The month of February brought more this year than unusually cold temperatures; it also provided an excuse for many Rice students to broadcast their love for a specific part of the female anatomy.
If you were on campus at all this month, you were inevitably bombarded with posters, fliers, buttons, and t-shirts bearing the slogan “I heart Vaginas.” The intense campaign was in honor of V-day, a worldwide movement inspired by Eve Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues.”
Witnessed throughout college campuses since 1998, each Valentine’s Day heralds not only the arrival of hearts, kisses, and cupids, but also vaginas. While I am partial to candy hearts myself, support for the vulgar tribute to private parts, this year, was disturbingly ubiquitous on campus.
Advocates for V-day define “V-Day [as]: an organized response against violence toward women. V-Day is: a vision: We see a world where women live safely and freely. V-Day is a demand: Rape, incest, battery, genital mutilation and sexual slavery must end now. V-Day is a spirit: We believe women should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities. V-Day is a catalyst: By raising money and consciousness, it will unify and strengthen existing anti-violence efforts. Triggering far-reaching awareness, it will lay the groundwork for new educational, protective, and legislative endeavors throughout the world. V-Day is a process: We will work as long as it takes. We will not stop until the violence stops. V-Day is a day. We proclaim Valentine’s Day as V-Day, to celebrate women and end the violence.”
The aim of the cause is more than commendable. I thoroughly encourage the objective and I long to help in the pursuit of this vision. I am troubled, however, by the means in which supporters of the campaign have attempted to achieve their goal.
Central to the V-Day festivities is a benefit production of “The Vagina Monologues,” A play written for the supposed empowerment of women. Put mildly the play is a far cry from the liberation the early feminists envisioned. “The Vagina Monologues” objectifies women in the most crude of manners, essentially reducing girls to a single body part, the vagina.
In the fight for an end to the subjugation of women in all forms, the content of the play fails and in fact hinders its cause. The production focuses on women more with regards to sex than on such qualities as talent or intellect. Despite what Eve Ensler might have you believe, empowerment does not emanate from the vagina, but rather the heart and the mind of any given woman. I thought that was the goal of women’s rights, for women to be respected and seen for more than their bodies.
The earliest feminists fought for the vote. For the right to voice their opinions, thoughts and beliefs, a product not of the vagina, but of their wits. Exemplifying the exclusion of intellect from consideration in “The Monologues” is the scene in which a former lawyer describes her journey toward liberation. “I started out as a lawyer, but in my late 30s I became obsessed with making women happy. It began as a mission of sorts, but then I got involved in it. I got very good at it, kind of brilliant. You could say I found my calling. I started getting paid for it. I wore outrageous outfits when I dominated women lace, silk, leather. I used props…whips, ropes, handcuffs, dildos. There was nothing like this in tax law.” While I suppose it is important for pre-laws to know what else is out there, I have to call into question the notion that this play represents support and advancement of women. What is the oldest profession again? And in what year did the first woman graduate from law school? I am not sure if this story really represents progress (and I am still confused as to how encouraging sexual domination over other women will reach the goal of women’s lib).
Some of my favorite scenes include a portion where the narrator recommends repeating the word “cunt” for relief and empowerment. Advice such as this is accompanied by further probing questions such as: “How would you dress your vagina?” What is the most vagina friendly city?” “What does a vagina smell like?” “If your vagina could talk what would it say?” Such questions prove only to undermine women and perpetuate stereotypes, namely that women dwell on the trivial.
The play itself provides little to no realistic information for “protection” against the violence V-Day supporters is attempting to combat. Instead viewers are treated to pornographic descriptions of sex and vulgar conduct. In fact there is one scene in which a young girl “learns” about her sexuality when she is raped by a “gorgeous lady.” “The alcohol has gone to my head, and I am loose. I am ready…. Afterwards, the gorgeous lady teaches me everything about my coochie snorcher. She makes me play with it in front of her… She transformed my sorry-ass coochie snorcher and raised it up into a kind of heaven.” This glorification of lesbian statutory rape and exploitation of a girl I feel is somewhat contradictory to what V-Day claims to be its mission.
The cause, to end violence against women, is an honorable and extremely important one. While the funds did go to Houston Area Women’s Shelters I question the values that were stressed to raise that money. How can women end violence through the continued reduction of women to sex objects? We ought to find ways to raise awareness by encouraging positive values to lift the heart and soul of each woman, rather than force her attention downwards toward her lap.
Caroline May
February 19, 2007
Tags: feminism, liberalism, Women
