It’s not me, it’s you: Breaking up with The Vagina Monologues
Listen, Eve. It’s 2017.
It’s time to let go.
I want to be clear: I respect the shit out of you, Ms. Ensler. The Vagina Monologues was crucially important when it began… in 1996. And therein lies the problem: the show is now 21 years old, old enough to legally throw back a margarita or three, which is coincidentally what I feel like doing after I hear some of the show’s more dated pieces.
Let’s backtrack a bit, so I can hopefully give myself some vaginal authority in the eyes of TVM-lovers. When I was a timid, insecure college freshman in 2013, I decided to audition for my university’s production of the Monologues. Fresh off 13 years in Catholic school, the audition felt intentional, subversive — the way it should feel, I think.
I don’t regret it. I loved participating in the production, and I relished being on stage once again. I met some of the most empowered, energetic, liberated women I’ve ever had the privilege to know, and I’m so, so grateful that I still call many of them friends today.
But as I listened to the pieces from the wings of the stage, a quiet concern wiggled in. If you’ve seen the show, you might be able to identify what I mean. In several monologues, most notably “Because He Liked to Look at It,” vaginas are positively and unequivocally equated with the entire physical experience of being a woman. “I want to see you,” Bob tells the narrator, you referring explicitly to her vagina. Fine. Men are dumb and say cheesy shit, like equating an entire woman to her vagina, thinking it’s romantic. I can forgive Bob, maybe. But I can’t forgive Eve — the vaginal essentialism continues in “The Vagina Workshop,” as the speaker waxes poetic about a vagina-whispering guide who tells her that she is her clitoris.
So, fine — even if these two monologues are slightly dated and problematique, what about the rest of the show? Each director chooses which pieces to include and which to skip, so why toss the whole show?
Well, for one, whether you include these pieces or not (and both productions I’ve seen have included both, by the way), the show is still textually trans-exclusive in its anatomical essentialism. Even — and this is my biggest gripe — the supposedly “trans inclusive” monologue that Ensler pats herself on the back for adding makes sure to explicitly mention that the speaker (or speakers, depending on the staging) have vaginas. “Trans women are totally women!,” the piece seems to be saying, “As long as they have vaginas!” (Also, I would be remiss to mention that not everyone with a vagina is a woman, either. I’ll hopefully cover that in a bit.)
Well, here’s a news flash: trans women are women whether they have vaginas or not. I’m a cis woman. I have a vagina. I think it’s great. I’m a big fan. But it doesn’t make me a woman, and women who don’t have or want vaginas are still women. And that, I think, is the fault that the show refuses to absolve. I think we should talk about vaginas, and I think we should talk about women with vaginas. I do think we should talk about vaginas as the sites of explicitly gendered violence. The problem is when we impose the mentality that vagina = woman and woman = vagina. I would like to believe we’re past that, but I know a lot of people aren’t, and I would hate to think that well-meaning productions of a dated, biologically essentialist show reinforce that notion.
I’m not saying I’m unilaterally right. Obviously. There are trans women who participate in the Monologues, and are rightfully empowered by doing so. Pieces like “My Vagina was My Village” and “My Short Skirt” are powerful, historically relevant, and important. But I think there’s so much more that we could be doing — like American University, which decided to start a production composed of original student monologues in lieu of trying to re-stage the wheel with yet another year of The Vagina Monoluges. I love the idea of something like that — something fresh, deeply personal, and, ultimately, suited to our progressing notions of gender and womanhood. I don’t think we should abandon The Vagina Monologues as a revolutionary text for its time, but I’m starting to feel more and more convinced that we should leave its trans-exclusionary assets in 1996.
