that have been for her son to witness?
Where does patriarchy, colonialism, etc. fit in here? These are atrocities in every sense. Except, and this obviously makes a difference to Alberici and Ensler, these are atrocities committed by women. Presumably, therefore, these acts simply didn’t happen.
Women in Politics
Gillard’s plightAlthough Ensler is not generally held as an expert on Australian politics, Alberici obviously decided to elicit some thoughts from this feminist icon on local current events. In particular, she asks Ensler about the recent treatment of the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard by the press.
Alberici asks Ensler about the “…lot of discussion… the tone in which the coverage of her policies and politics has taken a very kind of sexist or misogynist tone. Is that something quite particular to female leaders around the world?”
Now, this “discussion” was had by none other than the likes of Greens Senator Bob Brown (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2012). Brown is not an independent observer of Gillard’s government. His party has joined with Gillard’s Labor Party to allow her minority government to stay in office.
“The government would be defeated if an election was held now, according to the latest Nielsen Poll, (Nielsen, 2012)” was the poll that Brown was discussing when claiming that the treatment of Prime Minister was sexist.
Moreover, the sexism in question essentially boils down to one interview with Mike Willisee. In this interview Willisee asks Gillard “You say you’re a woman – would it be easier if you were a man?” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2012)
Apparently, it is fine for Alberici to reference Gillard’s gender to distinguish her from other politicians; it’s not OK for Willisee to ask what difference it makes to be a woman.
Alberici tries to further the misogyny discussion by referring to a certain point in Willisee’s interview, where he asks the Prime Minister if she cries much. Again, Alberici fails to show the context of the question.
In his interview, Willesee asks this question first. “Prime Minister, people talk about your lack of emotions and they’re only talking about seeing you in public. Are you a very emotional person when you go home?”
It is after she answers this question with a response that discusses emotions of love and joy, but not sadness, that Willesee asks about her crying.
It would be fair to accuse Willesee, in my opinion, of mining for sensationalist dirt on the Prime Minister, but not misogyny.
Alberici’s efforts to embroil the playwright in local controversies are in vain, however, as Ensler instead talks about powerful women in general, Hilary Clinton in particular, and Gillard not once.
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