Dialogue: Congress sure beats monologue

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

The Vagina Monologues - a public exercise in, ahem, navel-gazing - is another illustration of how women go on and on about themselves to themselves, forever analysing, eternally articulating the nature of womanhood and, by extension, the nature of blokehood, usually arriving at a comparison odious to the said blokes.

Every strong political movement has a trajectory that takes it beyond ground fire for a few years while it's at its most powerful and incontestable.

Thus feminism was an unassailable target for us blokes for about four decades; but I think it's back in the arena of public debate now.

Women have made their gains, have even cornered the market in big leadership jobs, so the issue of womanhood should be just another argument.

I'm pretty sure that's right and I certainly hope so because, if I've miscalculated, then woe betide me.

But, what the hell, I'm working on a new play, The Penis Congress. The purpose is to reiterate "Vive la difference" from our side of the bed, to celebrate our physiology, to regain our self-confidence after an era of undermined masculinity. We men have our own kind of deep understanding of ourselves. We just don't talk about it all the time and when we do we like to organise it collegially.

So, in order to talk about our penes (the correct Latin plural), we do not commiserate over coffee, reinforcing each other's deepest gender prejudices, or lounge about emoting, either face-to-face or on the telephone. We hold a congress to discuss the issues in an orderly and formal manner with correct meeting procedure.

The Penis Congress is a bit didactic as a play but I think it will restore the dignity of the organ, assailed as it has been by continued attacks by feminists.

Act one shows a lot of suits arriving at a convention centre, each with a prepared paper about his penis and how he relates to it.

They gather in the auditorium - having passed the Mark Twain sex test to ensure no sheilas are present - and they set up a hierarchy, basically according to income levels, the amount of tax they have avoided during the past two financial years, and the size of the four-wheel-drive they arrived in.

In Act two, after some serious discussion on the understanding between a man's inner self and outer self, the congress forms a couple of working parties and a sub-committee or two to develop programmes on existing problems and define a strategy for penile behaviour.

Should it be privatised, or corporatised? Why have couturiers ignored the use of Velcro in the design of trouser flies when the critical danger of hasty zipping is so well-known?

They tell their stories of accidents in the zipper zone, of the lack of self-confidence during the long years in which masculinity has been under siege, of how they've even gone limp-wristed to the footy to avoid the macho look.

Some blokes snap their pens in the throes of their recalled trauma. One is so close to breaking point he forgets to press "save as" on the comfort laptop he takes with him wherever he goes and without which he can't get to sleep at night.

One tall, corpulent man, Arnold Tuff, confessed he had decided to wear frocks after female Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright was appointed, completing a national matriarchy.

"You mean old Carthorse?" shouted a junior executive. A hush descended as startled attendees looked quickly around, mouths tight, eyes dilated. Was it possible the convention hall was bugged?

Bravely Arnold pressed on: "I thought if it took a dress to get to the top, well, it worked for Georgina Beyer. I'd burn my tie and buy a bra. But I couldn't find the gear to fit, especially a summer frock," he said tearfully.

Act three shows that after two days, the blokes are re-empowered by the thrill of shared experience about a subject so taboo in the workplace that they were frightened to confront their own bodies, frightened in some cases even to go to the bathroom for fear of what they might find there.

This leads up to a musical finale. A group of the men unzip, and fling their ties into a heap and burn them, singing around the bonfire:

Hark, hark Helen Clark,

You think your bite's worse than your bark,

You think that you can stare us down,

With one arched brow and heavy frown.

Well, now we know there's nothing heinous

About us blokes who wear a penis,

We're fronting up and fighting back,

We think you envy what you lack.

We want some jobs back for the boys -

Not, of course, for hoi pollois -

For suits, like us, for we who dare,

To face up to your baleful stare.

And if your hostile frowning lingers,

We're prepared to give the fingers.

My only problem at the moment is casting. The men I've auditioned so far love the music that goes under the song, but when they read the words they pale a bit, go soprano and remember they're too busy this year.