John PhiferDuring one memorable moment in the section titled, ‘The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy,’ the speaker launches into a long series of orgasmic moans, finally climaxing in a magnificently drawn-out ‘triple orgasm’ which is generally the high point of the evening. Other vignettes, such as the deeply moving ‘My Vagina Was My Village,’ bring the audience to cathartic tears, eliciting shaking fury and declarations to take action against the outrages of violence against women. I cannot recommend the play enough and urge everyone to attend.
Some people disagree. The Clare Boothe Lucy Policy Institute has for the past few years enacted a campaign they call ‘The Vagina Monologues EXPOSED,’ viewable at http://www.cblpi.org/programs/vday.cfm. They say that the play does not empower women or help to fight violence against them but rather ‘defines women by their private parts.’ Part of the problem simply seems to be their attitude towards the play. Their pamphlet asks ‘how embracing vulgarity is going to make the world a safer place for women.’
In the beginning of the play, Eve Ensler discusses her reasons for writing it. Among them is exactly the attitude evidenced by the Institute: that the vagina and discussion of female sexuality is something vulgar, not appropriate for conversation or acknowledgement. The Institute is seeking to reductio ad absurdum — to simplify the play until it becomes silly — but in the process they simply reveal that they never bothered to actually think about the play they are decrying.
This is increasingly obvious from a Washington Post article which ran last year, in which one of the Institute’s members backing the campaign, Monique Stuart, confesses that she had made up her mind about the Vagina Monologues 10 years before she ever saw it. It’s meant to affirm her commitment to the cause but only shows her commitment not to give new ideas a fair chance.
‘The Vagina Monologues EXPOSED,’ the pamphlet presenting the Institute’s case, is almost laughably translucent. The situations of the play are described as far out of context as possible, sly commentary implies that the ‘early suffragettes’ would have fought the play, and close-minded invectives are disguised as reasoned argument.
They deliberately confuse the purpose of V-Day, the movement which accompanies the play and seeks to fight violence against women, with the purpose of the play itself.
There are only two solid points in the pamphlet: that there is no practical information regarding the health and safety of women, and that at one point the play arguably supported child molestation.
It is true that the play does not teach women self-defense, nor does it tell them about the dangers of STDs or similar hazards. And while this would not work within the play, a work of entertainment, this is valuable information and should indeed be incorporated into V-Day activities associated with the play. In this sense, the Institute is wrong when it claims that the play does not ‘raise awareness about violence against women.’
The play and all the associated controversy (including this article) help to draw ever more attention to the issues associated with violence against women.
It is also true that one of the vignettes within the play, called ‘The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could,’ is about a sixteen-year-old girl (thirteen in the original version) who is seduced by an older woman in a manner seen as healing the previous wounds and shame her vagina had suffered in life. Some produced versions now omit this section, and the Institute is right to decry it.
Absent these nuggets of wisdom, however, the claims of the Clara Boothe Luce Policy Institute in their ‘V-Day Unveiled’ campaign are thick clumps of steaming hokum. They paint a smeary brown picture of a V-Day that intends to wipe out traditional romance on Valentine’s Day and which seeks to debase and degrade women as they ‘reduce women down to their sexual organs.’ This reeking invective is childishly obvious beneath the affected veneer of genteel discussion and owes its spirit, if not its substance, to one of the policymakers of the Institute, Ann Coulter. She does not appear to have had a hand in the matter — her name and image are markedly absent from the Institute’s webpage as a whole, perhaps an attempt to distance themselves from her after the controversy surrounding her last book, Godlessness — but there is no doubt that the ‘V-Day Unveiled’ campaign is offal from a like-minded source.
The best response to this smear campaign is not outrage but contemplative openness. Go to see the play. See if you are moved. Demonstrate your ability to think for yourself ‘hellip; and decide on the evidence not your prejudices. It’s the best revenge on bigots.