Christine Flowers Does Not Understand the Meaning of Context
Writing her standard legalistic drivel, Christine Flowers betrays her utter ignorance of context.
FOR THE SAKE of argument, imagine that Ann Coulter had called John Edwards a “vagina,” not a “faggot.”
Instead of being pilloried by both liberals and weak-kneed conservatives and threatened with rehab, praise would’ve rained down upon her flaxen head.
Why am I so certain? Because when three high school juniors from suburban New York defied their principal and pronounced the “v-word” at a school production, they were hailed for their “courage, insight and social responsibility” in a letter to the New York Times.
What Flowers knows, and pretends not to understand, is that context matters. My employers were recently involved with a production of “The Vagina Monologues”, which is about women’s empowerment and women loving themselves and their unique bodies: given the rate of eating disorders and plastic surgery among women, it’s an important message. It’s also an important message because women’s genitals have historically been used as an epithet with which to attack and demean women, words like “cunt” or “twat” to describe an unpleasant woman, “pussy” to describe an unaggressive man. Women’s vagina’s are “dirty”: they “smell like fish”. The Vagina Monologues, as Flowers knows perfectly well, is about self-respect.
If Anne Coulter were to call John Edwards “a vagina”, praise would NOT have “rained down upon her flaxen head”: she would have garnered a similar reaction, because context is everything. It would have been widely understood, as her “faggot” comments were understood, that she was trying to demean and feminize Mr. Edwards. That is what Anne Coulter and her ilk do, as Glenn Greenwald has helpfully pointed out in an article well worth reading:
Coulter insisted last night that she did not intend the remark as an anti-gay slur — that she did not intend to suggest that John Edwards, husband and father, was gay — but instead only used the word as a “schoolyard taunt,” to call him a sissy. And that is true. Her aim was not to suggest that Edwards is actually gay, but simply to feminize him like they do with all male Democratic or liberal political leaders.
In this sense, “vagina” would NOT an empowering word: it would an epithet, the same way “Jew” is no longer simply a descriptor when you’re talking about someone’s unwillingness to spend money.
One of the major problems with Flowers’ article are the massive holes in her thinking. What to make of a writer who claims:
But the play spends precious little time on the most important aspect of female sexuality, and it’s probably not a coincidence. Ensler gives very short shrift to mothers, glossing over the fact that the vagina is also the birth canal.
… and then in the very NEXT paragraph writes:
As a childless, non-masochistic female, I certainly agree. But it’s somewhat strange to have a play based totally on one part of the body that virtually ignores the primary function of that organ.
So using the vagina for “its most important aspect” is an act of masochism? Or is raising children an act of masochism? In any event, Flowers is typically muddled and wrong.
Flowers has written repeatedly on the topic of female sexuality, and has consistently decried libertine women. She is Philadelphia’s public scold, who claims that breastfeeding in public is offensive, that women bring rape on themselves by wearing provocative clothing, that a Conspiracy against Catholics is what drove the investigations into her religion’s problem with child-raping priests, and generally makes a variety of other contrarian and truly silly claims (detailed here at Philadelphia Will Do). She’s also an unethical nutjob, who stalked yours truly about a letter I wrote to her publishers at the Daily News, BEFORE THEY EVEN PUBLISHED IT.
Flowers is a truly bad writer. In her introductory paragraph, she equates a common anatomical term, “vagina”, with a second-tier epithet, “faggot”, which while not as strong as “buttfucking candyass”, is still considered pretty offensive by a lot of people. Your doctor would never refer to a patient’s vagina as her “cunt”, nor would a doctor refer to his homosexual patient as a “faggot.” The two words are not equatable. Thus is follows that, unless you think the word “vagina” is an epithet, the Anne Coulter example has nothing at all to do with the Vagina Monologues. It is an unproductive, and unrelated, metaphor. But Flowers persists, and in fact makes utterly false claims to back up her flawed premise.
These commandos of the uterus make me laugh. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the word vagina, just as there’s nothing offensive about the term “penis,” we shouldn’t go all gaga about dropping it into polite conversation so we can prove how enlightened and empowered we are.
Obviously, no one is doing that: the Vagina Monologues is a specific event, a play taking place in an auditorium, for which the audience has purchased tickets knowing full-well what they are about to experience. The article is about a play that celebrates the vagina: the article is not about people running amok in the streets, shouting “VAGINA!!” at startled people waiting for the 42 bus.
They erect a “No trespassing” sign on that so-called “country,”…
This utterly contradicts Flowers’ previous statements about women who sleep around; one would think that Flowers would approve of women putting a “No Trespassing” sign on their vaginas.
So let’s review: in Flowers’ mind, “vagina” and “faggot” are equatable terms; there is only one way to read a word, because context doesn’t exist; the vagina’s most important role is to give birth; giving birth and raising children are acts of masochism; women shouldn’t sleep around; women shouldn’t erect a “no trespassing sign” on their vaginas; and Sex in the City trumps Masochist Day.
“If I want to call my vagina “pookie” or “peanut” or “Chrissy,” that’s my business (as long as I do it in private).”
I submit that Christine Flowers would be better off calling her vagina “Cobweb Crevice”, because the way she writes, I don’t think hers is getting much love.
For that matter, she could also call her skull “U-Stor-It”, because it’s pretty obvious there’s no brain up there.
March 16th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Another glorious takedown of Christine Flowers.
Has she started stalking you yet? If not, then by the end of the day then, no later.
March 16th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
If she does, I’m gonna have to get my Medusa mirror out, because that woman’s face turns people to stone.
March 18th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
the vagina as birth canal is the single most important aspect of female sexuality? uh, is that a fact? gawd, what a twat that woman is.
March 19th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Flowers has also said that single women who choose to have babies are ’selfish’.
However, raped single women who get pregnant through violence MUST have those babies.
Wierd.
She once popped up on the comments section of Attytood to tell us that if we don’t practice immigration law like she does, we’ve no right to comment about it! Sieg Heil!
Yet the fifty something virgin can tell us moms how to run our families. T’anks!
She also called Cindy Sheehan a sunshine patriot. Even though Cindy put her birth canal to good use by having a son who became GWB’s cannon fodder. There is no metric for the level of contempt I have for that woman.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
[...] a glaring stupid error, reflecting laziness and a failure to do even basic research. And Chrissy (that’s what she calls her cold and cobwebbed vagina) has a doozy this time: If we’re pro-life, why should we open our tent to those who think [...]