The average guy–a guy who would cut out his own tongue before he’d call a person with dark skin the n-word–will toss out a “bitch” without a second thought. When his friends are unhappy, they’re whiny bitches. Frightened male friends are little bitches. Overweight male friends have bitch tits. Someone cuts him off in traffic, and she promptly becomes a dumb bitch. He might mutter it under his breath or even shout it, but either way, it’s no big deal to him. He moves on with his life and forgets about it. Maybe he says it about some particular woman he knows. His ex-girlfriend is the bitch ex. His boss is the stupid bitch. Women who don’t want to date him are all bitches.

Often, we don’t think very much about category-specific insults like racial, religious, or gender slurs. We don’t think about how, whether the category is defined by the color of someone’s skin, the name a person says in church, or a person’s gender, using one of those insults makes a statement about every member of that class and our attitude toward them.

Take the n-word. Nigger. The average middle-class white person would never dream of calling a black co-worker a nigger. But somewhere in that person’s categories for people, there might be one labeled “nigger.”  It’s there for people who are black who behave in a way corresponding to racial stereotypes.

It’s there just like “bitch” is there for women who behave in a way corresponding to gender-role stereotypes.

The thing is, when we use those terms, when we say that they’re acceptable in some circumstances, what we’re really doing is reinforcing those stereotypes. Like any word, “nigger” and “bitch” would be meaningless if they didn’t have any history behind them. But they do. And for both words, it’s a history of oppression, injustice, and violence. The choice to use a category-specific insult is not a neutral one.

Bitch. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary has four definitions for the word. Not one of them involves males. 1 : the female of the dog or some other carnivorous mammals 2 a : a lewd or immoral woman b : a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman–sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse 3 : something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant 4 : complaint.

When someone chooses “bitch” instead of a gender-neutral insult like “idiot,” the statement made by that choice is that this woman is overstepping her boundaries—the boundaries imposed on her by the powerful. In the case of men being called bitches, they’re being told that they are feminine: an insult in and of itself when being a woman is being powerless—and inferior. The word says: Women are powerless. You are a woman. Don’t forget.

Every time I hear that oh-so-casual “bitch” dropped into conversation, I wonder whether misogyny will ever become unacceptable.

I know that there are people who believe that words can be reclaimed. I’m not weighing in on that issue right now. I’m not talking about women who point out that “bitch” has been the name for powerful women throughout history and proudly claim that name for themselves. What I’m talking about is the use of the b-word—bitch—in its longstanding derogatory sense: as a slap in the face from a man to a woman.

Abstinence-only sex education curricula are created and funded by the government for the sole purpose of indoctrinating students with fundamentalist Christian dogma. It is the Christian Right’s back-door method of teaching religion and accomplishing by means of education what they could not accomplish by means of legislation.

Consider: there is not one scientifically conducted valid study which indicates that abstinence-only sex education lowers the rate of unintentional pregnancies, delays the onset of sexual activity, or reduces the likelihood of STI contraction. Not one. Despite the claims of various right wing organizations such as the Heritage Group, these studies: 1.) compare students receiving abstinence-only sex education to those receiving no sex education whatsoever; 2.) have such small sample groups that they are completely invalid; 3.) ignore other factors such as demographics in evaluating results; and/or 4.) assume that belief equates to action for teens.

Additionally, teenage pregnancy rates have been dropping since about 1990, yet the rate of infection of sexually transmitted diseases has been rising. Thus, any attempt to claim that the drop in teen pregnancy rates is due to abstinence-only sex education programs is blatantly false, as these rates have been steadily dropping while STI rates have been steadily rising. Cursory knowledge of logic indicates that the only rational conclusion is that more teens have been using non-barrier birth control. The United States has the least informative and most compressed sex education programs and the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed nation. In the Netherlands, sex education begins in kindergarten and is integrated into all aspects of schooling; the Netherlands have the lowest teen birth rate in the world. Comprehensive sex education has been proven to work, time and time again.

So, then, we are left with two possibilities. Either those who are promoting abstinence-only programs are demonstrating a startling inability to comprehend statistics, or there is some other purpose behind their support of these programs. Given that the Republican party has clearly indicated its ability to understand statistics to its own personal benefit, i.e., to win elections, it seems improbable that the right wing somehow has a specific blind spot in this area. It also seems that logic would dictate that those who are backing these programs have another agenda. Only a small minority — fifteen percent — of Americans believe that abstinence-only sex education is the best option.

The next question becomes: what does the administration gain by pushing for abstinence-only sex education? It does not gain the support of a large portion of its constituency. It does not reduce the number of teen pregnancies. It does not reduce the rate of STIs. What, then? How about this: George W. Bush is an evangelical Christian. Baptists and evangelical Methodists comprise his base. It is the absolute duty of an evangelical Christian to spread the word of God and convert others to belief.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the purpose of abstinence-only education is to evangelize fundamentalist Christian ideals. Therefore, abstinence-only sex education is misogynistic and anti-alternative-sexuality by nature. By either coincidence or design, it is also much more damaging to racial minorities. Put more bluntly: abstinence-only sex education is murderously negligent, and the primary impact of that negligence is upon women and minorities.

The rate of sexually transmitted disease contraction among minorities is vastly higher than that among whites. The chlamydia rate among black female teens aged 15-19 is seven times higher than it is for white females; for black male teens in the same age range, it is 12 times higher than it is for white males. Seventy-five percent of all reported cases of gonorrhea in 2001 occurred among blacks. In the United States, the type of HPV which accounts for half of all cervical cancer cases is more than twice as prevalent in women and is highest among black women. Women, particularly minority women, have been contracting AIDS through heterosexual sex at an ever-growing rate. Half of all new HIV infections are among those under age twenty-five, and African-American or Hispanics constitute 85 percent of teens who have AIDS. Refusing to teach about condom use kills Americans.

With regard to the accusations leveled of misogyny and anti-alternative sexuality, the very requirements of the programs make this clear. For a program to qualify for federal funding, it must teach the following:

1. the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
2. abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children;
3. that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems;
4. that a mutually faithful, monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity;
5. that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;
6. that bearing children out of wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents and society;
7. young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances; and
8. the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.

I think we can probably all agree that items 7 and 8 are unquestionably true and, moreover, that teaching them is a good idea. Unsurprisingly, comprehensive sex education programs rely heavily upon these points.

Items 1 and 5: Social harm from sexual activity lies within the realm of unintended pregnancy and contraction of STIs; both of these potential issues can be more rationally remedied by contraception, condoms, and STI testing than by mandating abstention. The American Psychological Association has made a specific statement in support of comprehensive sex education. From what exactly is this claim of psychological damage being garnered? There are no health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity except for the previously-referenced problems of pregnancy or STIs. In fact, studies have repeatedly indicated that regular sexual activity is beneficial to one’s health.

Item 3: Abstinence is indeed a certain way to avoid potential deleterious consequences of sex. Similarly, abstention from alcohol is a certain way to avoid drinking and driving, becoming an alcoholic, or having cirrhosis of the liver. If the true concern is health, then why the focus only on sexual activity? And why choose encouraging abstinence, a method which has been repeatedly proven to be ineffective (with regard to the alcohol analogy, Prohibition clearly indicated that even a constitutional amendment is insufficient to force compliance), over promoting use of birth control and condoms?

Item 6: Unintentional pregnancies which result in bearing children out of wedlock can have harmful consequences. Unintentional pregnancies which result in bearing children within wedlock can also have harmful consequences. When one in two marriages ends in divorce, bearing children within wedlock is no guarantee whatsoever that financial and other circumstances will remain such that there are no harmful consequences to the child, parents, or society. Intentional, planned pregnancy out of wedlock is no more likely to have harmful consequences than intentional planned pregnancy within wedlock.

Let’s go back to items 2 and 4. These requirements make several statements. They are indicating that marriage is the expected and desirable goal for every person and that upon marrying, women are expected to produce as many children as possible. Were this not the case, then wouldn’t sex education programs still have an onus to teach about birth control? If nothing about contraception except the failure rates is taught, then the easy inference is that these programs believe the use of contraception in any circumstances to be wrong. This aligns with fundamentalist Christian ideals. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that people have a right to use birth control. Therefore, another method of reducing contraception use was required; abstinence-only education is that method.

If contraception is undesirable, yet marriage is mandatory to achieve happiness, then that means that women have an unavoidable obligation to procreate. It implies, in fact, that the purpose of marriage is procreation, a stance with which the majority of Americans do not agree. Those who do agree with this stance are also those who support reinforcement of traditional gender roles: a woman’s job is procreation and a woman’s place is in the home. It is 2007. Title IX was enacted in 1972. What part of teaching women that their role is to bear children is in compliance with “No person in the United States shall…be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”?

Additionally, these guidelines imply that anyone who does not want to or is unable to marry is “outside the expected standard for human sexual activity.” Therefore, as it is impossible for homosexuals to marry, they are expected to refrain from sexual activity and to not bear children. Should they fail to remain celibate, then they are outside “the expected standard of human sexual activity.” Within this context, homosexuality is abnormal, undesirable, and harms society. Does this sound similar to anything that the current administration has said before? It bears a striking resemblance to the words used to support the Federal Marriage Amendment, does it not? The amendment which failed to pass? It appears that that was only a minor setback for an administration which has other means at its disposal to encourage what it believes to be morality.

These are not unsubstantiated interpretations of the requirements. Eleven out of the thirteen most frequently used abstinence-only curricula have been found to present gender stereotypes as fact or to provide factually incorrect information, all of which tends in the direction of discrediting condoms and contraception or denigrating homosexuality. Eleven out of thirteen. One might be coincidence or incompetence. But eleven out of thirteen is deliberate, and any claims to the contrary fly in the face of logic.

I once spent a year as a repair tech and computer lab teacher for a local school corporation. I taught the kids keyboarding and the basics of computer use. They taught me far more than I taught them.

I learned that kindergarteners all have a story to tell. As soon as a hand goes up, you have to say, “Okay, Caitlin, is this a story or a question?” No matter what the response is, you’ll get a story. Guaranteed.

I learned that fourth-graders are literal listeners. Never, ever say the words “Hit the ‘enter’ key.” Never.

I learned that first-graders think you know everything they know. Everything. Including obscure video game trivia, characters in sequels of sequels of sequels to Disney movies released in the theater, and their Aunt Jenny. Indications that you do not know any of these things are appalling and will likely result in announcements like, “My mom knows everything.”

I learned that fifth-grade boys will say, with no hesitation at all, “You’re a very small person, aren’t you? I’m bigger than you are.” There is no good comeback to this statement. “At least I’ve got a car!” gives you the short-term win but you feel silly about it later.

I learned that second-graders think farting is very, very funny, and the humor of it never decreases. Even if it’s the seventeenth time that someone has farted in the last half hour, it’s still hilarious. Also, the more the farts stink, the funnier they are. If they can get their teacher to breathe through her shirt to filter out the stench, they win.

I learned that third-graders spout racism without even thinking about it because it’s what their parents taught them, and they don’t recognize it as racism despite having a vague, general idea of what racism is.

We had a paint/picture program called KidPix on the computers in the lab. KidPix had a “stamp” feature, where you could use it to “stamp” a small picture on your “canvas.” Available stamps ran the gamut from armadillos to brooms to clouds, but for some reason, the only two stamps with people’s faces were a man’s head and a woman’s head, both shown in opposite profile. In other words, when you put the two stamps next to each other in the right order, the man and woman appeared to be kissing. Naturally, one of my kids discovered this almost immediately. Third-graders are like that.

Then Taylor looked over at the monitor next to his and said, “Ewwww. That’s gross. Black people and white people kissing. Gross.”

You see, the woman stamp was a dark-skinned woman and the man stamp was a Caucasian man.

It never occurred to Taylor that there was anything wrong with his statement. How could it? When I asked where he’d gotten that idea, he explained to me that his parents had told him. His parents, who were so very nice to me as his teacher and so very polite to everyone and so very politically correct. His parents, who would have been horrified to discover that along with peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread, they served up a heaping helping of racism to their child. They weren’t KKK members hiding under sheets. They weren’t even malicious bigots hiding under their business reputations. They were upstanding members of the community hiding under nothing at all.

They seemed so normal.

Of course, so does racism.

          My grandfather liked laughter, Vidalia onions, and buttermilk.

            He was born in Devonshire and his parents moved to the States when he was two but he never forgot England. British-born and British-oriented, he never set foot in church as an adult because he was Church of England and wouldn’t ever forget it. Sometimes people who would have been better served by timidity would say, “Isn’t Episcopalian the same thing?” and get roared at for their ignorance.

            But he drove my Catholic grandmother to church every Sunday and waited in the car.

            I think I was eight when we learned he had the cancer. “The cancer,” he and my grandmother called it. Not a disease, not a cell disorder, but a real thing, a monster thing like the bogeyman, that’s what the cancer was to them.

            At the age of eight, I did not know what cancer was.

            My grandfather went into the hospital, where he grew wan and pale and flirted with the nurses. We visited him every Sunday, driving across the Allegheny River and the
Monongahela River.

            My parents tell a story about my brother. When he was very small, he used to ride in the back seat of the car with my mother on her way to work and then she would drop him off at daycare. This must have been before they adopted me, so my brother was I think about fourteen months old at the time that he immortalized himself in our family stories, because my mother was driving across a suspension bridge, crossing a river, when with no warning at all, my brother said, “Monongahela Wibba!”

            In telling this story, my mother always laughs and says, “First time he ever said it, and he was wrong. It was the Allegheny.”

            My grandfather used to trick the doctors. He would convince me and my brother to eat his food, the hospital mashed potatoes and gray gravy and obligatory Jello. The hospital staff would praise him.

            “Bill! You ate your whole dinner! Were we hungry today?”

            He laughed and he winked at me and my brother and said, “We were.”

            To get to the hospital, we passed Glen’s Custard, which is still there almost twenty years later, providing the best ice cream in any city anywhere, and a Stop & Go.

            My grandfather was in the hospital for two years, off and on.

            By the time he left the hospital to go home and die, the Stop & Go had become a CoGo’s, and I knew what the cancer was, and my brother and I both could identify all three of Pittsburgh’s rivers, and I knew my grandfather mostly as a man who laughed a lot in his hospital bed but barely remembered seeing him walk around.

            At the hospital, we had to smuggle in the Vidalia onions and buttermilk. My mother would give them to my brother and me, and we would hide them in our coats or our bookbags. After the nurses would come and take away the tray that contained the food my grandfather talked us into eating, we would give him the Vidalia onions and buttermilk and he would smile at my mother and tell her what a good daughter she was. The boy and the girl—that’s my brother and me—we were good children, too.

            When we gave him the Vidalia onions and buttermilk the day before the cancer took him, my grandfather laughed a lot in his bed and showed us how to dial the phone so that once you hang up, it’ll ring back at the number you just called. He wanted us to be sure to try it soon, because he felt that my mother was losing her sense of humor.

Car repair is largely a mystery to me. Yard work makes my hands blister. Power tools seem like a certain route to severed limbs. But I find baking comforting, I enjoy making dinner, and I feel a definite satisfaction after I clean.

These things are my shame.

As a feminist (sometimes accused of being radical, more often called diehard, and once referred to as rabid), I believe in the equality of the sexes. Equality means opportunities and choices. So how come I feel so guilty about the fact that I like traditionally female occupations? How come I feel like I’m selling out?

Maybe it’s because liking certain “feminine” activities is looked down on by so many people. On one side, I’m denying my womanhood because I don’t want children, I have a career path, and I dislike the color pink. On the other, I’m selling out because I don’t want children, I do the housework, and I dislike the color pink.  Sometimes the sides are difficult to distinguish from each other. They get more so as time passes, as the original idea of having a choice seems to have become a demand that we do it all—motherhood, career, marriage—while the counterargument from the anti-feminists is that motherhood is the only thing worth doing.

The funny thing is that doing it all now seems to mean doing everything except the housework. Progressive, feminist women don’t do the housework. Progressive, feminist men don’t do the housework, either. The correct solution is for no one who lives in the household to do the house work. Smart progressive, feminist women hire someone else to do the housework.

Scrubbing toilets is for the birds. (But it’s all right for the maid to do it; oddly enough, maids are almost always women.) Baking cookies is a pointless exercise in retro activity. (But cooking is all right as a hobby if you can produce high-falutin’ food and call yourself a chef; oddly enough, chefs are almost always men.) Doing laundry is a waste of time for a literate woman. (But it’s all right to send your laundry out to be done; oddly enough, people working in Laundromats are almost always women.)

Housework is that last bastion, the litmus test for feminism. All things girly and grrrly and womanly and wymmenly are okay. Those are acceptable now. Motherhood and gynocentrism join multiculturalism as expressions of feminism. Making the choice to stay home with children and home-school them while remodeling the house in off moments and creating perfectly healthy and balanced snacks largely consisting of brown and green food is an expression of feminism. But it’s a careful expression, because if a woman crosses that line into professing fondness for housework, a feminist statement becomes the ill-considered prattling of the patriarchally deluded. Housework is acceptable only when it is for the sake of the children.

It’s a shame.

Sometimes the tagline is more interesting than the substance. This is true in personal ads and in articles, and Salon’s recent article asking, “Can liberal bloggers be both partisan kingmakers and independent journalists?” I am not slamming Joan Walsh’s article, mind you. The article is very good.

But it doesn’t deal with the question I hoped she would be exploring—the question asked in the tagline—in a general sense. Instead, Ms. Walsh primarily focuses on the firing and rehiring of two particular bloggers by the Edwards campaign without answering the question asked in the tagline. What she’s really examining is whether it’s possible for bloggers who have expressed controversial opinions in the past to work for a presidential campaign. The fact that this was the tagline chosen for this article is interesting, though.

The review of Marcotte and McEwan’s trials and tribulations with the Edwards campaign and Catholicism, that’s not interesting. Someone working for Edwards made a mistake that would be the equivalent of George W. Bush directly hiring Pat Robertson to work for his campaign. Then they tried to fix it. Then they realized that they’d screwed themselves. Short story, kind of boring, although both Marcotte and McEwan are fun to read.

The tagline is interesting because it suggests that perhaps there is some sort of ambivalence about what blogging is and why we do it and how valid it is compared to more traditional forms of public expression. That brings us right to the question: What is a public intellectual?

We can’t answer that without answering the other questions.

Does a public intellectual have a duty to be objective? Is a public intellectual supposed to educate? Is education inherently objective? If partisanship is okay, when and how can it be acceptable? More questions that I won’t address right now but that are raised by this piece: Does publishing, even in blog format, somehow lend more respectability to opinions? Is that why Marcotte and McEwan were hired when Pat Robertson wasn’t?

Bill Moyers gave a speech on public thinkers (note that he avoided the word “intellectual”) a little less than a month ago explaining why he believes that public thinkers ought to be presented to…well…the public. He doesn’t deliberately address the question of partisanship versus objectivity, but it lies under the surface of many of his remarks.

On democracy: We know who the enemies of democracy are…propaganda…sentimentality…pornography…

In a quote from a letter he received about a series he presented: …we have all become devout Constitutionalists… 

On religion: And of course, near the end of his life, Jesus of Nazareth also went to
Jerusalem…

This is not objectivity. This is not the cool, calm voice of dispassionate reason. This is partisanship.

Is that a problem?

I’m going to take the first step onto the path of building a functional definition of a public intellectual and say yes. Yes, this is a problem. But it is not a problem simply because Mr. Moyers has an agenda; it is a problem because he does not state that he has an agenda. To go back to Marcotte and McEwan: they have agendas. No question about that. Thus, their support of a Democratic presidential candidate is less than surprising, but by the same token, their agenda is not identical to that of Edwards, which is why they never should have been officially hired in. Contracted, perhaps, but not hired in. Neither of them made any secret whatsoever of her beliefs and intentions.

If you go out in public and say you’re providing information to the public without telling them what your agenda is, you’re not a public intellectual.

You’re a spin doctor.

And maybe you should be hired to work on a presidential campaign.

I bet you’re worried. We were worried. We were worried about vaginas. We were worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don’t think about them. We were worried about our own vaginas. They needed a context of other vaginas—a community, a culture of vaginas. There’s so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them—like the Bermuda triangle. Nobody ever reports back from there.

Worried about vaginas. Eve Ensler was, and so are the performers of the Vagina Monologues, and so am I. At this year’s performance, however, I began to wonder whether we’re worried for the same reasons. 

From the beginning, as I listened to statements like, “In a world without violence, every man’s face would not be an abuser,” or  “In a world without violence, female genital mutilation would be female circumcision, and it would happen by choice,” or “In a world without violence, ‘Hey baby’ would be something a man said only to an infant whose name was unknown,” I was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in a way I’ve rarely been in settings that could be perceived as “feminist” or “women’s spaces.” Uncomfortable in a way I never expected to be in a place dedicated to discussing women’s genitalia.

I don’t agree with all of the monologues, of course. The idea that one cannot love a vagina if one does not love hair made me roll my eyes the first time I heard it and my reaction has become no more positive since. The date rape described in “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could” makes me wonder when some feminists began to condone rape, as though it is an inconsequential matter between two women. No matter how well performed, “The Vagina Workshop” is so over-the-top with its fatuously vapid description that it makes me shudder.

But I used to agree with the cause. I believe in the creation of a context of other vaginas—or, to use more appropriate terminology, a community of vulvae—for women. A community where women can express what society has told them about their vaginas and what they have discovered for themselves and what they would like others to learn. What I don’t understand is why a context of other vaginas means a context of violence.

Violence and vaginas. Are they the only two constants and universals in a woman’s life?

The proceeds from IUSB’s Vagina Monologues went to the SOS of Madison Center and the YWCA of St. Joseph County. Worthy recipients, no question, and I am in no way saying that the cause of domestic violence is somehow insufficient or inappropriate. But I wonder. I wonder whether the women who were so worried about vaginas when Eve Ensler originally interviewed them were expecting this. I wonder whether they were expecting that their stories would become a full-fledged pacifist effort. Even if they accepted that the point of V-Day has become opposing domestic violence, they might have become more dubious this year, when the Vagina Monologues ended with a demand for absolute peace and when “state violence” in the context of wars was blamed for domestic violence.

“In a world without violence,” the Vagina Monologues tell us, “These monologues would not exist.”

Are vaginas only worth discussing in the context of violence?

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CcPublisher is the best option I can find for eternal audio hosting.

My grandfather threw a Bible across the room when Cindy, my mother’s youngest sister, told him that she was engaged to Tim. My grandmother cried. My mother cried. Her sisters cried, too, except for her oldest sister, Linda, who threatened to disown Cindy.

Linda was the activist of the family.

At the time, I was six, and couldn’t understand. I pulled aside Marsha, Cindy’s best friend, and I said to her, “Marsha?”

“Yes, honey?” she answered, without looking up from her crocheting. Marsha was a vicious crocheter. Through the course of one movie, she could crochet an entire scarf, put it in a box, and have it ready to give you as a present by the end. Sometime in the early 80s, Marsha quit smoking. Crocheting was her replacement. The more stressed out she was, the more aggressively she crocheted. Right then, during that conversation, her hands were moving so fast they almost blurred.

I took a deep breath. “Is Uncle Tim…Is he a cereal killer?” (At that point in time, I could not understand why killing cereal should be such a terrible crime, but I was absolutely certain that it was awful. The T.V. said so.)

“Oh, honey,” Marsha said, and shook her head. Putting her arms around me, she pulled me in close, rested her chin on my head, and said, “Honey, it’s even worse.”

I gasped in shock. Worse than a cereal killer?!

Anticipating my question, Marsha said, “Honey, Tim is…Tim is a Republican.”

You can understand how big a deal it is that three years ago, I thought I might vote for McCain if he ran. Thought he might be a good Republican.

The reasonable, rational Senator McCain, the Senator who worked with both sides of the aisle, the Senator who said in 2000 that Jerry Falwell was “an agent of intolerance,” the Senator who said in 1999 that he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, the Senator who opposed the insane tax cuts of the Bush Administration…He’s been fading fast. Fading into a bastion of right-wing respectability. Fading into someone who seems willing to do anything if it will get him elected.

I should call Marsha to tell her that McCain doesn’t have my vote now.

I do not attend dramatic performances very often, and as such, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything other than the Vagina Monologues performed more than once. In some ways, that disappoints me a little, and I wish I could muster more interest, because seeing a different performer play a role can bring an entirely new meaning to that role, one that you might not have considered previously.

That said, sometimes seeing from a different perspective is more like hearing a song you love remade into a song you hate, or a song that’s simply boring, or, worst of all, a song that expresses something you didn’t think was in the original version.

Many of the performers in the Vagina Monologues this year appeared to have no lack of acting ability or enthusiasm. What they lacked may have existed only in my view. They lacked the vision of the monologues that I had—a vision that may well have been influenced by past performances, my own experiences, and our different lives.

Monologues like “My Angry Vagina” made me wince this year, not laugh in slightly-pained sympathy. “My Short Skirt” was a frenzied bellow of rage at catcallers and gawkers, not a claiming of a woman’s right to wear what she wants because she wants it. The clitoris has twice the number of nerve endings the penis does…And the feeling from this performance was that we’re viciously superior about that, not just happy for ourselves. To me, when I saw the Vagina Monologues this year, the performance didn’t feel like activism. It didn’t feel like acting, even.

It felt like a reaction.

And that may be a valid view. Perhaps it’s one that makes sense right here and right now. But it makes me sad. Sad because when we react instead of acting, then we make it more about what we oppose than what we are.