Word: enslerã
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...Ensler??s project is to lift every woman out of the false consciousness that is life in the patriarchy. The play suggests that everyone with a vagina will love her vagina if given the chance—and if she doesn’t, it must be due to patriarchal oppression and/or sexual assault. But false consciousness is inherently condescending. It tells many women—perhaps even most women—that their way of living and thinking and presenting themselves as women is inauthentic. The paternalistic implication is that Ensler knows what these women really think...
...should not read the Monologues as a mere equation of women and vaginas. Instead, we must view them as Ensler??s representation of women, based on her life experience, which includes speaking with many women. Many audience members and critics are complicit in Ensler??s creative control over the vagina. We must keep in mind that the woman, women and even the vagina, with pop anatomy seemingly backing up its universality, are culturally constructed and historically specific institutions. While there may be trends, narratives with which we can identify and terms that are situationally useful, there...
...Ensler??s official website boasts that her play “has given a voice to women of all ages all over the world.” Ensler never attributes her stories to anyone. They may be composites of people she talked with. They may be complete reproductions of one side of a conversation. The monologues were all originally interviews. Ensler has written herself as interviewer out of the dialogue, and re-inserted herself as the interpreter of what she has now constructed as a monologue...
...play reflects a tiny fragment of the breadth of women’s experience. Even in the Ensler era, many voices remain excluded. What about women who have not had the opportunity to go to college, who are excluded from performing since the bread and butter of Ensler??s enterprise is V-Day performances at colleges and universities? Where is the transsexual woman who loves her female sexuality, who came about loving her vagina in a different way than the voices that are shown? What about people who don’t want their vaginas touched, not because...
...there’s one thing you can’t deny Ensler, it’s that her play does encourage dialogue about the vagina. If that expands to include broader discussions of patriarchy, gender and sexuality, great. Ensler??s woman-types are more affirming and complex than those presented in much of Western culture. But if it stops with Eve’s Vagina, then we’re not much better off than we were before...