The Vagina Conversations

My dear friend Nik recently emailed me to let me know she will be performing in an upcoming production of The Vagina Monologues. Unfortunately I can’t attend to support her and her vagina (she lives 10 hours away), but her email made me realize that the reappearance of The Vagina Monologues in art culture at this moment in American history is extremely important. Perhaps more now than ever before.

I remember attending a production of TVM in college, when I was bright-eyed and innocent and struggling to develop and solidify my nascent opinions about the rights of women in America. I invited my mom to my college town for the Valentine’s Day performance because I thought she’d enjoy it (and probably also in the hope that she’d take me out for a dinner of higher quality than Ramen noodles, and foot the bill), and she had the misfortune to trip and fall in the aisle of the theater. (Don't worry, she was OK.) Having inherited her charming clumsiness myself, she often recollects this event when one of us trips or falls but she gets the name wrong, calling it alternately, “The Vagina Dialogues,” or, “The Vagina Conversations.”

It seems that each day’s news brings me more information about American politicians – especially male politicians – who could probably benefit from a straightforward conversation with an American vagina or two. Men who claim that it oppresses their right to religious freedom to have to provide health insurance that covers contraception. Men who want women seeking an abortion to submit to an invasive and medically unnecessary ultrasound, be lectured on the parts of the fetus, and then wait 24 hours before being able to have the procedure. Men who declare that they want abortion to be illegal, while simultaneously slashing funding for programs like sex education, preventive health care for women, and accessible contraception – three things that are proven to reduce the occurrence of abortion. In other words, men who really hate women who enjoy having sex just for the pure physical and emotional enjoyment it brings. Men who hate women like me, who subscribe to no religion, derive great pleasure from non-marital sex, and are childless and prefer to keep it that way, thankyouverymuch.

As the national discourse on this topic, which is unfairly dominated by close-minded men, continues to escalate, I find myself experiencing a multitude of emotions.  They range from disbelief (Are you fucking kidding me?) to utter outrage (ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?). Yet more than anything else I keep returning to disappointment of a magnitude that I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced before. I’m disappointed in the group of politicians who are waging this war against women, and I’m disappointed that there has not been an uproar so deafeningly loud that it instantly silenced those very same politicians. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it is extraordinarily unlikely that I will be able to convince anyone who disagrees with me to see things from my perspective. They seem to have their beliefs (and inevitably their religion) and they are holding on tight and closing their eyes and shaking their heads and that is pretty much that.

But what about the people who agree with me and somehow aren’t incensed enough to be screaming at the tops of their lungs about these state-sponsored abuses? Being an optimist I have to believe that there are enough people, women especially, who possess the minimum amount of required common sense to see that the political agenda being proposed and executed by religious conservatives across the country is disrespectful, abusive, and short-sighted. Why aren’t they following Nik’s lead and finding a production of The Vagina Monologues in which to participate? Why aren’t they speaking up on their Facebook pages and blogs and writing letters to their elected officials (my current preferred methods of civil discourse)? Why aren’t they livid and letting everyone know about it?

Perhaps it’s because, like the majority of women in America, they don’t believe they will really ever need or want to get an abortion. And since they already have to pay their $30 co-pay for their birth control pill each month, it’s not too terrible a stretch to have to spend another $30 to cover the whole cost. Maybe the added expenditure each month is worth it to avoid a series of uncomfortable conversations with their families, friends, co-workers, and community members.  It’s also possible that – what with the time and effort women are spending pursuing education, starting and maintaining strong careers, supporting spouses and partners, and raising children – they simply don’t have the time or energy to put up a fight.

But maybe it’s even worse than that. Maybe it’s because they are worried that they will be further and publicly insulted and disrespected and just prefer not to subject themselves to any more nonsense than they’ve already had to endure – like being accused of being a slut, as Sandra Fluke recently was by Rush Limbaugh, or being wrongly characterized as a group of human beings too ignorant to decide for themselves what’s best for their bodies and their lives and their families. If this is part of the reason for what I believe to be relative silence on the part of many people (especially women!) who ought to be speaking up, then I have some words of encouragement: What a woman consents to do with her vagina and with whom she consents to do those things is nobody’s fucking business except hers and the person or people with whom she does whatever it is she’s doing. If I want to have a lot of sex and never want to have a baby that is MY business. If YOU don’t believe that contraception is moral, then YOU don’t have to use it. And that is your business. If YOU don’t believe that abortion is moral, then YOU don’t have to get one. And that is your business. It seems that some politicians and leaders of conservative thought in this country need to be constantly reminded of this. So let's remind them.

When I read articles like this one I feel like I’ve woken up in some terrible episode of The Twilight Zone. This is 2012, right? We live in the United States of America, right? Are men REALLY still THIS threatened by female sexuality? After how hard we’ve worked as a nation to promote the rights of women, are we seriously letting this happen? We must stop it, and to do that we have to speak up. We have to speak out. We have to DO something – lots of things! So I’ll ask you, please, please, email your representatives in Congress. Share this blog post with someone. Donate to Planned Parenthood. Tweet a news article that you think is important. Or, you know, go all out and do ALL of those things, and then participate in a performance of The Vagina Monologues like my homegirl Nik.