Robert Rowan is proud of stealing 21 ceramic penises that were
part of a domestic violence art show at the Boulder Public
Library in Colorado. The faux severed penises were strung on a
clothesline under the title "Hanging 'Em Out to Dry."
The Boulder library is the same one that recently refused to
display a ten-foot American flag in its entrance because some
patrons might be offended. A smaller flag was draped in the wake
of controversy.
Rowan was disturbed that his five-year-old daughter might see
what he calls an "anti-male" and "pornographic" display while
using the public library. On Veterans Day weekend, he carefully
placed the genitalia into a garbage bag as library patrons
watched. In their place, he left a calling card — "El Dildo
Bandito was here" — and hung an American flag. Then Rowan called
Denver's KOA radio station to confess. The police arrived at his
home in the wee hours and ticketed him for "misdemeanor criminal
tampering" which may lead to a $1,000 fine and one year in jail.
The library is using words like "censorship" and "intolerance"
to describe Rowan's actions. But Rowan put his finger directly
on the political issue when he pointed out the difference
between private art galleries and public, tax-funded spaces.
"If they had put this up at a private art gallery that would
have been fine. That way people could pay and see this stuff,"
Rowan said. In a private gallery, the exhibit would be a freedom
of speech issue rather than the abuse and improper use of tax
dollars to promote a political view.
The strung penises exhibit was displayed at a public library for
the benefit of the Boulder County Safehouse, a domestic violence
center predominantly supported at the public trough. This
constitutes political expression being hosted at taxpayer's
expense. Rowan is a taxpayer who objected. Like Henry David
Thoreau, author of On Civil Disobedience, Rowan publicly and
peacefully expressed his disapproval of an improper government
practice. He is willing to face the consequences.
Library officials cannot dismiss the issue of the message of the
exhibit by claiming to be impartial about what they display:
They attempted to deny the American flag a presence at the
entrance. The library seems to want to use tax dollars to fund
only politically correct expression and the likes of Rowan
should shut up about it.
Susanne Walker, the artist who created the exhibit of
tax-supported penises, has stated that dissenters should discuss
the matter with her. Perhaps Ms. Walker was not on-site to speak
with critics. Whatever the case, Rowan felt he could not "debate
[penises] hanging in the public library."
Why is the exhibit so controversial? The main problem is that a
public institution is supporting one side of a hot political
debate and disenfranchising the other.
The art exhibit and the Boulder County Safehouse do not merely
educate the public about domestic violence, they are advancing
an anti-male agenda.
Consider merely one fact: According to the Justice Department's
1998 National Violence Against Women Survey, some 1.5 million
women and more than 800,000 men are abused by an intimate every
year. However, a flood of new research indicates that the rates
of domestic violence for men and women are roughly equal and
suggests that the incidence of battered "husbands" is almost
certainly under-reported due to the social stigma attached to
male victims of domestic violence.
Yet the library's domestic violence exhibit portrays men as the
perpetrators, never the victims. The display included a sign
reading "Abuse by husbands and partners was ... the leading
cause of injuries to women."
The Boulder County Safehouse states that its mission is to
provide support and advocacy for battered women and their
children. Another sign at the exhibit read, "in approximately 60
percent of the cases where the woman is being abused, so are the
children." Yet nowhere is it stated that women commit most of
the child abuse and child murders in America.
Given that the group lives off public funds and is therefore
prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex, how can its
mission embed discrimination into the organization's raison
d'etre?
It is not merely that victimized men are being ignored. Hatred
is directed toward all men as a result of the brutality of a
statistical few.
Anti-male slander so frequently passes for domestic violence
"awareness" that the YWCA of Middle Tennessee was recently able
to run an ad in two Nashville newspapers that depicted the
blurred photo of a boy near a front door. The caption read, "One
day he'll own his own house ... drive his own car ... beat his
own wife."
The "Hanging 'Em Out to Dry" exhibit provides the same sort of
"awareness" as does an a priori indictment of all boys as wife
beaters. It is hate speech directed at a category of human
beings. If you doubt this, imagine a display of black penises
strung up. It would be condemned as racist in an instant. Why is
it less hate speech to expand the category from "black men" to
"all men"?
Rowan intends to make a test case of this incident and he has
the eager support of a burgeoning men's movement. The last two
chat rooms at the prominent Web site
mensactivism.org have
revolved around El Dildo Bandito and how best to assist him. The
participants draw a hard line between public-supported hate
speech and privately funded opinion. Tax-funded hatred must be
eliminated; private expression must be tolerated under the First
Amendment.
As for Rowan, if the library is imprudent enough to restring the
penises — which are now in police custody — he will remove them
again. He will protect his daughter from publicly funded hate
speech directed at her father and all men.