Last night I went to a production of The Vagina Monologues at Princeton Theological Seminary. I remember hearing about them being performed in Spokane while I was in college and I remember thinking, “Oh god! What is our society coming to – The VAGINA Monologues? Good lord, this must be some horrible secular thing.” It sure is fun to see how one changes over the years.
I am so glad that I went, and I believe that it is an incredibly important production. I hope that more and more seminaries will help put together productions of it in the future, and I’m very glad that The Women’s Center at Princeton Seminary put on the event. I have a lot of thoughts on The Vagina Monologues, and I’ll write just a few of them below, and I hope you’ll give me some of your feedback as well…
I’ve been trying to process all of what I saw, it’s difficult. So, let me just write a few random thoughts from my Vagina Monologues experience:
- I think the thing I noticed most was how I was somewhat uncomfortable during parts of the monologues. Not uncomfortable in such a way that I thought “These aren’t things we should be talking about” but, almost, that I was involved in the social processes and ways in which women had felt abused, were abused (physically, emotionally, sexually) that caused women to neglect such an important part of their body: their vagina.
- I was struck simply by the magnitude of violence and abuse that takes place to women in our world today. As is the cases with most things, hearing statistics is one thing: hearing stories, spoken monologues, by women who have lived the horrific experiences of rape, abuse, psychological abuse and violence…that is an entirely different thing.
- I laughed a lot. Perhaps sometimes because it was a nervous reaction to hearing a seminarian screaming “CÂ UÂ NÂ T” or saying “twat” and probably at the very beginning just went they kept saying vagina, vagina, vagina. Part of the monologue itself talked about how odd of a word it is – no matter how you say it, it’s just…odd. Other times simply because it was hilarious, absolutely hilarious.
- I got all hot & bothered at one point. Even started to sweat. For those of you who have seen it – yes, it was definitely during “The Woman Who Loved To Make Vaginas Happy.” The moaner, and her visual and physical on-stage demonstration of over, god it must have been, over 20 or so different types of “moaning” (basically, having orgasm after orgasm after orgasm on stage). My favorite might have been the “Seminary Moan” for those who live in CRW, which went something like “OH!! OH!! THE WALLS! THE WALLS! THE WALLS ARE THIN, THE WALLS ARE THIN, THE WALL ARE THIN!!!!!!”
- I got pretty uncomfortable during “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could” as it depicts the sexual encounter between a 16-yr old girl (which, apparently used to be a 13-yr old girl until that drew too much criticism) and a 24-yr old woman. That’s the only one that ended and I wasn’t sure how to process that. In one sense…yup, that’s definitely illegal, and hell, had that been my daughter, that woman would have gone to jail. And then on the other hand, this girl had gone through so many traumatic experiences in her life, and had been so oppressed by her mother, it was this liberating sexual experience that caused her to fully come into herself (no pun intended), into her full being. Yah, I really don’t know what to do with that one.
- One thing that I definitely had never thought of before, was the fact that many women have never seen their vagina. One of the therapy techniques that was discussed numerous times for women called for them to actually get a mirror out, and try to actually find their vagina and look at it. Obviously, men don’t suffer that problem – it’s just…there. We can’t help but see our penises every day. In the monologues, there was a woman who was 72 who had never seen her vagina.
- Finally, “I Was There In the Room” was probably the most moving monologue. The seminarian who performed it was absolutely brilliant, and it detailed being in the room with a woman who was giving birth, and describing the vagina during that life-giving process. She was in tears because of the vagina’s beauty, it’s sacrifice, and I was entranced by these detailed, visual descriptions of the vagina during that birthing process. [I only hope that I will be able to be that enthralled when I actually am in that situation…I’m very afraid that I’m going to be the one fainting…]
The one question that I kept asking myself last night was “What was it like for a woman to watch this performance?” I can’t imagine what type of experience it might have been for women to watch this, so I’m hoping that some of the women readers of this blog, who have seen The Vagina Monologues, will share some of their experience…