As it is February, the month that The Vagina Monologues are performed all over the world, I decided to start out with a critical article I wrote after participating in the play a year ago. After I wrote it, several people noted the lack of accessible, feminist criticism surrounding The Vagina Monologues.
My decision to try out for The Vagina Monologues* was strewn with hesitancy. Although I believed in the power of art as activism, I didn’t particularly like what Eve Ensler was saying. And besides that, a woman I didn’t speak to anymore was also trying out for the Monologues.** The Director of the Women’s Center, Kathleen, convinced me to try out and I began to think of my involvement as some sort of feminist challenge. I wanted to see what this thing called V-Day, a movement to end violence against women and reclaim the word vagina, did to women. What I found was something grasping just below the surface of what might have once been an explosion. I explore V-Day and The Vagina Monologues here through revealing seven veils of my own disillusionment, with part narration and part analysis, and the conclusion being a continuing story.
My decision to try out for The Vagina Monologues* was strewn with hesitancy. Although I believed in the power of art as activism, I didn’t particularly like what Eve Ensler was saying. And besides that, a woman I didn’t speak to anymore was also trying out for the Monologues.** The Director of the Women’s Center, Kathleen, convinced me to try out and I began to think of my involvement as some sort of feminist challenge. I wanted to see what this thing called V-Day, a movement to end violence against women and reclaim the word vagina, did to women. What I found was something grasping just below the surface of what might have once been an explosion. I explore V-Day and The Vagina Monologues here through revealing seven veils of my own disillusionment, with part narration and part analysis, and the conclusion being a continuing story.
The First Veil: What is V-Day?
Begun in 1998, the V-Day campaign raises money to end violence against women, partially through showings of The Vagina Monologues at colleges and universities across the country. This year, the tenth anniversary, was politely referred to as V-to the 10th, as Eve Ensler, playright and leader of V-Day, announced along with her many other guidelines for running the show, like following the strict copyright laws and changing nothing in the script. Those on the insides, who worked at the Women’s Center or were officers in UConn V-Day, a student organization, were wildly annoyed with Ensler. My own conversations with Kathleen revealed part of the problem: with Ensler’s own desire to end violence against women, she had risen to celebrity status and it was eating at her image. Her movement was becoming The movement to end violence against women, ringing familiar with the phrase “either you are with us, or you’re against us.” I thought of the Women’s groups of the seventies, how they formed their own sects that served to separate instead of unite, particularly women of color, who were left out of the histories of major organizations while their own groups fell into myth. Ensler is certainly still leaving voices out, as I will explain later.*** V-Day at its core is a problematic movement stemming from the problems with The Vagina Monologues itself.
“So have I,” I interrupted, annoyed. “And I wouldn’t pick those words.”
The discussion faded out and I was left more frustrated with the words than I was before. Analyzing the moment later I am reminded of my continuous frustrations with academia, and with feminism becoming a part of the academy. The 35th Anniversary of the Women’s Center and the subsequent article I wrote for the newsletter revealed the building of a language to discuss feminism within academia. Although this is the value of intellectualized feminism, we end up relying on the words of those who came before us (our “sisters’ shoulders”) to give our words meaning instead of constantly redefining with the demands of time. I was triggered by the comment about “the girl who did this last year” because I was annoyed with people saying things like, this is how it was done before and it worked, so let’s keep it, instead of really digging into the roots and considering that not all words, definitions, or language work for other people. In this case I was frustrated that many did not care to look at words already in existence (like mutilated) and how our use of them affects our language and experience.
But at least I said something.
The next day I came into the Women’s Center for work and Kathleen called me into the student office with another woman, Lauren, who works at the Center and was in the Monologues. “What was that?” Kathleen said, and I looked at her, confused. Apparently what I walked in on was not the full discussion of the essay, but the discussion. No one said anything. Except the performer of My Angry Vagina, who announced that the article helped her decide to perform the monologue with the accent. I couldn’t help but think that she missed the point.
Kathleen wanted to know why we didn’t say anything at the rehearsal. Our excuses varied. Finally I told her that this was the woman I no longer speak to and because it was her monologue, I felt awkward saying anything. When Kathleen asked why, I said, “I don’t know. It’s not conscious. It’s a body reaction.” And she nodded.
During the dress rehearsal, another possible discussion emerged that was not carried through. When the woman who performed The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy, a monologue that requires orgasmic moaning to be performed onstage, was told by one of the “authority” figures that she can’t say “oh professor” during the “college moan,” a heavy tension between the cast and those “in charge” became clear. Because of the tone of the onlooker, the cast became defensive and generally supported whatever the performer wanted to say. Kathleen took me aside later and asked me once again why I didn’t say anything. I told her everything was being said, so I didn’t think I needed to. “It doesn’t matter if it was being said,” she told me. “The problem was that the critique was coming from the outside and it needed to come from the inside.”
“I’m just so disillusioned with this all in general,” I said, and she scoffed in a very Kathleen way that seems to say, get over it.
She said something to the affect of: “You have to move past that, you can’t let it silence you.” Because, of course, I did agree that “oh professor” should be left out of the monologue.*`*
I think in general the Monologues are meant to challenge the male gaze and power structures. The professor comment plays into power structures and doesn't challenge it. This is a fundamental problem. I think, although most of us do find it funny, we should question the root of our laughter... are we still laughing at "sexist" jokes? I think it would be beneficial to open up a dialog about this where we are not feeling the need to be on the defensive; perhaps about the Monologues in general as opposed to our individual representations.
I was happy to see that an email discussion followed, still unhappy to see that the only women who really responded were either connected to the Women’s Center or heavily involved with V-Day. Was the language I used too internal, too feminist? I go back now to my discussion before about the language feminist academia creates. Was I being a hypocrite? Was I using words (representation, gaze) that didn’t necessarily have meaning for the other women involved? Perhaps I was alienating the other women because of my status within feminism at this university. The question that arises for me now is, how can we reach women who are not deeply engaged in feminism? Then I was asking, why are the other women here anyway? Or more importantly, where are the other women?
At some point I realized what was happening: female bonding. It happens through bad-vagina jokes, personal stories, memories, and laughter. A woman points to my bracelet. It’s a string of ancient coins. She likes it. I show them the one with moons on it from the reign of Queen Boudica of the Iceni in Britain, c. 60 BCE. They coo a bit over my bracelets and then the woman says how she admires me. I laugh in that awkward way that attempts to cover up my surprise. I think, what kinds of things go on behind the silence of our conversations? When I announced backstage that I thought we should have self-censored “the professor” after one woman complained that the “authorities” censored us, and no one responded, what were they really thinking?
I begin to see people.
In my audition interview I said I believed in the power of theatre and art as a form of activism. Five long rehearsals and too many bad vagina jokes later, I’m wasn’t sure I believed in the power of art anymore. Still a part of me yelled out, “But you do! Yes you do!” My dad said, “Maybe Ensler should have let it die out when it needed to die out.” Maybe in the nineties The Vagina Monologues made sense. My dad said, “I hate to say this, but women can be so critical. They need to come together.” Was I being too critical? Elitist? Or was I simply frustrated with the dictator-like nature of Ensler’s movement? I thought back to when I first started to talk about word choice with the group. Perhaps if I could have addressed in more openly – maybe I was too abrasive – maybe that was off-putting. I feel jaded.
Later, my father tells me that maybe I am moving beyond feminism and it makes me angry at first. I will never give up feminism. As I talk to him about it more, what he really means comes together for me. I am frustrated with singular movements that have a history and a destination but won’t open up to other ideas and greater meanings of wellness: for ourselves, for other people, for the earth. It’s not about moving beyond feminism, but expanding feminism.
The same question keeps coming back to me, all over the feminist agenda, all over the art word: in this post-post world, why aren’t we inventing new dialogs?
Notes:
*The Vagina Monologues are a series of monologues read by different women meant to express different women’s experiences with vaginas; their vaginas and other’s vaginas. Eve Ensler based the monologues on numerous interviews, but few, if any, are taken word for word and are adapted to fit the stage.
**This woman was once my best friend and my reasons for not speaking to her anymore involved a betrayal of my trust. This event alone was a feminist challenge for me because of the nature of the betrayal (it involved a man) and I chose to let her go over him, which seemed like a betrayal of sisterhood. In the end it was obvious to me whose trust I thought I had and who actually betrayed it. That said and done, 1.5 years later, and we barely look at each other, let alone speak. I was worried it would be awkward.
***Consider, for example, how the monologue about rape camps in Bosnia “My Vagina Was My Village” is told in English and therefore cannot fully express the feelings of the woman whose native language is not English.
****My issue with this woman, combined with The Vagina Monologues raises a good question regarding feminist organizations and sisterhood. What happens when betrayals take place within a feminist movement (personal or societal)? How do these disconnects hold movements back or cause us to silence ourselves?
*`Cooper, Christine M. Worrying About Vaginas: Feminism and Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. 2007 Signs 32.3: 727-758.
*`*The concrete reason that she could not say “oh professor” was that relationships between professors and students are defined as sexual harassment in the university handbook and is a real problem that might offend people in the audience (in the way we don’t want to offend).
*``*There is actually a monologue about menstruation in the permanent script, but not in this year’s V-Day script, which Ensler determines.
The Second Veil: Word Choice
Is word choice is important when creating feminist texts, particularly when patriarchal models and meanings govern so many words? My complaint with the monologue that I chose to read regarded word choice. I auditioned for I Was There in the Room, Ensler’s own monologue about witnessing the birth of her great-niece, for several distinct reasons: it was the only monologue that read like a poem, and as a poet, I felt I could perform it; it was also the only monologue that looked at the vagina from a non-sexual standpoint; and I had also witnessed a birth. Yet there were two places in the monologue where the word choice disturbed me: “mutilated” in reference to the torn vagina, and “a tiny stuck child inside, waiting to be rescued” neither of which were my own experiences of birth. I had long since decided to read the monologue anyway, to reveal the experience of another woman, but what mattered to me now was getting the cast to have a discussion about word choice, not just in this monologue, but in others. I finally explained my frustration to the cast after one of the rehearsals, hoping for a discussion. I must have gone about it wrong because one of the first reactions was: “Well, I think it’s just being honest. The girl who did this last year actually witnesses a birth – ”“So have I,” I interrupted, annoyed. “And I wouldn’t pick those words.”
The discussion faded out and I was left more frustrated with the words than I was before. Analyzing the moment later I am reminded of my continuous frustrations with academia, and with feminism becoming a part of the academy. The 35th Anniversary of the Women’s Center and the subsequent article I wrote for the newsletter revealed the building of a language to discuss feminism within academia. Although this is the value of intellectualized feminism, we end up relying on the words of those who came before us (our “sisters’ shoulders”) to give our words meaning instead of constantly redefining with the demands of time. I was triggered by the comment about “the girl who did this last year” because I was annoyed with people saying things like, this is how it was done before and it worked, so let’s keep it, instead of really digging into the roots and considering that not all words, definitions, or language work for other people. In this case I was frustrated that many did not care to look at words already in existence (like mutilated) and how our use of them affects our language and experience.
But at least I said something.
The Third Veil: An Unwillingness to Discuss
My issue with I Was There In the Room was one of many attempted dialogs that never pulled through, showing that this years cast didn’t really want to talk about vaginas, they wanted to perform vaginas. This is where my own involvement becomes complicated. The woman I no longer speak to, a challenge all on its own,**** performed My Angry Vagina with a Southern accent that sounded vaguely “black.” Someone questioned whether this was appropriate because she was a white woman and the monologue did not specify that this was the voice of a woman of color from the south, as other monologues do. The discussion, instead of questioning the representative nature of Ensler’s monologues in general, became a back and forth of whether or not we “liked” the accent, the discussion of representation falling to the sidelines. I refrained from the debate because of my disconnection with the woman. The next week of rehearsal, Kathleen and Stacy, the student director, assigned a reading that challenged The Vagina Monologues. The following week, I arrived late during what seemed to be the last five minutes of the discussion about the text. I was upset I missed the discussion, because the article validated the feelings I was having about the Monologues (as if my own voice is not valid).The next day I came into the Women’s Center for work and Kathleen called me into the student office with another woman, Lauren, who works at the Center and was in the Monologues. “What was that?” Kathleen said, and I looked at her, confused. Apparently what I walked in on was not the full discussion of the essay, but the discussion. No one said anything. Except the performer of My Angry Vagina, who announced that the article helped her decide to perform the monologue with the accent. I couldn’t help but think that she missed the point.
The Fourth Veil: the Point
The article, Worrying about Vaginas: Feminism and Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, by Christine M. Cooper,*` discussed several different problems with the Monologues. We were asked to read a specific part dealing with representation. In this section, Cooper notes that “the monologues transform their sole speakers in representatives” (744) and “serves a missionary feminism, where the (white, affluent, Western) feminist is positioned to aid, if not save, her others by witnessing their pain” (745) particularly in My Vagina Was My Village, a monologue about rape camps in Bosnia. We were essentially asked not only to think of how we were representing, but also what role the Monologues played in a greater representation. The performer of My Angry Vagina thought that since this monologue was “positive” it was better that she was representing a “black” woman unlike the negative monologues Cooper referred to. But her vagina is still angry (and thus not positive), which Lauren pointed out.Kathleen wanted to know why we didn’t say anything at the rehearsal. Our excuses varied. Finally I told her that this was the woman I no longer speak to and because it was her monologue, I felt awkward saying anything. When Kathleen asked why, I said, “I don’t know. It’s not conscious. It’s a body reaction.” And she nodded.
During the dress rehearsal, another possible discussion emerged that was not carried through. When the woman who performed The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy, a monologue that requires orgasmic moaning to be performed onstage, was told by one of the “authority” figures that she can’t say “oh professor” during the “college moan,” a heavy tension between the cast and those “in charge” became clear. Because of the tone of the onlooker, the cast became defensive and generally supported whatever the performer wanted to say. Kathleen took me aside later and asked me once again why I didn’t say anything. I told her everything was being said, so I didn’t think I needed to. “It doesn’t matter if it was being said,” she told me. “The problem was that the critique was coming from the outside and it needed to come from the inside.”
“I’m just so disillusioned with this all in general,” I said, and she scoffed in a very Kathleen way that seems to say, get over it.
She said something to the affect of: “You have to move past that, you can’t let it silence you.” Because, of course, I did agree that “oh professor” should be left out of the monologue.*`*
The Fifth Veil: Unknotting the Self
There it was in front of me, the big knots stemming from my own silence surrounding the woman I no longer speak to, my frustration with the cast, my annoyance with Eve Ensler, and a desire to just get this over with. This is why I like Kathleen: she challenges me without making me defensive, has a good way with unknotting feminism. I went home that night after one of the longer days of my life and wrote an extensive email to the cast, hoping to strike discussion. I noted first the problems of representation and how we are representing Ensler’s representations and so we are representing twice removed, causing original intentions to become, “lost in translation.” I then asked the cast to question the Gaze (Who are we pleasing? Women? The Male Gaze? A white, heterosexual gaze?). I asked them to consider why they wanted to be a part of the Monologues and if their reason is inline with the mission of V-Day, to end violence against women. I then addressed the professor problem:I think in general the Monologues are meant to challenge the male gaze and power structures. The professor comment plays into power structures and doesn't challenge it. This is a fundamental problem. I think, although most of us do find it funny, we should question the root of our laughter... are we still laughing at "sexist" jokes? I think it would be beneficial to open up a dialog about this where we are not feeling the need to be on the defensive; perhaps about the Monologues in general as opposed to our individual representations.
I was happy to see that an email discussion followed, still unhappy to see that the only women who really responded were either connected to the Women’s Center or heavily involved with V-Day. Was the language I used too internal, too feminist? I go back now to my discussion before about the language feminist academia creates. Was I being a hypocrite? Was I using words (representation, gaze) that didn’t necessarily have meaning for the other women involved? Perhaps I was alienating the other women because of my status within feminism at this university. The question that arises for me now is, how can we reach women who are not deeply engaged in feminism? Then I was asking, why are the other women here anyway? Or more importantly, where are the other women?
The Sixth Veil: Finding the Other Women
Backstage I met some of the women more personally. We weren’t in rehearsals any more, but just talking. In the excitement before getting on stage I was downing ibu-profen for my intense menstrual cramps and bouncing around in my body suit. I picked up a coat hanger: “What I want to know,” I said, “is why there are no monologues about menstruation and abortion.” Something Cooper’s article had said was beginning to really come together for me: “The vagina stands primarily as a sign of sexuality, and sexuality is made the very core of women’s identities” (732). A reason why I picked my own monologue about birth. The girls laughed, a few nodded, and noticing the coat hanger, they cringed. “Look at you!” one of them said, “Put that thing down.” The laughter was awkward. Did no one want to talk about real things? Or was my tactic too visual?*``*At some point I realized what was happening: female bonding. It happens through bad-vagina jokes, personal stories, memories, and laughter. A woman points to my bracelet. It’s a string of ancient coins. She likes it. I show them the one with moons on it from the reign of Queen Boudica of the Iceni in Britain, c. 60 BCE. They coo a bit over my bracelets and then the woman says how she admires me. I laugh in that awkward way that attempts to cover up my surprise. I think, what kinds of things go on behind the silence of our conversations? When I announced backstage that I thought we should have self-censored “the professor” after one woman complained that the “authorities” censored us, and no one responded, what were they really thinking?
I begin to see people.
The Seventh Veil: Art Unsolved
I was awakened the morning after the show by a phone call from my father who wanted to discuss the performance. He didn’t have much to say the night before as I gave my parents my complaints. Now he said, It’s an art form, a theatre piece. That’s all it is. Ensler’s own representations of women, a performance art, in-line with other performance art that deals with female sexuality. So what is the problem? That she searches for an essential woman through the vagina? That she represents other women without using their own words? Or that some of the cast members seemed to be there just to get onstage and have a moment of full attention on their bodies, words, and vaginas? Is this wrong?In my audition interview I said I believed in the power of theatre and art as a form of activism. Five long rehearsals and too many bad vagina jokes later, I’m wasn’t sure I believed in the power of art anymore. Still a part of me yelled out, “But you do! Yes you do!” My dad said, “Maybe Ensler should have let it die out when it needed to die out.” Maybe in the nineties The Vagina Monologues made sense. My dad said, “I hate to say this, but women can be so critical. They need to come together.” Was I being too critical? Elitist? Or was I simply frustrated with the dictator-like nature of Ensler’s movement? I thought back to when I first started to talk about word choice with the group. Perhaps if I could have addressed in more openly – maybe I was too abrasive – maybe that was off-putting. I feel jaded.
Later, my father tells me that maybe I am moving beyond feminism and it makes me angry at first. I will never give up feminism. As I talk to him about it more, what he really means comes together for me. I am frustrated with singular movements that have a history and a destination but won’t open up to other ideas and greater meanings of wellness: for ourselves, for other people, for the earth. It’s not about moving beyond feminism, but expanding feminism.
The same question keeps coming back to me, all over the feminist agenda, all over the art word: in this post-post world, why aren’t we inventing new dialogs?
-Tess Bird, February 2008
Notes:
*The Vagina Monologues are a series of monologues read by different women meant to express different women’s experiences with vaginas; their vaginas and other’s vaginas. Eve Ensler based the monologues on numerous interviews, but few, if any, are taken word for word and are adapted to fit the stage.
**This woman was once my best friend and my reasons for not speaking to her anymore involved a betrayal of my trust. This event alone was a feminist challenge for me because of the nature of the betrayal (it involved a man) and I chose to let her go over him, which seemed like a betrayal of sisterhood. In the end it was obvious to me whose trust I thought I had and who actually betrayed it. That said and done, 1.5 years later, and we barely look at each other, let alone speak. I was worried it would be awkward.
***Consider, for example, how the monologue about rape camps in Bosnia “My Vagina Was My Village” is told in English and therefore cannot fully express the feelings of the woman whose native language is not English.
****My issue with this woman, combined with The Vagina Monologues raises a good question regarding feminist organizations and sisterhood. What happens when betrayals take place within a feminist movement (personal or societal)? How do these disconnects hold movements back or cause us to silence ourselves?
*`Cooper, Christine M. Worrying About Vaginas: Feminism and Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. 2007 Signs 32.3: 727-758.
*`*The concrete reason that she could not say “oh professor” was that relationships between professors and students are defined as sexual harassment in the university handbook and is a real problem that might offend people in the audience (in the way we don’t want to offend).
*``*There is actually a monologue about menstruation in the permanent script, but not in this year’s V-Day script, which Ensler determines.
No comments:
Post a Comment