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The Vagina Warriors Are Gonna Getcha

I just don’t understand the right-wing obsession with The Vagina Monologues. So they talk about vaginas. They raise money to combat violence against women and girls. They don’t say, “The best way to live is to wait until your married, then close your eyes and think of England.” Conservatives would be better off attacking Avenue Q.

And yet they just can’t stop. Karin Agness, president of the Network of Enlightened Women at UVA (who I suspect is pissed off because her vagina never taught her how to write effectively) is example A:

While most people were celebrating or searching for love on Valentine’s Day, groups of women throughout the country decided to forego this lovely holiday to talk about their vaginas.

Because you either get vaginas or love, not both. And they never, ever have anything to do with eachother.

Women have the choice to do this. I am thankful for that choice. But this choice to participate in The Vagina Monologues is the latest manifestation of feminism gone wrong in America.


Yes, that God-given American choice to talk about vaginas is something that the Founders and Enlightened Women alike cherish, so long as its a choice that’s never exercised.

These “Vagina Warriors” have become those monsters, men, who they feared and hated for so long for exploiting women.

Referring to my vagina makes it clear to those I am speaking to that I am, in fact, a man.

Now feminists have reversed the scenario, and women are exploiting themselves. Throughout the play, women claim their body parts define them. In one monologue, a woman describes her experience at a Vagina Workshop. Her instructor told her to draw a picture of her own vagina and look at it with a hand mirror. This woman said, “She [the instructor] then told me my clitoris was not something I could lose. It was me, the essence of me….I didn’t have to find it. I had to be it.” She embraces and accepts this definition of herself.

The woman in this monologue has clearly reduced herself to a body part. This is way worse than the supposed objectifying that feminists claimed men did in the 1970s. Can you imagine if a man then or today would say to a woman, “Your clitoris is you?” No, only a leftist woman can get away with saying this.

Well, perhaps we’ll make an exception if he can prove that he knows where the clitoris even is. And, sorry, but recognizing the existence of your clitoris — or one woman talking about “becoming” her clitoris as she learned how to masturbate for the first time — doesn’t quite fit under the defintion of exploitation. But I’d be perfectly happy to buy this Enlightened Woman a dictionary, since it appears she needs one. She can start by looking up “enlightened.”

Unfortunately, these Vagina Warriors have chosen to focus on their body parts rather than their brains, talents or achievements. As such, they have effectively reduced themselves to the very thing they did not want to be defined by: their intimate anatomy.

I’m sorry, but doesn’t it take brains and talent to write, direct, act in, and produce a play that is put on in 76 different countries?

Feminists also loudly complained in the 1970s that men used their structural power to abuse women. In a monologue titled, “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could,” a 24-year-old woman invites a 16-year-old girl into her car. The 16-year-old says, “She asks me if I like to kiss boys, and I tell her I do not like that. Then she says she wants to show me something, and she leans over and kisses me so softly on the lips with her lips and then puts her tongue in my mouth. Wow.”

It gets worse.

Isn’t that just awful? Kissing… disgusting!

In turn, feminists have become the dominating, oppressive force, which they condemned in the 1970s when it was supposedly men acting this way, committing crimes and creating victims. These feminists are the monsters they once despised, abusing women and then celebrating it.

Still not seeing how feminists are abusing women and then celebrating it. And what exactly do we dominate and oppress? Men? No. The government? No. The courts? No. The professional class? No. Perhaps she’s angry at the female domination of low-wage menial employment, because we’ve definitely got a hold over that one.

The feminist movement has always been quick to point out the objectification and abuse they felt men were committing against women. I think it’s time that the feminists realize that they have become their own greatest enemy.

By saying “vagina,” you are harming your own cause. Or something. She lost me.

And like Amanda points out, we should keep in mind exactly what it is that these people are railing against. Plus, what Sheezlebub says.


97 thoughts on The Vagina Warriors Are Gonna Getcha

  1. doesn’t it take brains and talent to write, direct, act in, and produce a play that is put on in 76 different countries?

    Jill

    I’ve read the play. And I say.

    No.

    It reads like it was written by a 10th grader who finds people will pay attention to her if she swears.

    Deep Throat was an international hit, but I wouldn’t call it art either.

  2. It has NOTHING to do with vagina – the word or the thing.

    The VM is, as Darleen points out, simply boorishness dressed up as fine art.

  3. To each their own.

    I don’t like the Vagina Monologues — in my opinion it’s awfully pedestrian — but I support the cause and thus buy stuff from the campus group that puts it on every year. Plus, I like the novelty of buying chocolate vaginas.

  4. Those are chocolate vulvas.

    I knew there was something fishy about that outfit. Damn feminist profiteers, can’t even label the parts properly.

  5. Actually, the Vagina Monologues is a wonderful and liberating piece of art.

    Thank you, Trolls, for underlining that point. The lint in life (troll comments) makes the clean laundry (Jill’s post) seem all the cleaner.

    Thank you, Jill

  6. But critics aren’t lambasting the literary or artistic qualities of the play. They’re upset that it even exists. So the question of whether it’s “good” or not is a moot one, in light of Karin Agness’ complaints.

  7. isn’t that vulvae?
    so are all us feminists ‘Vagina Warriors’?? Or just the women featured in the play? (which I haven’t actually read/seen – embarrassed cough) I think I’d like that on a bumper sticker. Sounds quite Amazonian.

  8. What Agness fails to understand is that an expression of female experience, regardless of whether that expression is articulate or not, cannot be construed as some sort of de-evolution of feminism if depicted in the context of support for human rights issues.

    The VM can be life-altering or pedestrian, depending on the performance and the audience. But an art show has very little to do with a power structure in which people are still dying and being incarcerated due to domestic violence. Which seems to be the point of deconstructing Agness’ tirade, not to debate the relative merits of talking about vaginas.

    Shit, sometimes boorishness is necessary. Just ask the Danish.

  9. But an art show has very little to do with a power structure in which people are still dying and being incarcerated due to domestic violence.

    They are performing VM in Iran?

  10. isn’t that vulvae?
    so are all us feminists ‘Vagina Warriors’?? Or just the women featured in the play? (which I haven’t actually read/seen – embarrassed cough) I think I’d like that on a bumper sticker. Sounds quite Amazonian

    SSS: go to VDay.org and check out their Vagina Warrior shirts, hats, etc.

    I wore the beanie on the bus last winter a lot (because not everday did I feel like having a conversation about it) and one guy’s eyes got huge. I then heard him exclaim to his friend, who was a woman, “She was wearing a hat that said VAGINA WARRIOR!” She said, after very obviously looking at me, “But what does that mean?” He was like, “I don’t know, but it’s crazy.”

    I wanted to say, “Since I can hear your entire conversation about me, why don’t you just ask?”

    But alas, I did not.

    Jill: did you see the responses to Anne Lamott’s op-ed you posted the other day? Crazy anti-choicers they were, thought Anne Lamott didn’t add anything of worth to the abortion debate.

  11. thanks, peanut. what a cool store. I think I’d choose a ‘Vagina Warrior’ t-shirt over one of those tired, worn-by-thirteen-year-olds ‘Porn Star’ shirts any day of the week…

    He was like, “I don’t know, but it’s crazy.”

    oh, the ignorance. “I don’t know, so it must be something weird, having the word ‘vagina’ in it.”

  12. I’m sort of amused by the argument that the Vagina Monologues is a bad play. As I’m sure we all know, there is no other bad art on the average college campus. Pretentious one-acts are totally unknown. Derivative paintings are verbotten. You can be expelled for publishing bad poetry or banal personal essays. Every frat party features a band that will break new ground and change the future of popular music.

    If people think it’s a bad play, they’re free not to go. I suspect that most people on college campuses have a fair amount of experience dodging crappy student art. There’s really no need to stage a protest.

  13. It’s okay though I often refer to my son as Peanut as I’m the Head Nut, lol.

    Glad you liked it! I’m always happy to encourage others to don Vagina Warrior stuff, especially since it’s for a good cause.

  14. Isn’t that just awful? Kissing… disgusting!

    Jill, you deliberately omitted the sentences that follow:

    The 24-year-old asks [the 16-year-old] to spend the night, feeds her vodka, slides into lingerie and then teaches the young girl how to play with herself.

    If this is not abuse, I don’t know what is.

    Intoxicating a minor to commit statutory rape is not something to be celebrated.

  15. isn’t that vulvae?
    so are all us feminists ‘Vagina Warriors’

    No, some of us are Grammar Warriors 🙂

  16. My instructor told me to draw a picture of my own dick and look at it with a hand mirror. He then told me my dick was not something I could lose. It was me, the essence of me….I didn’t have to find it. I had to be it. I embraced and accepted this definition of myself.

    It’s not my fault.

  17. The VM can be life-altering or pedestrian, depending on the performance and the audience.

    alexandria makes a good point here, in the (somewhat moot) debate about whether VM is good or bad. different levels of consciousness about these issues are going to result in different reactions to the material, that’s understandable. but i’d hope that even people who feel it’s pedestrian can appreciate, as lauren does by her generous purchasing of little edible vulvae, that VM can still certainly serve a feminist purpose.

  18. the whole subtext to VM surrounds the history of a kind of vagina-denial. for those whom have never read it or seen the play… for eg: myths about touching ‘it’ – strange nicknames intended to replace that ‘dirty word’ (vagina) – myths about what might happen if a gal has sex too ‘young’ (not married) or if she actually enjoys sex – stories about embarrassments with partners (needless) and some about abuse (psychological and otherwise).

    it isn’t about objectification at all – it’s about deconstructing, sharing, and reclaiming ‘womanhood’. which is, very well represented by the vagina, seeing as this particular body part is examined so very early in our lives in order to determine who is a ‘girl’ and who is a ‘boy’. not to mention the countless other sociological implications having either a vagina or a penis ‘brings with’.

    it’s obvious this writer hasn’t seen the play, i’m not convinced she’s read it either.

  19. Oh – and B Moe,

    A theatre troupe (of fellas) here in Canuckistan mounted and toured a play called “CockTales”. Kind of the equivelant actually of VM. More humour written in than with VM, but the content was very honest and definately written in a context that reflected their age-group (25 – 35yrs old). It was well recieved.

  20. ricia

    seeing as this particular body part is examined so very early in our lives in order to determine who is a ‘girl’ and who is a ‘boy’. not to mention the countless other sociological implications having either a vagina or a penis ‘brings with’.

    Is there some reason for the “scare” quotes around girl and boy?

  21. here we go again. for years, men have called the vagina whatever name they wanted, and talked about it for all and sundry in all the public squares and made themselves rich in the process. finally when women stand up and talk about their own vaginas, then we stand attacked? how hypocritical. of sourse agness is a blind follower and reactionary to the right oppresive anglo partriachy system. who are afraid of every step toward liberation that women make. they are only mad because when women can candidly stand up and talk about their anatomy with no shame, then they cease to control those areas in our lives like making choices about sex and our sexuality and not being ashamed of it. hail the vagina!

  22. I find it interesting that Darleen considers “vagina” to be a swearword. Are vaginas filthy? And if so, what does that say about the people attached to them?

    That said, DocMara, how liberating does a work have to be (not necessarily VM, which I’m sadly unfamiliar with, but in general) before its creator can get a pass on artistic merit? It’s the flipside of what Hestia said: While VM may be great art, that’s not why there are hundreds of performances every Feb. 14.

  23. Now feminists have reversed the scenario, and women are exploiting themselves

    This quote says it all. The major tenets of the patriarchal faith are:

    1) Women are inferior to men.
    2) Women were put here to bear men’s progeny.
    Therefore,
    3) Vaginas are the sole property of men.

    The Vagina Monologues are a threat because they are about how vaginas in fact, by right of biology, belong to women. Conservos think reclaiming your vagina as your own is the equivalent of breaking into a man’s house and taking his HDTV.

  24. 28 Hershele

    *I* don’t consider vagina a swear word and I never used cutsey euphemisms with my daughters for genitalia of either sex.

    But IMO the author of VM certainly does.

    Kinda of on par with my three year old grandsons find the word “poo” so hilarious.

    True, I’ve never had to ‘reclaim’ my vagina because I’ve never considered it someone elses. But then, I’m a whole person and pretty damned comfortable in my own skin.

  25. I haven’t seen VM either… and I really don’t feel the need to see it. However… I have to say the text about the 24 year old more or less molesting and giving alcohol to a 16 year old rather disturbs me. If it was a 24 year old *man* with a 16 year old woman, I would guess responses would be a little different – as in outrage rather than acceptance.

    Just my two cents.

  26. Anne

    Interesting bit about the rape scene… originally written in 1998 it was a 13 y/o girl and she says “well if it was rape, it was a good rape and I’ll never need a man.” in 2001 the character’s age was upgraded to 16 and the reference to “good rape” taken out, but the “I’ll never need a man” stayed in.

  27. I agree with Anne, above – and I also haven’t seen the play – my experience is that 16-year-olds don’t need adult “instruction”, male or female, on sexual self exploration, and they don’t need alcohol, period.

    But aside from that, Jill, I don’t see how you’ve missed the reason for right-wingers’ obsession with VM: it’s so that they can say the word “vagina” over and over again, and feel all self-righteous about it.

  28. IIRC, Eve Ensler wrote the VM based on interviews with hundreds of women, and the Coochi Snorcher piece was the experience of a real person, right down to that stupid nickname. Ensler said in interviews that she was conflicted about the piece – should she include something so potentially controversial, or should she not? She eventually included it because she felt she would be leaving it out primarily because she felt the young woman should be traumatized. Ensler felt it was not her place as a playwright to tell this woman how she should or shouldn’t feel about her experience, especially since that would be going against the point of the play itself. It was a tough call, and of course anti-feminists are grabbing it and running as fast as they can to use it as “proof” that feminists are okay with rape as long as it’s lesbians that are doing it. Much more satisfying than asking the playwright what her intentions were, I guess.

  29. flea

    Certainly VM is distilled out of over 200 interviews, if we take Ensler at her word. But she crafted those interviews to make dramatic points. And she presents that child-rape scene as a positive experience.

    This has not a thing to do with being ‘anti-feminist’. And I certainly would never belittle all the true humanitarian work Ensler has done in raising money to help women.

    But that doesn’t make her play sacrosanct and free from criticism.

    If that scene had a 24 y/o man ‘rescuing’ a 13 y/o girl from lesbian sexual exploitation by plying her with vodka and ‘laying her out on the bed’ and having her find heaven in her vagina and having her claim “it was a good rape”, I dare say you would NOT find it acceptable regardless of the author’s claimed intentions or not.

    Women are NOT just vaginas conveniently provided with arms and legs. How reductive.

  30. The Vagina Monologues are a threat because they are about how vaginas in fact, by right of biology, belong to women. Conservos think reclaiming your vagina as your own is the equivalent of breaking into a man’s house and taking his HDTV.

    Hahaha… Amanda, this is why you’re the best. You nail it! This is a perfect description, and I just spit out my Cheerios from laughing.

  31. Hershele,

    Easy answer. Great art IS liberating. The Vagina Monologues, if performed well (!) qualifies as great art, therefore is liberating.

    As to you being *suspicious* of it because the play is performed on Valentine’s Day, that is another matter. For instance, why did I sing Mozart’s Grand Mass in C Minor in church settings? Did that suck all artistic merit out of what I consider to be Mozart’s greatest work (the soprano solo in the Kyrie of that work is featured in the climactic moment of Amadeus, appropriately IMHO)? Did the church setting make the the notes inexorably rearrange themselves in more regular and hymn-like measures? Does watching Dickens’ A Christmas Carol turn it into oppression of all non-consumers during that season? Should we all write screeds about the propagandistic nature of The Nutcracker because it happens to coincide with ritualistic celebrations of the Christmas season?

    No, what people do with great art doesn’t sully the work. What DOES sully great art like the Vagina Monogues are misinformed ideologues who willfully misrepresent not only the work itself, but the very real context from whence it emerges (in this case, a context of rape, shame, and oppression by a larger partriarchal and patrifocal dominated culture). That the misinformers are college students doesn’t surprise me. They are young, and almost inevitably discover the wider truth about their bodies and the culture that hates that body. Pieces of art like the Vagina Monologues can evoke those discoveries, but it is hardly the only place where these revelations take place. The truths will out.

  32. True, I’ve never had to ‘reclaim’ my vagina because I’ve never considered it someone elses. But then, I’m a whole person and pretty damned comfortable in my own skin.

    Good for you!

    *I* don’t consider vagina a swear word and I never used cutsey euphemisms with my daughters for genitalia of either sex.

    But IMO the author of VM certainly does.

    She’s responding to and attempting to exorcise a societal tendency to see vaginas as gross and dirty, as evidenced by interview after interview during which women said that, yes, that was exactly how they’d been taught to feel about theirs. How do you get from, Eve Ensler wants to destigmatize the word “vagina,” to, Eve Ensler is excited by how naughty she thinks she’s being by using that word.

  33. Women are NOT just vaginas conveniently provided with arms and legs. How reductive.

    Yeah, no shit. That’s why Ensler collected all these interviews wherein women describe their internal lives and thereby attach human reactions to the experience of being treated like vaginas conveniently provided with arms and legs.

  34. If a playwright decided to make a documentary play about women’s experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, and collected a bunch of interviews from women who’ve been pregnant, would that playwright have reduced those women to incubators?

  35. This whole thread has gotten me thinking about what we, as mothers of daughters, call our daughters’ vaginas. I mean when you’re in the bath and you tell her to wash all over, do you include her “privates”, her “pussy”, her “cat”, her “chocha” or just her vagina? I’m curious to know what you all think–feel free to comment either at my blog or at Our Word.

    I’m a big euphemism-user myself, but I’ve been known to go either way.

  36. Piny

    And EE never gets beyond being a vagina.

    Oh. I’m sorry. She’s now obsessed with her stomach.

    I can see why this play may be popular on college campuses. A lot of young women get to college without having the experience of sitting in an audience chanting “cunt” over and over again. And I’m sure there’s a certain titillation factor for young college men to hear performers talk about ‘being’ their clitoris.

    Mary Wollstonecraft would be so proud

  37. Oh. I’m sorry. She’s now obsessed with her stomach.

    Don’t forget the one where she reduces women to Bosnian refugees.

    And EE never gets beyond being a vagina.

    In this very thread, you referred to an interview with a woman who describes a lifelong experience as a sexual person. The play is focused on female sexuality and maturity as defined–both by society and by the women themselves–by their genitalia. That doesn’t mean the women involved are reduced to those body parts. Eve’s next play, to which you so derisively refer, is all about how women are reduced to their bodies and taught to obsess about their bodies, and what that does to them as people. It doesn’t support the reduction of women to their appearance, any more than If These Walls Could Talk reduces women to their pregnancies. And, gee, the fact that Ensler’s attempting to explore other sexist delineations of women-as-objects would seem to argue against the idea that she’s merely vagina-obsessed.

    If I saw a documentary play about transsexuality that pretended to convey all of transsexual experience but was only concerned with the where/what/when/how of The Change, I’d be very offended. If, however, I saw a play that focused on that particular aspect of being a transsexual, one which consisted of interviews with transsexuals about their understanding of that particular aspect of being a transsexual, which happened to be written by a transsexual playwright, I’d be overjoyed.

    I can see why this play may be popular on college campuses. A lot of young women get to college without having the experience of sitting in an audience chanting “cunt” over and over again. And I’m sure there’s a certain titillation factor for young college men to hear performers talk about ‘being’ their clitoris.

    Not to mention the monologue that consists of graphic descriptions of inserting tampons, visiting a gynecologist, and childbirth. Oh, and the one about gang rape, torture, and mutilation. Hot!

    Mary Wollstonecraft would be so proud

    As if you’re on the side of that particular angel.

  38. of course anti-feminists are grabbing it and running as fast as they can to use it as “proof” that feminists are okay with rape as long as it’s lesbians that are doing it. Much more satisfying than asking the playwright what her intentions were, I guess.

    Flea – I’m not an anti-feminist, I just have a problem with an adult having sex with a child AND plying said child with alcohol. I’m not using the text about this scene as proof of anything. I simply find the act repugnant.

  39. Piny

    What is your problem? I’ve read both Ensler and Wollstonecraft and let me say, Eve is no Mary.

    I’m a 51 year old woman, a wife, a mother, a grandmother. I’ve graduated college, I work, and pursue a variety of interests. My husband is my lover and, most importantly, my friend. I’ve raised fearless, intelligent daughters (4). I’m involved in the lives of my 3 y/o twin grandsons. I have breasts and eyes and legs and a vagina and a uterus and two lungs and three kidneys …

    And *I* am not any ONE of those things, but I’m all of them and more. *I* is a synergism, and reducing *I* to one discrete part and getting stuck there is as defeating as what Wollstonecraft decried as the culture that keeps women as perpetual children by disallowing their growth through Liberty.

  40. What is your problem? I’ve read both Ensler and Wollstonecraft and let me say, Eve is no Mary.

    She’s also no three-year-old. My problem is with you attributing the reduction, the shame, the immaturity, and the sexism she’s trying to comment on to the woman herself.

    And *I* am not any ONE of those things, but I’m all of them and more. *I* is a synergism, and reducing *I* to one discrete part and getting stuck there is as defeating as what Wollstonecraft decried as the culture that keeps women as perpetual children by disallowing their growth through Liberty.

    Great! Again, good for you! And if someone had written a play about you, the person, that reduced you to any one of those things, your privates in particular, that would be sexist and wrong. But that’s not what’s happening here.

    You haven’t provided anything to support the idea that Ensler has gotten stuck there, and you haven’t explained why focusing on one thing for the purpose of one work of art is the same as insisting that that one thing is all that matters. By your logic, Fires in the Mirror is deeply racist and utterly without value in any dialogue on race. The Scarlet Letter Plays–not to mention Venus–are racist and misogynistic.

  41. That article makes me want to let my feminism shine out in public a lot more.

    I feel like we need to have a women’s rally of sorts to get myself back in the feminist attitude.

  42. Doc, that’s kinda the opposite of what I asked, or at least what I meant to ask.

    Look, I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 11 or so, and I thought it was great … because it had dirty words in it. I’d never seen that language in an official context, so to speak (the father of one of my classmates famously avoided the f-bomb in one of his own books, to Dorothy Parker’s pithy dismay). So it was amazing, it was freeing, it was liberating, yes, but I’d’ve felt that way about anything with dirty words in, not just Salinger. How many people feel Lolita and Portnoy’s Complaint are droll satire or brilliant social commentary and how many people see them, particularly the Nabokov, as respectable smut? When people say “no one had said the things Lenny Bruce said on stage before,” how many of them mean his remarks about race and religion and how many mean “fuck” and “cocksucker”?

    I’m not suspicious of it because it’s performed on Valday specifically (I don’t know that I’d use the word “suspicious” at all, but I can’t say it’s too far off denotatively and I don’t want to get sidetracked by semantics). I meant that, e.g., Measure for Measure is, arguendo, a great dramatic work. A theater company that puts it on is presenting it as art, even though it does make a case against sexual harassment that was probably fairly progressive in the 17th century. If it were a bad play, no one would put it on*. It seems to me that VM is performed as a political act — the date being a part of that, but not the whole thing — and I propose that few people producing it would be dissuaded if it were a bad play, as long as it wasn’t execrable.

    I realize this sounds like I think art should exist in a vacuum. I don’t. I just think it needs to be more than clever, and people who defend VM from political attacks by praising it’s artistry — or, for that matter, attack it’s political outlook by saying it’s bad art, or attack its artistic merit because they don’t like the politics — are making the wrong argument. As, to get back to my original point, are people who defend it as an artistic work by praising its politics.

    *Not that anyone does, but perhaps it’s indeed not one of Shakespeare’s greatest efforts.

  43. Y’know, Darleen, it’s called The Vagina Monologues, not The Woman Monologues. Of course it’s going to focus on vaginas. It would be reductive to call it The Vagina Monologues and talk about women in general, like the vagina is the only important part of a woman. If that’s were what it was about, you’d have a much stronger case that she’s just using the word to get attention.

  44. Look, I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 11 or so, and I thought it was great … because it had dirty words in it. I’d never seen that language in an official context, so to speak (the father of one of my classmates famously avoided the f-bomb in one of his own books, to Dorothy Parker’s pithy dismay). So it was amazing, it was freeing, it was liberating, yes, but I’d’ve felt that way about anything with dirty words in, not just Salinger. How many people feel Lolita and Portnoy’s Complaint are droll satire or brilliant social commentary and how many people see them, particularly the Nabokov, as respectable smut? When people say “no one had said the things Lenny Bruce said on stage before,” how many of them mean his remarks about race and religion and how many mean “fuck” and “cocksucker”?

    If we apply these examples to the VM, aren’t we talking about two different political acts accomplished through this piece of art? Namely, resisting the silence on this particular aspect of women’s experiences and dismantling the idea that the words associated with it are dirty? They’re two related aspects of the surrounding silence, but they and the strategies used to solve them are different. We can focus on Ensler’s choice to use the language she uses–and make an argument that it is an attempt to shock–without necessarily agreeing that her attempt to shock is designed to appeal to prurience.

  45. Actually, piny, I think all that can really be demonstrated is that I’m not all that well-read.

    It was an unfortunate choice of examples, but although I’m not a woman, I think a comparison can be drawn between an 11-year-old seeing a book with dirty words and a grown woman who’s used to dirty words seeing her subjective sexuality treated as real and valid. There’s a similar (I assume) sense of “gosh, I didn’t know you could do that!”

  46. Actually, piny, I think all that can really be demonstrated is that I’m not all that well-read.

    It was an unfortunate choice of examples, but although I’m not a woman, I think a comparison can be drawn between an 11-year-old seeing a book with dirty words and a grown woman who’s used to dirty words seeing her subjective sexuality treated as real and valid. There’s a similar (I assume) sense of “gosh, I didn’t know you could do that!”

    Heh. I see what you’re saying. No, not at all–there’s nothing shallow about wanting to evaluate transgressive art and the motives for putting it on display, be they political, artistic, or cheap on both levels. It is very shallow to insist that shock has value independent of the nature of the assumptions it’s meant to shatter.

  47. Shorter Darleen: I got other body parts, so why not let men own my vagina?

    The Vagina Monologues are a blast. I don’t find them particularly revolutionary, but that’s because, by the time I saw them, I was years away from the kind of Robert-Darleen advocated anti-female-sexuality worldview. But had I been 19 or so, they might have been a revelation. I had to come around to noticing that guys have zero problem being proud of their penises, whereas most people have problems remembering that a vagina is flesh, not just a fuckable hole. In fact, if anything, The Vagina Monologues are too conservative for my tastes, due to the fact that vaginas, which are in and of themselves not very sensitive, are elevated to top of the sexual parts pantheon. That said, there’s more to conceptualizing the vagina than just sex, which the play does. Frankly, I’d adore goofier monologues on some of the less remarked upon woman-and-her-vagina interactions. How about a monologue about the chaos that is trying to put in a tampon the first time? That shit could be hysterical.

  48. … the kind of Robert-Darleen advocated anti-female-sexuality

    Hey, I’m not anti-female-sexuality. As long as the married woman’s orgasms derive solely from contemplation of the joys of impending motherhood, it’s A-OK with me.

  49. Oh and as for the best euphemism ever for the vulva/vaginal area–“monkey”. That’s what my grandmother calls it, much to the rest of our delight. Seriously, the word “monkey”, used properly in my family, can dissolve everyone into laughter.

  50. And all this time I thought “monkey” was slang for penis, and I’ve been laughing and laughing at those Curious George ads.

  51. Well, I suppose it could be slang for “genital area”, but the greatest story ever was when my mom, as a kid, slid down onto the bar of her bicycle and my grandmother ran over and said, “Oh no! Did you hurt your monkey?”

  52. Shorter Amanda: I own my own vagina and I got the rent receipts to prove it.

    Shorter Darleen: Amanda, you ignorant slut.

    A woman who enjoys being sexual = happy hooker. Nice.

  53. Piny

    I don’t think Mandy enjoys it at all since she is so determined to call women who DO enjoy sex, but not on HER terms, as anti-female-sexuality. In this whole thread I’ve talked about how I viewed a play that I’ve actually read – poor writing and what I believe is a reductive message. And so that means men own my vagina. Yeah.

    Me thinks she doth brag the playhr part too much.

  54. I don’t think Mandy enjoys it at all since she is so determined to call women who DO enjoy sex, but not on HER terms, as anti-female-sexuality. In this whole thread I’ve talked about how I viewed a play that I’ve actually read – poor writing and what I believe is a reductive message. And so that means men own my vagina. Yeah.

    No, it means you’re anti-female-sexuality. It’s not “women,” who are anti-female-sexuality, just you. And Robert, who’s not a woman. You also cast aspersions on the women who find it an important and resonant piece of art: “I can see why this play may be popular on college campuses. A lot of young women get to college without having the experience of sitting in an audience chanting “cunt” over and over again.”

    Me thinks she doth brag the playhr part too much.

    Is that why you just slut-bashed her?

    I wouldn’t go throwing any stones, Darleen:

    True, I’ve never had to ‘reclaim’ my vagina because I’ve never considered it someone elses. But then, I’m a whole person and pretty damned comfortable in my own skin.

  55. Shorter Darleen:

    I’m super-awesome and read one proto-feminist from 300 years ago. Therefore the Vagina Monologues is teh suck. So is Iran.

  56. Piny

    I cast aspersions on the PLAY. When did VM become a holy icon?

    And how does my criticizing it mean I’m “anti-female-sexuality?” Oh, because I made an offhand comment about college students who might be attracted to the sensational??….OOoooOOOooo…naw, that never happens

    I’m in awe of the kind of mental gymnastics required to use a play that arguably reduces women to talking vaginas as a ‘touchstone’ of who is Authentic Woman while dismissing out of hand the womanhood of any female with the termerity to say ‘wait a minute, I don’t agree’

    Dis VM, have a fatwa declared on your vagina. Sez so right in the footnotes.

    Hey, whatever gets you through the night.

  57. Frankly, I’d adore goofier monologues on some of the less remarked upon woman-and-her-vagina interactions. How about a monologue about the chaos that is trying to put in a tampon the first time? That shit could be hysterical.

    Okay, which one is the vagina and which one is the urethra?

  58. robert, I’m perfectly willing to picture you as a pasty, asexual spheroid. like buddha, but whiter, with more hair, more sullen, and significantly fewer genitals.

    but only as long as you behave yourself.

    Darleen, you obviously DON’T have any kind of ownership of yourself. You keep trying to deny that any part of you is crass. As if your vagina has magic powers that make it different from any other sex organ on the planet.

    You’re the same as those selfish fuckers who argue they shouldn’t have to help their wives through birth, because seeing her cooch during birth would render it permenently unsexy. Somehow, being aware that it can be intensely physically pleasurable, can be a source of both fear, when you have no idea what you’re doing, and wonder when you do, that it can open bottles, make it so you can’t think about that flap of flesh attached to you, because that reduces you.

    guess what? you also have bowels, and they too are fucking disgusting. grow up and take the stick out.

  59. Certainly VM is distilled out of over 200 interviews, if we take Ensler at her word. But she crafted those interviews to make dramatic points. And she presents that child-rape scene as a positive experience.

    “If we take Ensler at her word?”

    I could write a thousand word rebuttal to this sentence fragment alone. Not take the word of the artist who created the piece? You’ve got to be joking. Listening to the writer when she tells you how she created her play is the single most valuable tool we have when studying her work. Of course we take Ensler at her word. If we didn’t, then we say crazy things like Ensler deliberately created this piece to indoctrinate thousands of college women to view themselves solely as vaginas on legs. This is beyond absurd, not merely because it so totally misses the point of the play (and a broad point it is) but it also assumes that Ensler had some kind of control over the runaway success the play became. There is not a single artist that I can think of who used her artwork as some sort of nefarious plan to cause groupthink in millions of people. Artists don’t do that, Scott McClellan and Dick Cheney do. Artists write to the best of their ability and keep their fingers crossed that it doesn’t lose money. The end. Anything else is gravy.

    And this:

    “But she crafted those interviews to make dramatic points,”

    well, no kidding. Good on her for doing exactly what a professional playwright is supposed to do. I fail to see how this proves anything except her competency as a writer.

    And this: “she presents that child-rape scene as a positive experience.”

    No. A thousand times, no. The character presents that child-rape scene as a positive experience. Humbert Humbert presented child-rape scenes as a positive experience, not Nabokov. Patrick Bateman presented the torture of women in American Psycho as a positive experience, not Bret Easton Ellis. Ensler crafted a controversial monologue, then stepped back and let the viewer do the thinking. The writer based the monologue on a woman who found statutory rape to be a positive experience. Ensler remained true to the character’s intention. The actors that portray this particular character also portray it that way, because that is their job. That is their work. Artists challenge themselves by their accurate ability to portray people who have viewpoints different from themselves. It doesn’t mean they support rape. Hilary Swank isn’t really a transgender, either.

    You don’t approve of child-rape? You don’t say!

    Nobody does, and to get your knickers in a twist over a scene in literature that portrays it and claim that because of it the artist supports child rape implies that either you are a drooling imbecilic or, perhaps, you have an agenda of your own.

    The Vagina Monologues is a series of monologues about the experiences of different women, some good, some bad, some you can identify with, some you can’t. The characters in the play do things with their vaginas you might not approve of, or react to situations in ways that perhaps you wouldn’t. The point in re-telling these monologues is to drive the point home that a woman’s body is hers to do with as she wishes – NOT what you or I would wish her to do.

    It isn’t a deep play, so I assume we all understand that. If scenes of child-rape bother you that much, why aren’t you picketing the library, harrassing some librarian’s blog? LIbrarians have blogs, too, you know. Rape is all over the library, and arguably more people go to the library than to the Vagina Monologues, but you’re not railing against Nabokov, you’re going after Ensler. One wonders why.

    Or perhaps you’re suggesting that Ensler is more influential than Nabokov, and that’s why the VM must be scorned, to Protect the Youth. Won’t she be pleased to hear it!
    If a piece that fails utterly to challenge the audience is your requirement for being able to view it, perhaps you should stick to Thomas Kinkaide paintings and Precious Moments figurines.

    This is why your arguments against the VM ring so false. You can’t criticize a play if you can’t understand even the basics of Art Appreciation. The inconsisent application of your criticism leads me to believe that you’re interested only in reactionary rhetoric, deliberately misunderstanding the very basics of art interpretation to badger feminists, not genuine intelligent criticism of Ensler’s work.

  60. “Ensler said in interviews that she was conflicted about the piece – should she include something so potentially controversial, or should she not?”

    Thats all well and good, but the fact is that the whole peice has the effect of seeming to vindicate the Pat Robertson view of feminists.

    At a gut level it simply looks like a lesbians honestly saying “Its ok when we do it to each other” , like Af. Am and the N-word. So, there you are: the feminist equivilent of gangsta rappers.

  61. Why should an artist produce work with the fear of the disapproval of Fucktard Americans hanging over her head? If Pat Robertson is too stupid to understand what is essentially an overly-simplistic play, that isn’t Ensler’s fault; it’s his. God forbid we dumb all art down to his level – we’d never rise above Herbert the Lion! It isn’t Nabokov’s fault that you can’t see Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator, and it isn’t Ensler’s fault that social conservatives are so stupid they think she endorses rape by having a character talk about it in her play.

    Really, if someone can’t grasp something so elementary, they are better off staying at home to complain about Wife Swap and not darkening the doors of the theatre.

  62. Not take the word of the artist who created the piece? You’ve got to be joking. Listening to the writer when she tells you how she created her play is the single most valuable tool we have when studying her work. Of course we take Ensler at her word.

    Well if the whole Oprah, James Frey thing has taught us anything….

  63. You don’t see a difference? Really? Holy cow. Social conservatives need to stay far away from the arts. You guys really don’t have the capability. Honestly, stick with the Family Circus. Billy broke a dish and blamed it on Not Me!

  64. You don’t see a difference? Really? Holy cow. Social conservatives need to stay far away from the arts. You guys really don’t have the capability. Honestly, stick with the Family Circus. Billy broke a dish and blamed it on Not Me!

    Flea,

    So what is the difference? Junkie turned author, Lawyer turned author. Is there really that much of a difference in reputation for honesty in either of the authors’ former professions?

    I wasn’t getting into a political discussion or even criticism of the play, I was just dubious about your contention that guarded skepticism about an author’s stated intentions was unwarranted. Just reading a few biographies of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald…none of them will ever be nominated for sainthood on the basis of honesty. Lillian Hellman got caught in a few lies too just in case anybody thinks I’m just picking on the boys.

    All I’m saying is just because its an artist or author speaking, doesn’t mean you should automatically turn off your bullshit detector.

  65. Oh Darleen, my sex partners don’t think they’re “renting” my cunt just because the one you claim to enjoy so much has made the full-on purchase. They actually manage to think that because it’s mine and not a state-owned facility, that it’s just part of my larger body and not something that needs to be accessed via a diamond ‘n’ gold wedding band patriarchal acquisition syndrome.

    And heh, piny, Darleen calling me ignorant or slut would rule, since she doesn’t quite grasp the implications of either word.

  66. All joking aside, I’ve always been the first to point out that being against female sexuality doesn’t actually mean the person spouting it is against a female enjoying herself in the bed the right winger is having sex in, be it the partner of or the woman herself. Just as abortion opponents tend to believe their abortions are acceptable, anti-sex people have elaborate reasons that their sexual behavior is acceptable, but other people are sinful and need to be controlled. For instance, Darleen’s purchase vs. “rent” methodology here. Her orgasms are acceptable since the pussy mortgage has been paid in full by her husband. Mine are eeeeevil, because I don’t accept cash and/or social acceptability for mine, since while Darleen can’t conceive that I don’t put a price on the vagina, I actually don’t.

    But I love the rent/purchase structure you built there, Darleen. We sluts may not be for sale, but by your own reckoning, wives are just whores that are owned outright.

  67. And, can’t help but add, while I know you think it’s unbearably clever to mock feminist men by suggesting they’re lowering themselves to treating women as human beings out of sexual desire instead of condescending to women and purchasing them with diamonds like Real Men do, Darleen, it’s really not. Because even if feminist men are only in this for the sex, they are still your moral superiors. For one thing, they think enough of women to care for our opinions. But most importantly, they aren’t what you are, someone who would sell out their own kind to cozy up to The Man with the pathetic hopes that he’ll despise you a little less than he despises us. This is true–sexist men despise conservative women less than feminists, but the price conservative women pay is you don’t get their a-feared respect, either.

  68. Just reading a few biographies of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald…none of them will ever be nominated for sainthood on the basis of honesty.

    Fiction, fiction, and fiction.

    Oh, and The DaVinci Code? Also fiction.

    Vagina Monologues? Fiction.

    And geez, haven’t any of you heard of the unreliable narrator?

  69. I just think it’s funny that Darleen slut-shamed Amanda in the same thread in which she held up Mary Wollstonecraft as an exemplar of what feminism should be. Did you miss the part where Wollstonecraft took a lover and had a child out of wedlock? I guess her cunt was for rent, too.

  70. that rent analogy still confuses the hell out of me. I can’t personally recall any sex which was a prolonged enough situation to constitute a renting, even at blockbuster. maybe I’m an exception, but even a two day rental, that’s 48 hours of continuous sex. that’s… alot.

    so, in the rent structure, it’s more like “I own an apartment, and I’m inviting a friend over to watch some DVD.”

    pregnancy on the other hand, as Darleen is so fucking proud of, you’re pretty much giving up significant portions of that space for several months. sounds to me like she’s the one who put out the “room for rent*” sign.

    *and no, I’m not going with the obvious pun. because it’s too easy, and not that funny.

  71. Fiction, fiction, and fiction.

    Oh, and The DaVinci Code? Also fiction.

    Vagina Monologues? Fiction.

    And geez, haven’t any of you heard of the unreliable narrator?

    zuzu,

    the point I was trying to make is that being skeptical about what an author tells you their intentions were in their work is not inherently unreasonable.

    The unreliable narrator doesn’t really have anything to do with that since its a literary technique and would therefore apply to the work of fiction itself, and my post wasn’t even arguing about the play.

    Similarly the argument that they’re all fiction writers doesn’t really have anything to do with my point either. If anything, it actually reinforces my point. Other fiction authors in the past have not always been honest when talking about what their intentions were when they wrote something, therefore just because an author says “I wrote that because…” doesn’t mean that their statement of intentions should be treated as inerrant scripture.

  72. Her orgasms are acceptable since the pussy mortgage has been paid in full by her husband. Mine are eeeeevil, because I don’t accept cash and/or social acceptability for mine, since while Darleen can’t conceive that I don’t put a price on the vagina, I actually don’t.

    Sweet! Free pussy!

    (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that…)

  73. I find it interesting that Darleen considers “vagina” to be a swearword. Are vaginas filthy? And if so, what does that say about the people attached to them?

    There was a Catholic website I saw once (real one, not a parody) that had “vagina” written as “v*****.” Like it was a “swear” and not an actual medical term.

    I didn’t see if they had “penis” as “p****.”

  74. I saw the Vagina Monologues yesterday, and according to the program, “the perfomers aren’t using notecards because they didn’t learn their lines; they’re using notecards at the author’s request to remind people that these are real women’s stories”.

    Hence, not quite fiction (although perhaps not quite non-fiction either). Doesn’t mean that the unreliable narrator isn’t present; just that it isn’t fiction.

  75. pregnancy on the other hand, as Darleen is so fucking proud of, you’re pretty much giving up significant portions of that space for several months. sounds to me like she’s the one who put out the “room for rent*” sign.

    It’s like having a squatter!

    badteeth, I personally don’t read a work of fiction, at least for the first time, with the author’s stated intentions in mind. I like to discover meaning for myself. Sometimes it’s helpful to know what the author’s intentions were if I need some clarification, but ultimately, it’s *my* job as the reader to understand that it’s a work of fiction and to draw whatever lessons I can from it.

    None of the authors you cite did much in the way of straight factual writing, with the possible exception of Hemingway’s war journalism (and honestly, it’s pretty easy to sense the self-aggrandizement there). Their works of fiction were not meant to be taken as memoir, nor were we supposed to understand that they believed everything that came out of every character’s mouth.

    Unlike James Frey, Eve Ensler never presented her work as non-fiction. And because it was fiction, she presented certain themes and certain characters, and let the readers make up their own minds about it.

    And, frankly, it seems like a lot of the objection that people like Darleen have is in the way that other people have made up their minds about the work, not necessarily about the work itself. God forbid other people might find something positive in the work.

  76. Pingback: Darleen's Place
  77. – Maybe a little anger management might help….btw…I rewrote the entire nova as a musical. Lots of supportive slippery libia and upbeat lyrical passages, while retaining all the sonorous vapors of appropriate angst. To get a taste of the basic theme, think “Springtime for Hitler and Germany”…..

  78. shorter Josh: maybe I’ll score with hot feminist chicks by dumping on the old fart

    Probably too late for this but yeah, Darleen, you figured me out. You really can’t imagine the amount of tail I pull by anonymously commenting on feminist weblogs.

  79. You really can’t imagine the amount of tail I pull by anonymously commenting on feminist weblogs.

    Well, the “anonymous” part is where you’re letting yourself down, dude. Using my real name, I’ve got Lauren yearning for my babies.

  80. Well, the “anonymous” part is where you’re letting yourself down, dude. Using my real name, I’ve got Lauren yearning for my babies.

    Well, I’m only quasi-anonymous since I use my real first name, but I have to lest my girlfriend find out about all my sucking up to feminist women in hopes of getting e-laid.

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