No big loss over V-Monologues ban!

Feb 17, 2005

SIR— Surely, is this all there is to the brutality against women? Must someone go out of their way to first shock people in order to address violence against women?

SIR— Surely, is this all there is to the brutality against women? Must someone go out of their way to first shock people in order to address violence against women? It is clear that the people responsible for marketing this play did not prepare well for Uganda. Maybe they underestimated the reaction. It has been reported that the money from the play will be donated to some NGOs. Following a report in The New Vision that a Christian-founded NGO in the north had distanced itself from the funds, I realised that for sure it would have been hard for my sisters there to explain the meaning of Vagina Monologues to their people.
Working in the field of sexual health, I wonder why the title had to be that vulgar, yet communicators pride themselves in understanding their audience needs and communicating in a language that is not offensive. Sometimes would-be audiences tell us to change certain words so that we don’t sound vulgar yet this is in reference to HIV/AIDS and other sex related topics.
One of the organisers said that rural women really understood and appreciated the play. So I wondered why it wasn’t being staged in the rural areas, in the local languages. That would have been interesting. How would they have translated that controversial title into the local language? I think they would definitely have toned it down and as a result lost the controversy that is supposed to attract crowds.
On the other hand, the writer must be having a great day since so much attention has been drawn towards the play. But we need to ask ourselves what her motives were. I think she wasn’t sensitive enough to some communities, and the organisers should have moved a little slower. We shouldn’t be fooled by the so-called donations coming to the needy NGOs. There is always a catch somewhere. We might be getting more than what we see.
In the meantime, I am still wondering how to translate the title, hence discuss the content of the play with my grandmother. It’s amazing what the world has come to, but Ugandans have done well to raise concern about the play.

Concerned woman
(Name withheld
on request)
SIR— If you want to poison someone, the poison must be mixed with something
palatable in order to trick
the person into ingesting it.
We cannot vouch for
the poisoned food basing
on the amount of vitamins
or minerals it contains
in spite of its poison content. We must throw the whole thing out.
The Vagina Monologues
masquerades as a tool
for female empowerment
and education, but is laced with the poison of lesbianism and loveless sexual
gratification.
Objection to the use of
the word ‘vagina’ is a red
herring. It does not even
prepare one for the explicit nature of the lesbian
pornography contained
in the text of the play.
As women seek to empower and educate themselves,
they should be careful
about what they embrace
and what they feed to their children.
I don’t think Ugandans need
to go so far in search
of education about violence against women. We have the LRA in the north, cattle raiders in the east and rapists, defilers, wife-beaters in every district of this country. Are their stories of no consequence to us, or is their social status too low for them to be of note?
Ugandan women have come a long way and are capable of empowering themselves.

Andrew Ideket
Kampala

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