Word: vaginae
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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...
Ensler has colonized the vagina as her own personal space and made it safe for all the types of women she allows—but where does this hegemony of Eve leave everyone else...
...craft who these characters are, as long as they fall within the definition of woman. But what definition of woman? Such a question may seem odd to people not involved in gender studies, but there are many ways to define a woman—such as chromosomes, a vagina, breasts, a uterus, clothing, pronouns, using the ladies’ room, self-identification—and no consensus has been reached...
...title and content of the play offers Ensler’s answer to this question—women are people with vaginas. This equation of woman and vagina is meant to make women aware of their own vaginas (as if they were not before) and to create public discussion of vaginas, which are often considered an inappropriate topic for public discourse. However, this equation of women and vaginas presents the dangerous possibility of biological reductivism and an interpretation of the play that says women are vaginas and vaginas are women, period...
...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...