Programming note: Tonight at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific I'll be joining Tucker Carlson live coast to coast across America - with a rerun at 12 midnight Eastern. If you are in the presence of the receiving apparatus, I hope you'll dial us up.
Three years ago I wrote:
I can't recall ever describing The Vagina Monologues as 'edgy'. But I did tell Joseph Brean that I was amused to see that its annual 'V Day' production at Mount Holyoke College has been canceled because of its 'extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman'. Hence, this Guardian headline: 'Vagina Monologues playwright: "I never said a woman is someone with a vagina".' As I said to Mr Brean, the revolution devours its own: Less than 20 years after Eve Ensler 'empowered' women by 'reclaiming' their vaginas, it seems a woman doesn't need a vagina at all, and it's totally cisgenderist to suggest you're not a woman if you're hung like a horse.
As is my wont, I was playing it for laughs - but, as I always say, none of the people who matter in our society are laughing. Hence, the Bathroom Wars of the subsequent years, in which the position of what used to be known to Common Law as the Reasonable Man (now presumably the Reasonable Cisman) is apparently (as I put it on Rush): What sort of woman would be offended by the sight of another woman's penis?
So this latest development in Trump Resistance anniversary observances was entirely predictable:
Pink pussyhats are being dropped from Women's March because they 'exclude trans women and women whose private parts are not pink'
The pink is racist, and the pussy is transphobic. The Pussyhat Project has now issued a clarification of the rules:
The color pink was chosen "because pink is associated with femininity," the Pussyhat Project posted on its website. "We did not choose the color pink as a representation of some people's anatomy. Anyone who supports women's rights is welcome to wear a Pussyhat. It does not matter if you have a vulva or what color your vulva may be. If a participant wants to create a Pussyhat that reflects the color of her vulva, we support her choice."
Henry Ford said you could get a Model T in any color as long as it's black, but you really can get a Volvo in any color. Whoops, sorry, I mean a vulva. In the Civil Rights era, millions marched so that Americans might be judged not by the color of their faces but by the color of their vulvas. If only the apartheid regime in South Africa had thought to issue their citizenry with vulva-colored hats. Hallelujah!
Unfortunately, the Women's March in Pensacola is having no truck with celebrating divulvaversity, as they explained in a post helpfully labeled...
Trigger Warning and Content Warning for comments: Transphobia, Cissexism, Racism, mention of Sexual Assault, Genital Mutilation, Misogyny and Trans-Misogyny.
They're not kidding:
The Pink P*ssy Hat reinforces the notion that woman = vagina and vagina = woman, and both of these are incorrect.
Exactly. These days it's entirely random. You never know what you're getting into. As I noted a couple of years back, since the two sexes became multiple genders, and "transsexuals" became "transgenders", and "sex change" became "gender fluidity, some 60 per cent of transgender persons now retain their original genitalia. For example, my compatriot Gabrielle Tremblay won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress for a film in which she showed her penis.
"Her penis": See how easy it is to get with the program?
Alas, there are always a few holdouts. The singer Ginuwine was on Britain's "Celebrity Big Brother" and was asked if he'd ever date a trans woman by telly journalist India Willoughby, a trans anchorwoman who used to be a cis anchorman (Jeremy Clarkson, I think). The conversation turned rapidly transphobic:
"Would you go out with a transsexual woman?" she queried.
"I believe it's your choice... I would choose not to," replied the R'n'B singer Ginuwine. "That doesn't make me scared."
"You would go out with a woman?" Willoughby asked.
"Yes."
"But you wouldn't go out with a transsexual woman?"
"No."
The conversation rumbled on. When Willoughby suggested "Let's have a kiss," Ginuwine replied "no" and leaned away from her.
So, if Charlie Rose leans in and says, "Let's have a kiss" and you're disinclined, he gets fired. But, if Charlie Rose transitions to Charlene Rose and says, "Let's have a kiss" and you're still disinclined, you're a hater:
if you have a sexual preference that discriminates against transgender men or transgender women, you are transphobic.
this is a fact.
All this under the hashtag #LoveWins. Gosh, it seems barely a couple of years back that President Obama was attributing American success at the Olympics to "our devotion to an enduring set of ideals: That we're all created equal, that we can think and worship and love as we please", and the First Lady was touting our right to "speak freely, worship openly, and, yes, love whomever we choose", and Secretary Clinton was demanding that everyone everywhere must be "free to worship, associate, and to love in the way that they choose".
But that all feels very 2015. If men are going to go around choosing women with cis-vulvas, maybe we need to do a better job of clamping down on all this cis-privilege. The cult-Marxists have remade almost everything in society, and detaching the sex organs from the sexes is the final decisive victory: Once "the notion that woman = vagina and vagina = woman" is up for grabs, there really isn't anything left to demolish. If a woman can have a penis, then in a certain sense there is no longer any man - which is the point: the abolition of man. I've quoted before my old friends Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and a song they wrote back in the Seventies about de-gendered "Simplified Language", culminating in the replacement of "penis" and "vagina" with the unisex "penina":
Oh, nothing could be finer
Than to play with my penina
If you will show me yours-a
Then I will show you mine-a...
The sooner the government issues us all with peninas the better. We're trending very Eloi-like ...and then come the Morlocks.
~On Friday for Mark Steyn Club members Mark will be reading the second half of our double-bill of frosty fiction in Tales for Our Time. Don't miss it! And, if you've got some kith or kin who might like the sound of all that and more, we have a special Steyn Club Gift Membership that includes a welcome gift of a handsomehardback or a CD set personally autographed by Mark. More details here.
He will see you on the telly very shortly!
