The Vagina Monologues — revisited

Vaginas are funny stories.

Puzzles, Sudokus, Brain Games, a ‘guess who’ game.

And guess who has always been studying them?! [drumroll] MEN!

Vaginas are funny stories that for centuries have given headaches to men for wanting to unpack vaginas’ features and women for the “findings” that men have “found” about theirs/ours vaginas. What have these “science” men have found? [drumroll] NOTHING!

Science-men have rather created what Emily Martin (1991) has defined a fairy tale. Vaginas are designed for initiating the process of menstruation which, in turn, has the only purpose of creating babies.

So, a fairy tale with a happy ending?

Unlike ordinary fairy tales that bring up hope and have a happy ending, this fairy tale has created gender roles––nothing like a happy ending (mostly for us women). Sperm is powerful, active, and so are men. Meanwhile, eggs — women — are passive, just waiting to be invaded and penetrated by the powerful eggs — men.

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No wonder girls and women — yes, like myself — wait to be kissed, rather than do the kissing; wait to be invited to a dance; wait for men to magically fulfil their sexual needs, rather than asking men to fulfil them.

It is all about gender roles. Most of the times when a blowjob is done there is no need for a request, and sometimes is just demanded by a push on the head of the unfortunate woman in question. Instead, when a vagina is licked, most of the times, there is a gentle request.

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What do Vaginas have to say about this?

First of all, Vaginas are not jigsaw puzzles. Vaginas are simply made of an outer and inner entrance; labia majora and labia minora; a central aisle towards the altar, in the sacred center, where the miracle takes place (Ensler, 2001: xvii). [Tada!] I present you a religious architecture and the Vagina itself…

Vaginas are simple, but to really “study” and understand them, you must listen to them.

— What do Vaginas say?

— Vaginas don’t talk!

And here enters Eve Ensler with “the Vagina Monologues”.

— “If your vagina could talk what would it say?

— “Feed me”.

Yes — Vaginas want to be fed, and not only during lockdown times, when you –if privileged– have nothing to do, but ALWAYS.

Spoiler alert: Vaginas are designed –yes for procreation–, but above all for PLEASURE!

This brings us to the so-called clitoris.

The clitoris is the living proof that the sole function of the vagina is not procreation. The clitoris is the sole muscle in human organisms whose function is all about pleasure.

That’s why science-men have been hunting the Clitoris.

Both men and women have been looking for it.

Some have never found it, some have thought to have found it.

The clitoris is not a myth, is not some three-foot monster.

The clitoris is there, believe me! And when you find it, that’s when the real miracle happens!

Vaginas are hungry for pleasure, orgasmS. But mostly vaginas are hungry for respect, care, consent, understanding… Vaginas have been invaded by men since colonisation. Colonisation, though, has not ended. Today, colonisation occurs through daily symbolic acts of violence. Symbolic acts of violence from the very fact that everyone wants to have a saying. For example: “vaginas are smelly”. Gender roles have teamed up with the soap and bath products market industry for making us believe that vaginas are smelly and that vaginas need to be smell-less or that need to smell like roses. For centuries we have been told that our vaginas needed to be cleaned almost as if we had coronavirus, way long before coronavirus appeared [probably you’d laugh now if this was a stand-up comedy].

Every vagina has its own smell. Fish… Pineapple… Snowflakes…

Colonisation and symbolic acts of violence against vaginas happen even by our beloved and “objective” science books that present fertilization of the eggs by the sperm as conquest, in a similar way that Europe conquested and “discovered” the Americas.

Vaginas are hungry for respect, care, consent, understanding…

[I have repeated myself, but — believe me — it is never enough]

The worse acts of violence are not the symbolic acts of violence, is the real violence. Rape, sexual assault, unconsented sex…

Vaginas have been put through acts of violences since their very existence.

Luckily, in the same way as colonisation happens every day, the decolonisation of vaginas, and vaginas’ and women’s empowerment, happen everyday…

“All of us, all women, have this capability to be connected, to be warriors, to be friends, to have as many facets as we wish, to be… an endless well of possibility”

(Hillary In Ensler, 2001: 156–7)

The very existence of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ is proof of that.

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Bibliography

Ensler, E. (2001) The Vagina Monologues

Martin, E. (1991) ‘The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical MaleFemale Roles’, Signs, 16(3), pp. 485–501