Chris, Erik, Katha, Marjorie (but mostly Chris):
The Vagina Monologues seems like an odd, slender branch from which to hang an entire discussion of feminism. The play makes few attempts to tie its discussion of clitorises to child care, employment, political representation, or most other first-tier feminist issues. This approach seems both right and refreshing–for once, our bodies are not our (whole) selves, but just bodies in need of pleasure and health and safety. So let’s not overreach either.
Besides, the play isn’t even that concerned with men! As Katha points out, it’s perfectly friendly: Ensler makes a point of welcoming the guys in the audience, and some of the monologues depict men who are tender and loving. Ensler does refer to rapists and other enemies of female happiness, but she doesn’t use them as stand-ins for all men. In fact, Chris, it almost sounds to me as if you’re doing what feminists are so often accused of: confusing a few bad guys for the entire male species.
And why do you assume the audience wouldn’t welcome a play about penises? I’d love it, especially if it were as warm and welcoming as The Vagina Monologues: Think of what I’d learn! Trying to imagine what your partner is feeling is the great mystery of sex, at least if you’re heterosexual. And it’s exactly the kind of secret that you can’t uncover in life but that might be elucidated by art.
I’m glad you mentioned a male version of The Vagina Monologues, though. A very effective, time-honored rhetorical strategy, this changing of shes to hes and hes to shes. How would men behave if they menstruated? (Readers, see yesterday’s discussion.) Could a woman get away with JFK- or Clinton-like sexual improprieties? These scenarios provide a quick, refreshing jolt by reversing the usual order of things. But ultimately they’re not all that helpful because they erase the gap between male and female experience, which is usually the very issue at stake. A play about penises would be welcome, but it would be far from the first mainstream art about penises. (See Portnoy’s wurst-less liver.) If a woman could’ve been president in 1960, then being an American woman would have been a lot more like being an American man. And if men could menstruate, well, they’d be women, or a lot more like women.
Erik, do you think Eve is Ensler’s actual, parent-given first name?
Over to you,
Jodi
P.S.: Someone stop Gloria Steinem before she blurbs again! My nomination for single most brain-dead moment in The Vagina Monologues is when Steinem admires the “self-knowledge and freedom” accorded to the vagina in India–this is symbolized by Hindu worship of the yoni, a female genital symbol–without considering the utterly miserable and unequal conditions under which most women in India live.
