By Robby Muhumuza LOTS of fire has been exchanged over the controversial Vagina Monologues play by American self-confessed feminist Eve Ensler, in Kampala.
I have just completed reading this play. Just as the title suggests, the whole play is centred around women”s sexual experiences based on interviews with 200 of them.
The play mostly dwells on sexual topics and uses language that is taboo and forbidden in most cultures like masturbation, menstruation, female genital mutilation, rape, bestiality, oral sex, lesbian sex, sex with children, deviant sex, orgasms, etc.
The author uses shocking , provocative and titillating words in celebration and glorification of the female sexual organ as if she is obsessed with it. Naughty street slang that many people might find revolting is sometimes used.
Shock tactics are used in an irreverent manner in many parts of this play. On the back cover of the book, Gloria Steinem describes the book as “the new bible of a new generation of women”. In another monologue, a woman says her sexual organ smells like “God” (p. 93). In another monologue that describes different sexual moans, one of them is nicknamed “the semi-religious moan (a Muslim chanting sound)” p. 110.
Adoration of the female sexual organ prominent in the monologue in honour of the sexual organ during birth.. Ensler says she used to hold the female sexual organ “in awe” but after witnessing a child being born, “I am certainly in deep worship now” p.120.
In this chant of worship, the organ is described as a “sacred vessel”. She praises it as being capable of “sacrifice”, “able to forgive and repair” p.124. You can hear religious innuendos in the part that says, “It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed...us into this difficult wondrous world” p.125.
The Monologues portray men negatively, blaming the much for much of the evil that happens to women. Men are portrayed as child defilers, rapists, philanderers and brutes. The only man praised is Bob. And it is because he spends hours transfixed as he gazes into and admires the sexual organ of one woman.
For a play that should be exposing sexual violence against women, the biggest section of the play is not about this theme. More time and space is spent on describing in glowing terms the female genitals, masturbation and lesbian sex than violence against women. However, one of the monologues is about the rape of women refugees in Bosnia. The play condemns the systematic use of rape of women as a weapon of war.
The play reveals that during 1993, between 20,000 and 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe without anyone doing something to stop it. It is also argued that in USA over 500,000 women are raped every year (p. 60). This is followed by a ghastly description of gang rape and how the woman was traumatised by it.
Female genital mutilation that affects 80 to 100 million girls and young women in an inhuman manner and leads to tetanus, deformed body parts, painful child birth and early deaths is also condemned and decried in one of the monologues.
Lesbian dominance is glorified in a monologue of a bored tax lawyer that discovers that her “mission” and new “calling” in life is to become a lesbian sex worker. “Women pay me to dominate them, to excite them, to make them come” (p. 105). She adds that she is now “addicted to making women (sexually) happy” p.106.
The Monologue on pages 115-118 is a steamy graphic description of lesbian sexual activities in titillating language that is more of pornography than intellectual artistic literature. In fact it is a clear detailed manual of how to carry out lesbian sex.
The play criticises incest and other repeated abuse by men against women as it “ultimately eats away at their self-esteem, driving them to drugs, prostitution, AIDS and in many cases death” (p. 76).
Ironically, the play glorifies lesbian child-sex defilement. In a monologue entitled, “The Little Coochi Snorcher” (pp. 77-82, a 13-year-old girl describes in sensual language how she was seduced by a 24-year-old woman and initiated into masturbation and lesbian sex at such a tender age. This experience is described as having helped her find her “salvation” and her abused sex organ is transformed “into a kind of heaven” p.82. Talk about being irreverent and worshipping the sexual organ.
In yet another controversial monologue a 6-year-old girl is asked about what she thinks about her sexual organ and the reply is quite colourful.
Over all, the play claims to be fighting against violence against women. However, apart from decrying the evils that men do, I do not see any tips for fighting or preventing this violence except to shun men,
worship the female sexual organ and become
a lesbian. Instead of advancing the women’s emancipation cause, I see it as taking them backwards by turning them into sex objects.
The writer, a researcher and writer, has a BA (Literature), Makerere University, and a Master of Science (Journalism) from Ohio University, USA
