Celebrate Valentine's Day, not V-Day

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you Mustangs out there! Yes, I know many of you, especially guys (and especially engineers), think Valentine’s Day is a semi-holiday that was made up by flower dealers, chocolate peddlers and card pushers. I slightly agree with this interpretation, but it doesn’t demean the holiday for me. Celebrating American mass consumerism along with “love” and all that other stuff is something that most of us should be used to doing. Indeed, most of our holidays have morphed into a combination of frenzied purchases and awkward gatherings.

However, I think deep down inside, most of us have at least some sympathy for this holiday and the others like it. In fact, I have very fond memories of Valentine’s Day in grade school, when the day was spent decorating a shoebox with colored hearts and exchanging cards with everyone in the class. I went for the supercool, popular “Star Wars” Valentine’s Day card. If you were curious, some popular lines that you may try out, free of charge, include: “Our love will Endor,” “Yoda one for me,” and “You R2 good to me.”

Unfortunately, in recent history there have been attempts to undermine this wonderfully commercialized holiday by turning it into something called V-Day and putting it on Feb. 14. Now, I know some of you history buffs out there are wondering; but doesn’t V-Day or VE-Day already fall on May 8 when the allied forces declared victory in Europe, or also on Aug. 15, VJ-Day, the day the allied forces declared victory in Japan? No – to my knowledge, we haven’t added any major global victories against the forces of evil to be commemorated on this day.

Instead, this “V” doesn’t stand for victory or even valentines; this movement replaces the “V” for vagina or violence (specifically, male violence against women) and culminates with the yearly nationwide readings of “The Vagina Monologues.”

Many women in Hollywood – such as Rachel McAdams (“Wedding Crashers”), Calista Flockhart (“Ally Mcbeal”), and Jane Fonda (extreme leftist) – along with others, such as Cal Poly, have embraced this new day over the more traditional one.

The stated purpose of this V-Day celebration and the reading of “The Vagina Monologues” is to raise “awareness” about violence against women.

While it’s certainly important to be “aware” of things, “The Vagina Monologues” takes an inappropriate, unnecessary, and rather uninformative path to do so. The play itself revolves around talking vaginas and their rather vulgar stories. Instead of taking practical steps to stop violence, such as promoting self-defense, advocating tougher laws, or teaching men to not objectify women, it does the opposite. The play itself objectifies women by centering solely on the vagina and describing in great detail many vulgar acts that happen to it.

Likewise, the play in its original form condones underage rape (the rape of a 13-year-old; in later versions, a 16-year-old) by an older woman. As the text says; “if it was rape.it was good rape.” I guess this lesbian rape, rather then male rape, makes it somehow OK (not really). Also, as a man, I take slight offense to the play, because the majority of the play has an anti-male bias. Nearly all of the male characters in the play seem to be incestuous rapists and sexual assaulters.

All in all, raising awareness and doing something to oppose violence against women seems like a noble cause. While “The Vagina Monologues” is at the heart of this V-Day movement, even without it the movement has problems. Violence affects everyone, not just those with vaginas. Likewise, V-Day is really just a fundraiser for groups like Equality Now, Feminist.com, gay and lesbian centers, and Planned Parenthood, which collect most of the V-Day donations. While these groups oppose violence against women, as most groups tend to (I really can’t think of a group that is pro-violence against women), they also advocate specific political agendas that, ironically, many women oppose.

As a man, having a corresponding P-Day would seem like a fair way to counter this movement. However, instead of trying to send a message to everyone with all these “days,” I say we just could go back to celebrating American holidays the way they were meant to be: by franticly buying things and reveling in our commercialized society.

Brian Eller is a materials engineering junior and Mustang Daily political columnist.