Pork and the Vagina

Mount Holyoke College was the first of the Seven Sisters, a woman’s liberal arts college to provide available and appropriate dates to Ivy League boys in the old days when college students still went on these things called “dates.”  It remains an all-female institution, even as the Ivy League has gone co-ed, because no guy wants to go there.

But this celebration of womanhood has hit a snag.

Women’s college Mount Holyoke has decided to stop performing Eve Ensler’s classic play “The Vagina Monologues.” The college has been annually performing theater classic for decades, but since Mount Holyoke redefined its definition of “woman” to include transgender students, many felt the play was neither inclusive nor representative of the student body.

If this strikes you as peculiar, given that vaginas appear somewhat integral to womanhood, Jezebel quotes Campus Reform to explain:

“At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman…Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive.”

Gender used to be a fairly straightforward thing, based upon the anatomy one ended up with.  But that leaves out people who fall into one of the 37 categories of sexual identity and orientation, and no one should be left out.

But it’s more than that. Don’t try to reduce women to their vaginas. Even if women want to talk about their vaginas, just amongst themselves, they can’t because a woman somewhere will be hurt by not having a play that extols the virtue of her existence.

In the UK, the leading publisher of textbooks, Oxford University Press, will remove all references to sausage and pork in books.

In attempt to avoid offending Muslims and Jews, Oxford University Press have banned authors from referring to “anything pork-related” in their school textbooks.

 

The UK’s leading educational publisher, Oxford University Press, request the removal of references to sausages and pigs in their books.

A spokesperson from the publisher defended the editorial policy, claiming books needed to be “acceptable in other cultures” for them to be exported.

There is no word as yet whether Oxford University Press will also remove all pictures of Charlie Hebdo cartoons, but one can anticipate that it will be on the chopping block.

I hesitate to wade into areas where I’m unwelcome, which includes Mount Holyoke’s vaginas or Oxford’s sausages, but it’s rather important to point something out.  Women have vaginas, and pigs exist, even if they don’t fly.

And some pigs, perhaps most, end up eventually as bacon.  Bacon is delicious, and it’s unfortunate that Muslims and religious Jews don’t get to enjoy it, as it would likely go far in bringing us together over a fabulous BLT.  It’s hard to maintain hostilities after a really good BLT.

But the facts are the facts, and these things exist. I have personal knowledge of this, and cannot be persuaded otherwise.  Refusing to put on the Vagina Monologues will not excise vaginas from the female anatomy.  If the show doesn’t do it for you, then don’t watch it.  But no matter how loudly you cry “lalalalala,” women will still have vaginas.

There is a significant distinction between doing things that are designed or intended to ridicule or diminish people whose beliefs are different and being “underinclusive.”  If women who feel that they should be men and have vaginas even though they would much prefer penises feel left out of the Vagina Monologues, there should be no resistance to someone writing a play that reflects their view of life.  Whether they can make a go of it is another story, but nobody promised them a successful opening.

Yet, to deny other women their opportunity to dwell on their lady parts, if that’s what they want to do, enhances nothing for those who suffer from vagina denial.

As for Islam, here’s a secret for Oxford Press: Muslims aren’t inherently stupid. They know that infidels eat bacon. They’ve seen pictures. Pretending otherwise isn’t going to make you rich from the oil-educational complex, but a joke told in Arabic. Have you checked out porn-surfing on the internet?  Even they know that women have vaginas under their burkas.

That people wish to be sensitive toward others isn’t a bad thing, and that doesn’t change based on the tyranny of the majority.  Caring deeply about the feelings of the transgendered and pork-deprived is a perfectly fine way to go through life. But elevating that concern to denial of the majority’s existence, that it’s wrong to celebrate all thoughts, all ideas, all body parts and all meats, goes far beyond sensitivity.  This is pathological denial of reality.

Just as it’s okay to not want to celebrate bacon and vaginas, it’s okay to do so as well.  What is not okay is for those who choose not to engage in the celebration to demand that no one else do so either.  What is not okay is to silence women’s vaginas and deny the school children of the world the existence of bacon. What is not okay is demand that the rest of the world live in your peculiar fantasy.

Don’t like your vagina? Fair enough. That doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t. With or without bacon.

22 thoughts on “Pork and the Vagina

  1. Dan

    My mother went to Mount Holyoke and tells me about how when she first enrolled, gentlemen callers, including her father visiting on parent’s weekend, weren’t allowed up to the students’ rooms, but had to wait downstairs in the parlor. But then, amidst the turmoil and tumult of the late 60’s, at some point, her father, and the man who would become my dad, were allowed up to her room. And they thought those were crazy times.

    And a note on the pork thing- I don’t know about Muslims, but I’m pretty familiar with the laws of kashruth and Orthodox Jewish views on these things- there is nothing offensive, or bad, or evil, about bacon. You just don’t eat it. That’s all. Now, inviting your observant Jewish friend over for a pork sausagefest- that might be a little offensive, or maybe just dumb, but there’s nothing wrong with the meat itself, other than don’t eat it.

    1. SHG Post author

      I remember a movie years ago, the name long since lost, where all strife in the middle east had ended when Arabs and Jews both realized that the thing they both wanted most was sex with blond women.

    2. Anne Krone

      Dan, it’s the same for Muslims. The Koran even contains a “if you’re starving and there isn’t anything else” exception to the no swine rule.

  2. DaveL

    “At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective”

    That’s hardly a reason to discontinue it. Broad and inclusive perspectives are something one synthesizes from surveying a variety of perspectives, many of them narrow. Broad experience or understanding is not something you get delivered to you neatly wrapped up in one package.

    1. SHG Post author

      Among the many reasons not to discontinue it, that’s certainly one.

      Yet, do we really need reasons at all? As the great philosophers say, let’s put on a show!

  3. lawrence kaplan

    What is really dishonest is OUP’s saying it asked that references to pigs and pork be deleted to avoid offending Jews and Muslims. The truth is that OUP is afraid of offending Muslims, and it threw in the Jews as a cover. Jews, including Orthodox Jews , are not offended by the mere mention of pork and pigs. I am an Orthodox Jews, and my family does not, of course, eat bacon or ham, but I read Charlotte’s Web to my kids– Some pig!– and no one was offended. Great book.

    1. Turk

      Yeah, it looks like Oxford threw in Jews for cover. I’ve never heard of an Orthodox Jew being offended by others eating pork, and that’s because it isn’t part of the religion to proselytize.

      And the concept of claiming that art must be all-inclusive is just bizarre. I’ll assume that neither Blazing Saddles nor Hedwig and the Angry Inch will be playing at Mount Holyoke anytime soon. To the detriment of the students.

        1. Turk

          I wonder sometimes if movies like that, or All in the Family, could even be made today.

          It’s as if some people wake up in the morning and think, “Hey, what’s out there that I can be outraged about today?”

  4. Nick

    Really, you cited Russia Today?
    Oxford University Press has not banned mention of anything pork related.

    I know I’m not supposed to post links, but:
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/15/books-pigs-global-publishing-oxford-university-press-children

    I still think it is a little too sensitivity based, but it isn’t a ban.

    Also, some indication in the article and other press releases that this guidance may be for books aimed at being sold in Muslim countries, which would be less offensive.

        1. SHG Post author

          Some people can’t see the forest through the trees. Some people can’t see the trees or the forest. It doesn’t matter.

          1. John Burgess

            The natural habitat of the pig is the forest. They don’t really pay attention to the trees, either. It’s just the fallen acorns and mast they’re interested in.

            I’ve yet to come across a pig that freaks out at the mention of bacon. You’d think they, being intelligent animals and all, would be the first to object. But no. I’ve not tried them on the word “vagina.”

  5. Pingback: Political Correctness and Hate Speech… « blueollie

Comments are closed.