Ain't No Monologue Like A Vagina Monologue

The script became the play that became a book, or a playbook, or generations of unspoken thoughts and feelings that needed to 'scream-yell-and-tell' like there was no tomorrow because there wouldn’t be. Not without us and our vaginas. Yep, vaginas. But such awful things happened to them. And kept on happening to them. And a massive silent public didn’t seem too outwardly bothered enough.

Enter The Vagina Monologues.

Thank you, Eve Ensler.

Woman Warrior brought the fire.

And 'V-day,' a movement to eradicate violence against women.

And clarity that couldn’t be muddied for all the mud in mudland.

I don’t remember how this happened, this book and me.

Who saw who first, play or book?

Sometimes the most important thing is that you meet. The smaller details fall by the memory wayside.

These books and I became fierce allies. I say “books” because I bought another copy after I found the first one was missing a page. A page to end all pages. This quote from Natalie Angier’s Woman: An Intimate Geography:

“The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That’s a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice…twice…twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you’ve got a semiautomatic.”

-The Vagina Monologues “Vagina Fact”

I hate guns, but hey, not my metaphor.

Worth the price of another book to have that page though.

The totality of my girl-teen-lady life plus other women in their billions who didn’t have access to this knowledge. Information. Research. Basic anatomy for crying out loud. Reading this material unveiled a lot of mysteries for me, gave rise to even more questions, and brought some delayed righteous rage necessary for healing.

Finding out about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and being traumatized speechless. The screams, catastrophic blood loss, infection, and lifelong complications with risk of maternal and/or fetal death.

Being reminded of the time as a young teen when a friend’s anesthesiologist sister explained how women weren’t meant to give birth lying down. Cue the King Louis XIV story she shared about his perverse desire to watch the many women and girls he impregnated endure the birth process in a position that allowed him to see better

...Healthcare professionals acting like certain complications come with the territory and perineal tears are acceptable outcomes. Absolutely frickin’ not!

And the way every woman’s anatomy and physiology had to squeeze into strict parameters like the brassiere designs of yesteryear. You could not be in between sizes. It was forbidden.

Oh no, something wrong with you if you weren’t cookie-cutter everybody else.

I usually went for 6-8 months without a period, so my body was wrong. The doctors ran every test that would not confirm my necessary 'wrong status.' Then one stated matter-of-factly that I go on the pill to “regulate” my periods. Still in high school and had never been sexually active…my Mama said no even before I could. In my young understanding, menstruation was a package deal. I never thought that you could ovulate and not have a period.

Two children in later years with no problem and the epitome of fertility back then.

Moron of a doctor.

In total absorption of the words from women’s personal accounts in The Vagina Monologues, two things crystallized in tandem for me over successive readings:

1. Lack of knowledge and awareness allowed others power over women’s bodies.

2. Devastating patriarchal infrastructures would continue (unless knocked to the effin ground) making men the control beneficiaries.

Ensler’s book became a battalion beacon connecting me to other women and girls sharing personal accounts that didn’t keep men as sole narrators of our story. Flashed a fleeting childhood memory of “Edith” on long ago ‘70s American sitcom 'All in the Family' where she articulately questioned why it was menopause and not “womenopause.”

My young mind never stopped questioning after that…

Menstrual cycle/menstruation/menses/menarche/menopause—Sheesh! Did men have to have their signature on everything because they didn't own a semiautomatic?

If men had an organ like the clitoris, would we not hear about it shouted every day from the rooftops?

What warped sadistic mindsets feel justified raping women and girls as a weapon of war, or revenge, and why do they still draw breath in states of freedom?

“When I returned to New York after my first trip, I was in a state of outrage. Outraged that 20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993, as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it. A friend asked me why I was surprised. She said that over 500,00 women were raped every year in this country, and in theory we were not at war.”

-The Vagina Monologues (p.60)

Who has the audacity to speak with expertise on how a woman’s body should look, feel, react, function, etc. when they are not this or any other woman?

Do you know where to shove your statutory guidelines if *plot twist* men could get pregnant? (Methinks Roe v Wade would be made constitutionally irreversible tomorrow.)

And wouldn’t men just love to have a pelvic exam?

What a relief to find out other women not only hated them but were just as utterly disgusted by them as I was.

“Then there’s those exams. Who thought them up? There’s got to be a better way to do those exams…My vagina’s angry about those visits. It gets defended [sic] weeks in advance. It shuts down, won’t “relax.” Don’t you hate that? “Relax your vagina, relax your vagina.” Why? My vagina’s not stupid. Relax so you can shove those cold duck lips inside it? I don’t think so.”

-The Vagina Monologues “My Angry Vagina”

I still have periods of seething. Less threat of GBH charges but seething nonetheless.

This book helped me feel less alone, more self-aware, and empowered. Gave me a voice and waited, as a seedling biding its time, for me to get into the healthcare profession and be a force of reckoning. I remain passionate about women’s health and take every available opportunity to empower women and inform men. Of course, I don’t know everything, but I do know I won’t stop this journey, and I sure know how to chuck statistics back in some faces with evidence-based research and qualitative methodology.

What the right monologue can do!

V-Day is ‘Make Us Free’ Yay!

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