The Book Club

The Bobbitt Contribution

Ladies and gentleman,

Before we leave this part of the discussion with a wistful and good-natured “chaque a son gout,” I do want to address a couple of points Katha and Marjorie made in their postings today. Especially Katha, who attributes to me opinions I did not express and do not hold.

She says I regarded The Vagina Monologues as hostile to men and to sex, she suggests I felt the play contains “anti-male diatribes” and some sort of “political lesbian” agenda, and she informs me that I was “bothered” by a scene in which a frigid woman learns to masturbate. None of this is true. I think the politics implicit in the play are largely benign and its goals generally unexceptionable. I also think the writing is inept and the mentality behind it unimaginative and vapid.

Today’s discussion may well exemplify the reasons Chris and I both consider the play to be agitprop. I was brought up in left-wing circles in which, too often, mediocre work was extolled if its political tendencies were considered worthy. There’s something coercive, even totalitarian, about this sort of exercise, as if a failure to admire the work is tantamount to a rejection of its political and moral values. Which is why I’ve taken the time to address the attitudes Katha attributes to me. I can comfortably applaud most of what Eve Ensler is attempting and still find the piece itself valueless.

In addition, I can only conclude that Marjorie has apparently heard the word “penis” a lot more frequently than I have. In my experience, its use was another social no-no (not quite a taboo, but a genuine envelope-pusher in polite company) until that fateful day Lorena Bobbitt lopped off her husband’s. And then, all at once, the word was ubiquitous, downright inescapable. Out of the closet and (literally, in poor John’s case) into the streets. Otherwise, words like “penis” and “vagina” were normally restricted to doctors’ offices and to high-school hygiene classes (accompanied, in the latter, by nervous tittering). Latinate medical terms are not the sort of vocabulary lovers use in bed, after all, nor are they especially common in locker rooms, either boys’ or girls’.

Marjorie is gently ironic about the attitudes toward female anatomy that Chris and I profess. I’m not quite sure why. That one felt like a cheap shot. The mechanics of sexual reproduction are rather extraordinary, and when you factor in their emotional component, they are even more so; the hydraulics of male sexual functioning still seem to me a legitimate subject of awe even though I’ve lived with them all my life, and the astonishing fact of female orgasm–unnecessary for reproduction but damned useful for bonding–is enough to make an agnostic reconsider. The lunar influence on the menstrual cycle is mysterious and haunting, and childbirth is a never-ending source of transcendent wonder. And Marjorie, this is a reformed pornographer (as Jodi was kind enough to remind us all yesterday) talking.

Finally, Jodi, Katha, and Marjorie all insist that the productions of the play they’ve witnessed brought out merit not apparent on the printed page. This is certainly possible ; as a sometime playwright and screenwriter, I’m aware that work intended for performance always benefits from the creative contribution of an inspired performer. But I also know that Ella Fitzgerald’s first big hit was “A Tisket a Tasket.” Her extraordinary virtuosity made the record noteworthy, but it doesn’t make the song any better.

We seem to be giving male bodies short shrift this week. Such, I suppose, is the power of the vagina.

Fraternally,
Erik