Post by rick on Dec 28, 2006 15:36:52 GMT -5
Why 'The Vagina Monologues' is Bad for College Women
by Catherine Brumley
1/2/2004
Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues has, for several years now, caused sensation after sensation on college campuses across the country. After the show’s successful off-Broadway run, Ensler took her production -- “an eye-opening tour into the final frontier,” according to the jacket of the 1998 Villard Books edition -- to theaters and universities from coast to coast, inviting audiences everywhere to join her as she talks about one word.
The word “stirs up anxiety, awkwardness, contempt, and disgust,” Ensler says, but it is also a word that “propels us and sets us free.” It is a word, she says, that makes the speaker “feel guilty and wrong, as if someone’s going to strike you down,” but is also “your word...your most essential place.”
What is this incredible, revelatory word? The word is “vagina” -- a word in which Ensler proclaims to have found the meaning of her womanhood, and with which she invites women (particularly college-age women) across the country to do the same.
Judging from The Vagina Monologues’ success on the hundreds of campuses at which it has been performed, it seems that college women are receiving its message enthusiastically. But does the controversial play really do much good for the audience that has kept its title in the headlines for the last few years? Does it make college women happier, more fulfilled individuals? Or does it in fact encourage a lifestyle and worldview that not only short-change women, but can also endanger their physical and emotional well-being?
A look at the text of The Vagina Monologues sheds some light on why it is so popular on college campuses as well as why so much controversy surrounds its performance on these campuses, particularly those affiliated with various Christian denominations.
The play is blatantly graphic -- scenes of masturbation, rape, genital mutilation, lesbian sex, and child-birth are described in unabashed detail. The pure “shock value” of The Vagina Monologues is a source of interest for many college students; I overheard one male student at my university enthusiastically describe the play as “more graphic than a war movie.” There is also the appeal of talking about “forbidden” subjects in a public setting; while sex itself hasn’t been taboo for a long time, not many students have heard the words “vagina,” “vulva,” or “clitoris” in public discourse since their grade school sex-ed classes, if then. The mere fact that the production is “naughty” and “outrageous” guarantees a certain level of interest among many college students.
But The Vagina Monologues is more than an orgy of graphic descriptions and “dirty” words. It is Ensler’s personal manifesto, the articulation of her understanding of her own sexuality. The quest for understanding holds enormous interest for college students, particularly women, who are searching desperately for personal definition. The Vagina Monologues, while encouraging this search, offers only one acceptable end to it -- the woman must find “her center” in her vagina. A woman is her vagina, Ensler proclaims. In the words of a character in one of the monologues, “I didn’t need to find it (the vagina). I had to be it...be my vagina.” Ensler believes that the vagina represents the entirety of the woman -- her personality, her experiences, her hopes, and her dreams. A single bodily organ in which one can find the sum and meaning of her existence? This can be an attractive idea to a young woman who is looking everywhere in an attempt to “find herself.”
This is where the danger of The Vagina Monologues lies. It tells women that they are, first and foremost, sexual beings. It reduces the full potential of a human person to a single part of that person’s body. By defining the person by the functioning of her sexual parts, the play is saying that the woman was ultimately meant for sex, that sex is the fundamental expression of who she is.
In this sense, The Vagina Monologues communicates an idea of women not unlike that found in most major Hollywood movies. The movies present us with impossibly beautiful, assertive women who are overtly sexual without inhibitions and promiscuous without consequences. These women are the entirely sexualized beings that The Vagina Monologues encourages all women to be. This connection might help explain the enormous popularity of the play among the Hollywood elite.
Another danger of The Vagina Monologues is one presented by the liberal feminist agenda that pervades most university curriculums -- while inequality between the sexes is justly decried, a sexual double standard is unjustly established. Male violence against women is, of course, never excusable, and the play does promote awareness of its devastating and lasting effects, particularly in a monologue by a Bosnian rape victim. But not all men are predators, and not all predators are men.
Men, when they appear in The Vagina Monologues, are abusive, brutal, or clueless. The few who are portrayed in a positive light are depicted thus only when they succeed in sexually satisfying the women in their lives. Women, on the other hand, are free to indulge their sexual appetites by serial promiscuity, masturbation, and even rape. One monologue depicts the drunken rape of a 13-year-old girl by an older woman, an incident described as “a good rape” (this phrase was excluded from the 2001 edition of the play, and the victim’s age was changed to sixteen).
For all their talk of sexual equality, it is clear that Ensler and her supporters firmly believe that same actions that make men bestial and abusive make women healthy and liberated. This double standard can be clearly seen if one imagines the roar of indignation and protest that would arise among feminists if a male version of The Vagina Monologues was produced, glorifying and obsessing over the phallus.
The Vagina Monologues and the ideology it promotes are also bad for women on physical and emotional levels. Anyone who has spent some time on a typical college campus knows that sexual activity is widespread among college students, that this activity is very frequently in the context of drug and alcohol use, and that it sometimes leads to violence and sexually transmitted disease. The Vagina Monologues, by insisting that women be their vaginas, encourages college women to be sexually promiscuous in an atmosphere where it is particularly unhealthy and unsafe for them to be so. While the proceeds from college productions of the play and from Ensler’s “V-Day” movement go to organizations that prevent violence against women, The Vagina Monologues’ hedonistic message works at cross purposes with this worthy effort. It is similar to a mother working to educate motorists about the dangers of careless driving while encouraging her children to play in the street.
The physical dangers of promiscuity, especially in the college setting, carry with them emotional dangers. The Vagina Monologues depicts women who are satisfied to view themselves as entirely sexual beings -- it ignores the pain and self-loathing many young women experience after casual sexual encounters. Most women are looking for love and intimacy in their sexual experiences, however “casual,” and are heartbroken and depressed when their one-night stands fail to satisfy these desires. The uncontrolled bed-hopping and carefree “experimentation” encouraged and glorified by The Vagina Monologues are more likely to leave young women feeling empty and insecure than fulfilled and comfortable with themselves.
The Vagina Monologues is typically described as a collection of real women’s stories and thus an authentic look at female sexuality. But the fact is the play is the author’s interpretation of other women’s experience. While some of the monologues are the original stories told verbatim, others are composites or original works that began “with the seed of an interview.” All of them are told from the perspective of Ensler’s ideological feminism -- no differing view is articulated. Wouldn’t a serious look at female sexuality include more than one opinion on the subject? And aren’t there better methods of discussion than asking the audience to ponder “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?” or encouraging them to join in chanting the word “”?
The Vagina Monologues has found its way onto the stages of college campuses across the country because it claims to express “the feminine voice.” But in actuality, the only voice expressed by the play is Eve Ensler’s -- the voice of the liberal feminist agenda. Ensler is, of course, entitled to the free expression of her opinions. But she simply does not speak for all women, and she is arrogant and irresponsible to claim that she does. The Vagina Monologues is the representation of one voice in the larger discussion of the nature of sexuality, not a discussion in and of itself.
College women, as the demographic that The Vagina Monologues most appeals to and with which it has had the most success, should be aware of the ideological, physical, and emotional problems that the play and its worldview presents. It instructs young women to view themselves as entirely sexual creatures, defined by the functioning of a single body part, while encouraging them in behavior that is detrimental to their physical and emotional well-being. Instead of fostering common sense and maturity at a turbulent time in her young audience’s lives, Ensler pushes them toward selfishness and profligacy. While it may prove popular among young women searching for meaning and purpose in their lives, The Vagina Monologues can do more harm than good for the women who take its message to heart.
Catherine Brumley is an undergraduate student at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington
by Catherine Brumley
1/2/2004
Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues has, for several years now, caused sensation after sensation on college campuses across the country. After the show’s successful off-Broadway run, Ensler took her production -- “an eye-opening tour into the final frontier,” according to the jacket of the 1998 Villard Books edition -- to theaters and universities from coast to coast, inviting audiences everywhere to join her as she talks about one word.
The word “stirs up anxiety, awkwardness, contempt, and disgust,” Ensler says, but it is also a word that “propels us and sets us free.” It is a word, she says, that makes the speaker “feel guilty and wrong, as if someone’s going to strike you down,” but is also “your word...your most essential place.”
What is this incredible, revelatory word? The word is “vagina” -- a word in which Ensler proclaims to have found the meaning of her womanhood, and with which she invites women (particularly college-age women) across the country to do the same.
Judging from The Vagina Monologues’ success on the hundreds of campuses at which it has been performed, it seems that college women are receiving its message enthusiastically. But does the controversial play really do much good for the audience that has kept its title in the headlines for the last few years? Does it make college women happier, more fulfilled individuals? Or does it in fact encourage a lifestyle and worldview that not only short-change women, but can also endanger their physical and emotional well-being?
A look at the text of The Vagina Monologues sheds some light on why it is so popular on college campuses as well as why so much controversy surrounds its performance on these campuses, particularly those affiliated with various Christian denominations.
The play is blatantly graphic -- scenes of masturbation, rape, genital mutilation, lesbian sex, and child-birth are described in unabashed detail. The pure “shock value” of The Vagina Monologues is a source of interest for many college students; I overheard one male student at my university enthusiastically describe the play as “more graphic than a war movie.” There is also the appeal of talking about “forbidden” subjects in a public setting; while sex itself hasn’t been taboo for a long time, not many students have heard the words “vagina,” “vulva,” or “clitoris” in public discourse since their grade school sex-ed classes, if then. The mere fact that the production is “naughty” and “outrageous” guarantees a certain level of interest among many college students.
But The Vagina Monologues is more than an orgy of graphic descriptions and “dirty” words. It is Ensler’s personal manifesto, the articulation of her understanding of her own sexuality. The quest for understanding holds enormous interest for college students, particularly women, who are searching desperately for personal definition. The Vagina Monologues, while encouraging this search, offers only one acceptable end to it -- the woman must find “her center” in her vagina. A woman is her vagina, Ensler proclaims. In the words of a character in one of the monologues, “I didn’t need to find it (the vagina). I had to be it...be my vagina.” Ensler believes that the vagina represents the entirety of the woman -- her personality, her experiences, her hopes, and her dreams. A single bodily organ in which one can find the sum and meaning of her existence? This can be an attractive idea to a young woman who is looking everywhere in an attempt to “find herself.”
This is where the danger of The Vagina Monologues lies. It tells women that they are, first and foremost, sexual beings. It reduces the full potential of a human person to a single part of that person’s body. By defining the person by the functioning of her sexual parts, the play is saying that the woman was ultimately meant for sex, that sex is the fundamental expression of who she is.
In this sense, The Vagina Monologues communicates an idea of women not unlike that found in most major Hollywood movies. The movies present us with impossibly beautiful, assertive women who are overtly sexual without inhibitions and promiscuous without consequences. These women are the entirely sexualized beings that The Vagina Monologues encourages all women to be. This connection might help explain the enormous popularity of the play among the Hollywood elite.
Another danger of The Vagina Monologues is one presented by the liberal feminist agenda that pervades most university curriculums -- while inequality between the sexes is justly decried, a sexual double standard is unjustly established. Male violence against women is, of course, never excusable, and the play does promote awareness of its devastating and lasting effects, particularly in a monologue by a Bosnian rape victim. But not all men are predators, and not all predators are men.
Men, when they appear in The Vagina Monologues, are abusive, brutal, or clueless. The few who are portrayed in a positive light are depicted thus only when they succeed in sexually satisfying the women in their lives. Women, on the other hand, are free to indulge their sexual appetites by serial promiscuity, masturbation, and even rape. One monologue depicts the drunken rape of a 13-year-old girl by an older woman, an incident described as “a good rape” (this phrase was excluded from the 2001 edition of the play, and the victim’s age was changed to sixteen).
For all their talk of sexual equality, it is clear that Ensler and her supporters firmly believe that same actions that make men bestial and abusive make women healthy and liberated. This double standard can be clearly seen if one imagines the roar of indignation and protest that would arise among feminists if a male version of The Vagina Monologues was produced, glorifying and obsessing over the phallus.
The Vagina Monologues and the ideology it promotes are also bad for women on physical and emotional levels. Anyone who has spent some time on a typical college campus knows that sexual activity is widespread among college students, that this activity is very frequently in the context of drug and alcohol use, and that it sometimes leads to violence and sexually transmitted disease. The Vagina Monologues, by insisting that women be their vaginas, encourages college women to be sexually promiscuous in an atmosphere where it is particularly unhealthy and unsafe for them to be so. While the proceeds from college productions of the play and from Ensler’s “V-Day” movement go to organizations that prevent violence against women, The Vagina Monologues’ hedonistic message works at cross purposes with this worthy effort. It is similar to a mother working to educate motorists about the dangers of careless driving while encouraging her children to play in the street.
The physical dangers of promiscuity, especially in the college setting, carry with them emotional dangers. The Vagina Monologues depicts women who are satisfied to view themselves as entirely sexual beings -- it ignores the pain and self-loathing many young women experience after casual sexual encounters. Most women are looking for love and intimacy in their sexual experiences, however “casual,” and are heartbroken and depressed when their one-night stands fail to satisfy these desires. The uncontrolled bed-hopping and carefree “experimentation” encouraged and glorified by The Vagina Monologues are more likely to leave young women feeling empty and insecure than fulfilled and comfortable with themselves.
The Vagina Monologues is typically described as a collection of real women’s stories and thus an authentic look at female sexuality. But the fact is the play is the author’s interpretation of other women’s experience. While some of the monologues are the original stories told verbatim, others are composites or original works that began “with the seed of an interview.” All of them are told from the perspective of Ensler’s ideological feminism -- no differing view is articulated. Wouldn’t a serious look at female sexuality include more than one opinion on the subject? And aren’t there better methods of discussion than asking the audience to ponder “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?” or encouraging them to join in chanting the word “”?
The Vagina Monologues has found its way onto the stages of college campuses across the country because it claims to express “the feminine voice.” But in actuality, the only voice expressed by the play is Eve Ensler’s -- the voice of the liberal feminist agenda. Ensler is, of course, entitled to the free expression of her opinions. But she simply does not speak for all women, and she is arrogant and irresponsible to claim that she does. The Vagina Monologues is the representation of one voice in the larger discussion of the nature of sexuality, not a discussion in and of itself.
College women, as the demographic that The Vagina Monologues most appeals to and with which it has had the most success, should be aware of the ideological, physical, and emotional problems that the play and its worldview presents. It instructs young women to view themselves as entirely sexual creatures, defined by the functioning of a single body part, while encouraging them in behavior that is detrimental to their physical and emotional well-being. Instead of fostering common sense and maturity at a turbulent time in her young audience’s lives, Ensler pushes them toward selfishness and profligacy. While it may prove popular among young women searching for meaning and purpose in their lives, The Vagina Monologues can do more harm than good for the women who take its message to heart.
Catherine Brumley is an undergraduate student at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington