The Vagina Monologues

“The Vagina Monologues” just won’t die. When I first read of the play more than a decade ago, it sounded bizarre. When I saw the playwright, Eve Ensler, interviewed on TV, she was another kooky, man-hating feminist and her play was becoming a rallying point for NOW (National Organization for Women) types and “Women’s Studies” majors across the country. When I spoke disdainfully of it last year in front of a young, female colleague, she asked, “Have you ever read it?”

“No,” I admitted and she offered to lend it to me. I promised to check it out, but not to read it all if it didn’t grab me. It was interesting the way train wrecks are interesting and so short that I read it all. It was even more bizarre than the newspaper descriptions because most of its content couldn’t be published in a newspaper. Women chanted several dozen slang terms for that part of their anatomy - way more than I’d ever heard. Then they described what their vagina looked like, smelled like, what it would say if it could speak, and what it would wear if it could get dressed up. It reminded me of puerile conversations sixth grade boys would have about their anatomy when out of the earshot of adults. But these were grown women.

My wife didn’t want to read the book last year, but I persuaded her to watch an HBO film of the play I rented from Netflix starring its author, Eve Ensler. Her impression was the same as mine - bizarre. Then a local theater company decided to produce it at the Magic Lantern in nearby Bridgton, Maine - a community whose newspaper carries this column. I thought it would be interesting to watch local women willing to shout the C-word to an audience and see if the audience would join in the chant. Again, it would be interesting the way a train wreck is. I bought tickets, but then gave them away when the date conflicted with a trip to Ireland.

Last weekend, a theater company in North Conway, New Hampshire produced it - another community whose newspaper carries this column. My wife said, “Nah. I’ll stay home. You go.” It was a very small venue at M&D Productions, but nice enough and quite reasonable at $15. They even served wine which I could take into the theater with me - very civilized. Most of the actresses were my age - late middle age - and so was the audience - mostly women and about 80% late middle aged. The script was modified with local writers adding monologues, but the flavor was the same. Women offering feminist laments about bad treatment of them and their vaginas by the world at large - especially by men, of course.

Being familiar with the script, I was more interested in watching the audience. Most laughed in that way some junior high school girls will when they’re shocked at outrageous sexual comments made by junior high boys. They don’t consider the remarks funny, but laugh because they don’t know how else to react. It seemed that some of the men laughed because they thought they were supposed to and it would have been impolite not to. I smiled at one performance by a local woman mimicking a triple orgasm. She bettered Meg Ryan’s performance in “When Harry Met Sally.”

The play’s nadir was a monologue by an actress playing a 13-year-old girl describing her seduction by a 24-year-old woman.

“Vagina Monologues” explored many aspects of vaginas except what I would consider their most important one - procreation. Vaginas are, after all, vehicles for pregnancy and birth. Ensler said in a revised version of TVM: “I had been performing this piece for over two years when it suddenly occurred to me that there were no pieces about birth. It was a bizarre omission.”

Um, yeah.

Radical feminists’ disconnect from the maternal is the essence of what’s bizarre about them. Ensler went on: “Although when I told a journalist [about] this [bizarre omission] recently, he asked me, ‘What’s the connection [between vaginas and birth]?’”

Uh-duh. It’s hard to imagine any journalist asking that question. I know there are dumb ones out there, but still. Ensler then described how she was present at a birth and what she saw. I’ve been present at four and it wasn’t a bad piece of writing.

TVM’s forward was written by feminist guru Gloria Steinem, who seems to deny that women have a maternal instinct at all. In his television special “Boys and Girls Are Different: Men, Women, and the Sex Difference,” ABC’s John Stossel asked Steinem: “Aren't women, in general, better nurturers?” Icily, she answered: “No. Next question.” In TVM’s forward, she referred to the women’s movement as an alternative to the “patriarchal/political/religious control over women’s bodies as a means of reproduction.” Is Steinem referring to abortion here? I learned elsewhere that she’s had at least one herself and described it as “a pivotal and constructive experience.”

Constructive experience? Abortion?

Given that vaginas are the vehicle for 40 million-plus abortions in the United States alone, and given that abortion is the single most important issue on the radical feminist agenda, it’s very interesting that it's completely ignored in what has become the iconic feminist play. Maybe that’s because the worst and most horrible violence perpetrated on a vagina is by a woman’s own choice.