The Book Club

Is It Man-Hating To Masturbate?

Well, I can’t resist jumping in here. I haven’t read The Vagina Monologues in book form, but I went to the Madison Square Garden gala performance, and I thought it was fantastic. So what if it isn’t Hamlet or even Tom Stoppard? When was the last time you saw a modern American play that measured up to the literary standards you are applying here–especially on the page, where many plays look a little thin and wan? What we have here is a performance piece–loosely constructed, often revised and updated, that is by turns hilarious, brassy, lyrical, poignant, romantic, tragic, vulgar, exhilarating. It has nothing to apologize for–it’s a great night in the theatre. You really should have been there!

Actually, I thought some of The Vagina Monologues was pretty wonderful, even as writing–the old woman who thinks of her “down there” as a cellar full of dead animals and who tells the story about her one passionate kiss and her dream of Burt Reynolds swimming in her embarrassing “flood” of sexual wetness. Some of it was a little familiar, like the “Angry Vagina” monologue about the little indignities of uncomfortable tampons and gyno exams. (Although Rosie Perez was really comical in this one, all pumped up and snorting like a girl prize fighter.) Some of the parts that probably look flat on the page–the opening list of slang names for vaginas (mimi, toto, etc.)–have a wacky, surreal, cumulative effect when recited by ball gown-clad actresses swirling about the stage. As for the “Cunt” segment, on the page it’s kind of obvious alliterative word play. Performed by Glenn Close, who relished each sound as if it was a bite of the most wonderful meal she’d ever had in her life–it was delicious.

The Vagina Monologues is a performance piece–loosely constructed; changing over time; in segments that are by turns hilarious, exhilarating, poignant, romantic, and tragic. It’s about transforming female sexuality from a source of shame and disgust into a source of pleasure, connection, and creative energy. (And before you make fun of that, consider how often the penis has been given that symbolic role, as sword, as sceptre, as pen.) It’s about becoming a sexual subject instead of the sexual object that is mostly what our culture–and other cultures–consider a woman to be. That’s a dry sentence, so let me assure our readers that Eve Ensler makes her points not by preaching or dryly expounding but through humor, metaphor, stories, fantasy, music, voices.

It’s true that there is some sexual violence in the play, but I am surprised that both Chris and Erik see it, and its audience, as hostile to sex and men. (Now that they know Jodi and I were there, they’ll want to rethink that, of course). I just don’t get that. The whole play is an ode to sex–not porno-mechanical sex, as Chris claims, but warm, quirky, affectionate, friendly sex. There is no praise of celibacy, no “political lesbianism,” no anti-male diatribes–and no praise of sex without feeling. The scene that bothered you both, in which a frigid, uptight woman learns to masturbate, is not about excluding men from one’s life on principle; it’s about learning to have an orgasm. What could be the harm in that? Do you think it’s man-hating to masturbate? I detect a certain element of threatened masculinity here.

Chris compares the audience laughing and applauding sexy taboo words to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (i.e., anti-sex prudes) and the play’s feminist sensibilities to the Turner Diaries, the white supremacist pulp novel which features mass lynchings of blacks and Jews after a Neo-Nazi takeover of the United States. I don’t understand this comparison at all. Chris, do you really think Marisa Tomei and Calista Flockhart and Julie Kavner (voice of Marge Simpson) are the moral equivalents of Hitler fans and racists? Is Tampax, which helped underwrite the show, the IG Farben de nos jours?

Why not change into something a little more comfortable and just let your mind float free … think about seashells, rose petals, snowflakes, breasts … yes, that’s right … right there … like that. …

Katha