So the crusty Gazette this morning published an opinion piece from Men’s Resource Center Director (you know the guys who retreat to the woods sit around the campfire, beat drums and cry about how Daddy never loved them) Rob Okun extolling the virtue (irony intended) of Amherst children performing ˜The Vagina Monologues,’ reprising their 2004 ignominy as the only High School in the nation to allow adolescents to revel in ‘R’ rated material.Well at least this time Mr. Okun didn’t criticize me by name as he did in 2004 in an NPR commentary: Mr. Kelley's discomfort with the "C-word"--"I can't say it out loud," he told a school committee meeting last month--symbolizes men's discomfort with admitting how little we know about the dangerous world our mothers and daughters, wives and partners, sisters and nieces live in: a world where sexual harassment and sexual assault are commonplace.
Of course back then Mr. Okun, who appeared at that 2004 School Committee meeting to support the production, never managed to spit out the C-word. And thus far, I have not seen or heard Superintendent Hochman or Principal Jackson use it either.
And Mr. Okun never then or now explains how a monologue where an adult gives a minor alcohol and then has sex with them leads to a decrease in domestic abuse. In this state that IS considered domestic abuse.
Okun also fails to mention and the Gazette editor failed to catch the conflict, because his baby—‘The Men’s Resource Center’--is one of the do-gooder organizations slated to receive a significant monetary donation from the proceeds of this travesty.
