This Valentine's Day, a performance of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Chronicles" will be held at the Old Town Temecula Community Theater for the benefit of Safe Alternatives for Everyone. Although I support SAFE, I strongly urge you not to go.

Its very timing is in bad taste, sabotaging the one day that celebrates romantic harmony between the sexes; this sexist travesty offends even feminists such as Betty Dodson, who describes the play as "a blast of hatred at men and heterosexuality." The male/female encounters in the play are all viewed in terms of abuse and destructiveness to women, while the female-to-female and lesbian relationships are viewed as supportive and nurturing.

Sexist double standards used to be considered bad form, but somehow it's OK here. It's very raunchy, with women talking graphically about, well, their vaginas. Can you imagine a play where men crowed about the size, shape, smell and taste of their male organ? We'd lie about it, anyway.

It's very trendy. The printed version of the play is in its 15th printing, and indeed while there are some valuable topics -- such as the rape camps in Bosnia and the horrors of female circumcision -- the play turns pornographic, bordering on criminal. "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could" celebrates the lesbian rape of a 13-year-old girl by a 24-year-old neighbor who plies her with vodka to seduce her. In prior performances, I understand, the closing line was "if it was a rape, it was a good rape."

I also understand that the rape story now has been amended to depict the girl as 16. And I'm sure the love-me-I'm-a-liberals might cluck in approval of artistic license, but my God, if a man stood onstage glowing about a homosexual rape, he'd be put in jail.

Ironically, the play is the cornerstone to "V-Day" celebrations worldwide that are supposed to be bringing awareness to rape. Recognizing that irony got conservative contributor Robert Swope canned from the staff of the Hoya at Georgetown University. I guess free speech only goes one way.

"V-Day" sounds good, wanting to end violence against women and girls, but men are demonized, and when discussing wartime rape and torture of women in places such as the Congo, no one seems to care that men get hacked to death with machetes. This is about the horrors of war, not the inherent evil of men.

And on the board of the "V Day" organizers -- which stands for Valentine, Vagina and Victory -- is Jane Fonda. By definition, this woman is every bit the traitor as John Walker Lindh. She's certainly no role model for young women.

This is about radical feminists, not those who have stood for equal economic opportunity, equal treatment under the law, etc, but those who view men as the enemy.

While their goal to end violence is commendable, violence is part of the human condition, not inherently male; "The Vagina Monologues" and the concomitant celebration of "V-Day" exacerbates the disharmony between the sexes it purports to be out to end.

SAFE has always been unique in the field of domestic violence -- an organization that recognizes that violence is a family problem, not a male problem. This connection is very disappointing and hypocritical.

Again, Valentine's Day is about promoting harmony between the sexes. Do something romantic -- avoid this male-bashing, disgusting obscenity and the blatant sexism it purports to oppose.

Greg Scharf of Temecula is a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: gscharf7@aol.com.