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The Vagina Monologues

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The Vagina Monologues is an Obie Award-winning episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the off-Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at HERE Arts Center in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production; when she left the play it was recast with three celebrity monologists. The production has been staged internationally, and a television version featuring Ensler was produced by cable TV channel HBO. In 1998, Ensler launched V-Day, a global non profit that has raised over $50 million for women's anti-violence groups through benefits of The Vagina Monologues.[1]

Plot summary

The Vagina Monologues is made up of a varying number of monologues read by a varying number of women (initially, Eve Ensler performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses, and more recent versions featuring a different actress for every role). Every monologue somehow relates to the vagina, be it through sex, love, rape, menstruation, mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the variety of names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality. Some monologues include:

  • I Was Twelve, My Mother Slapped Me: a chorus describing many young women's and girls' first menstrual period.
  • My Angry Vagina, in which a woman humorously rants about injustices wrought against the vagina, such as tampons, douches, and the tools used by OB/GYNs
  • My Vagina Was My Village, a monologue compiled from the testimonies of Bosnian women subjected to rape camps.
  • The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, in which a woman recalls memories of traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood and a self-described "positive healing" sexual experience in her adolescent years with an older woman. In the original version, she is 13, but later versions would change her age to 16. This particular skit has sparked numerous controversies and criticisms due to its content (see below).
  • The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy, in which a dominatrix for women discusses the intriguing details of her career and her love of giving women pleasure. In several performances it often comes at the end of the play, literally climaxing with a vocal demonstration of a "triple orgasm."
  • Because He Liked to Look At It, in which a woman describes how she had thought her pubic area was ugly and had been embarrassed to even think about it, but changed her mind because of a sexual experience with a man named Bob who liked to spend hours looking at it.
  • I Was There In The Room, a monologue in which Eve Ensler describes the birth of her granddaughter.

Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue affecting women around the world. The monologue is performed at thousands of local V-Day benefit productions of the play that take place annually in February and March raising funds for local groups, shelters, crisis centers working to end violence against women. In 2003, for example, Ensler wrote a new monologue about the plight of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. This Monologue is known as "Under the Burqa."

History

See also: Performances of The Vagina Monologues

Eve Ensler wrote the first draft of the monologues in 1996 (there have been several revisions since) following interviews she conducted with 200 women about their views on sex, relationships, and violence against women. The interviews began as casual conversations with her friends, who then brought up anecdotes they themselves had been told by other friends; this began a continuing chain of referrals. In an interview with women.com, Ensler said that her fascination with vaginas began because of "growing up in a violent society."[2]"Women's empowerment is deeply connected to their sexuality." She also stated, "I'm obsessed with women being violated and raped, and with incest. All of these things are deeply connected to our vaginas."

Ensler wrote the piece to "celebrate the vagina." Ensler states that in 1998, the purpose of the piece changed from a celebration of vaginas and femininity to a movement to stop violence against women.

The play first opened at HERE Arts Center in New York City on October 3, 1996 with a limited run that ran through November. The play gained popularity through a word of mouth campaign that culminated with a performance at Madison Square Garden in 2001, which featured Melissa Etheridge and Whoopi Goldberg performing segments of the play.

V-Day

Main article: V-Day
V-Day logo.

The Vagina Monologues is the cornerstone of the V-Day movement, whose participants stage benefit performances of the show worldwide each year between February 1st and March 31st.

On February 21, 2004, Eve Ensler in conjunction with Jane Fonda and Deep Stealth Productions produced and directed the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues, with readings by eighteen notable trans women, and including a new monologue documenting the experiences of transwomen. It debuted in connection with "LA V-DAY until the Violence Stops" with moving monologues documenting the violence against transgender people. Since that debut the Women's' Centers of many universities and colleges have added these three "Transgender Monologues" to the original production.


Criticism of The Vagina Monologues

Feminist criticism

The Vagina Monologues has been criticized by a number of people in the pro-sex feminist, gender egalitarian, and individualist feminist movements. Pro-sex feminist Betty Dodson, author of several books about female sexuality, saw the play as having a negative and restrictive view of sexuality and an anti-male bias.[3] She called the play a blast of hatred at men and heterosexuality. Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy shared many of Dodson's views.[4][5]

Elements of the play critics find contentious include:

  • the amount of attention given to brutal sexual encounters compared with consensual or harmonious sexual encounters;
  • negative portrayal of male-female sexual relationships (many of the male-female sexual relationships are depicted as negative and destructive to women, whereas all female-female sexual relationships, even one including statutory rape, are depicted as positive and nurturing);
  • In "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could", an underage girl (thirteen in earlier performances, sixteen in the revised version) recounts being given alcohol and then having sex with an adult woman; the incident is recalled fondly by the grown girl. Eve Ensler linked The Vagina Monologues with "V-Day" (a proposed day of remembrance for victims of female sexual abuse, to replace Valentine's Day).

Colonialism and heterosexism

Kim Q. Hall further criticizes the play, particularly the sections dealing with women in the Third World, for contributing to "colonialist conceptions of non-Western women."[6] Although she supports frank discussions about sex, Hall rescales many of the same critiques leveled by feminists of color at White privilege among Second-wave feminists and "premature white feminist assumptions and celebrations of a global 'sisterhood.'"[6] Racism, colonialism, heterosexism and ableism should all be taken into account.

Social conservative criticism

The play has also been criticized by social conservatives, such as the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and the Network of enlightened Women. The TFP denounced it as "a piece replete with sexual encounters, lust, graphic descriptions of masturbation and lesbian behavior",[7] urging students and parents to protest. Following TFP and other protests, performances were canceled at sixteen Catholic colleges. Recently, Saint Louis University made the decision not to endorse the 2007 production, claiming the yearly event was getting to be "redundant." The response of the university's student-led feminist organization was to continue the production at an off-campus location.

The case of Robert Swope

In 2000, Robert Swope, a conservative contributor to the Georgetown university newspaper, The Hoya, wrote an article critical of the play. He suggested there was a contradiction between the promotion of rape awareness on V-Day and the scene "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could", where the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl (changed to a 16-year-old in the revised version of the play) by an older woman is described in positive terms. Outcry from the play's supporters resulted in Swope's being fired from the staff of the Hoya, before the piece was even run. Swope had previously criticized the play in an article he wrote entitled "Georgetown Women's Center: Indispensable Asset or Improper Expenditure?". His termination received editorial coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, National Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Times and the Weekly Standard.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ WMC Exclusive: From Superdome to SUPERLOVE—V-Day at 10 by Marianne Schnall - January 30, 2008
  2. ^ Random House Interview
  3. ^ Sexual Politics
  4. ^ zetetics.com
  5. ^ ifeminists.net
  6. ^ a b Kim Q. Hall, "Queerness, Disability, and The Vagina Monologues," Hypatia - Volume 20, Number 1, Winter 2005, pp. 99-119
  7. ^ tfp.org
  8. ^ ifeminists.net

"Eve Ensler on "good" bodies and bad politics -Mother Jones [2]

The television production

Criticism

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