Marquette University is a Catholic, Jesuit university, at least according to its website and marketing materials. But like so many colleges and universities that were founded in the Catholic tradition, that moniker seems almost meaningless at this point, as traditional Catholic doctrine and teaching seem completely absent from campuses.
The latest example from Marquette University centers around the marketing for a performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” which is an episodic play made up of a varying number of monologues read by a varying number of women, dealing with feminist themes like sex, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body.
Sounds lovely, right?
So the fact that this play is being staged at Marquette may seem at odds with the university’s Catholic origins, but this year, things have taken a strange twist. In the marketing for the performance, the producers are making it clear that the anatomical feature from which the play derives its name isn’t actually a defining characteristic of a woman, after all.
Poster for The Vagina Monologues reads: "The presence of an anatomical feature, such as a vagina, does not a woman make." pic.twitter.com/gBEkKoGy3f
— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) February 24, 2017
On the post, there’s an asterisk next to the word “vagina”, and at the bottom of the poster is the disclaimer, “The presence of an anatomical feature, such as a vagina, does not a woman make. We recognize and support the trans, non binary, and intersex individuals in our community.”
In other words, a play that was written to glorify the female anatomy as a means of elevating feminist ideals has now fallen victim to the self-consuming nature of gender identity politics. Apparently, you no longer must possess a vagina to participate in a production of the “The Vagina Monologues.” Who knew?