Vagina Vagina Vagina!

I will make no retraction later for what I’m about to say. I won’t apologize for using any of the language following this sentence. I will also not feel demeaned, degraded, or defiled the next time a person calls me a name that is construed as pejorative such as cunt, twat, slut, bitch or any other name they feel I may truly take offense to. Those things mean nothing to me, how could they.sticks and stones.yet many people truly take offense to such things. Apparently, the worst of those things is the vagina and the way people feel about talking about vaginas.

The women’s center is about to put on their eighth production of the play The Vagina Monologues. Every year I participate in this event, I am moved by the honesty of the women who donate their time to this project. How strongly they feel about being a part of a movement that seeks to promote awareness and change. I’m always amazed at the single-mindedness of the protesters and naysayers who never seem to have read the play or seen it. Moreover, I’m always in awe that vagina is a dirty word to them. That a body part is considered dirty and unfit to talk about.

My vagina is NOT a dirty secret, every other person on this planet has one, and without question everyone came from one. I firmly believe that I may talk about my vagina in the whichever terms are the most comfortable for me, whether that be referring to it as hoo ha, foofy, pee pee, topo, vagina or any other array of names we were taught for it has children.

Talking about being a vagina warrior or referring to myself as a vagina is not diminishing myself to a body part; it’s claiming that part of my body for myself, acknowledging that it exists by talking about it openly and freely and not being ashamed of it. Being part of this production makes me proud to be a woman. I get to talk with other women about their experiences and simultaneously surround myself with strong minds and ideals. These women participating in the Vagina Monologues that I am proud to call my friends, are opening up discussion about how they discovered that vagina is a part of them and not just a word the doctor uses.

They are calling out the words that their mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, grandparents, friends, and lovers, have used as euphemisms for vagina. They are not demeaning themselves or other women by using these words. They are telling powerful stories about influential events in women’s lives. And yes Virginia, they are going to talk about vaginas. They are going to talk discovering vaginas, birth, worry, orgasms, pain, lesbians, and a good experience with a man, moaning, reclaiming cunt, flooding, tampons and all other things that have to do with being a woman. They are going to show us what they as women have felt, seen, and experienced.

But there are things they are not doing too; they are not condoning rape, they are not saying all marriage is bad, they are not giving intimate masturbation lessons and they are not reducing themselves to merely a body part. They are reclaiming womanhood. They are calling out the word vagina and wanting you to respond.

ELISE ROBBINS
Guest Opinion

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