VDay

I want to write about something that really means a lot to me. 

On Saturday Marie and I went to see the Vagina Monologues.  It was the matinee and there were maybe 20 other people there.  Last year when I went with Annette we went to the evening show and we had to sit on the floor because there were so many people.  It was emotional and moving and inspiring and hilarious and deeply depressing and thought provoking.

I tried to recruit a few people to go with us, by telling them that there were funny stories about pubic hair and screaming orgasms.  There are those stories.  They're funny.  They help make the mood a little more light hearted.  Because in between the stories about pubic hair and the different orgasm screams were terrible stories. 

Monologues from women raped during civil war in Africa, who used to think of their whole self as a reflection on their beautiful country but now hate their vaginas, their womanhood and their selves because they were repeatedly raped for days by dozens of soldiers and their guns. 

Monologues about transgender individuals who were born male and grew up feeling with every fiber of their being that they were female and were beaten every day of their youth because of it and after their sex change found their boyfriend murdered because he had been dating her.

Monologues about the beauty and the pain associated with birth.  Every word from that heart wrenching monologue I related to because I experienced watching the greatness of the miracle of birth.  Eve Ensler  wrote about her experience watching her grandchild be born, and said this about the experience (and much more):

AND AS I STARED,

HER VAGINA SUDDENLY BECAME

A WIDE, RED,

PULSING HEART.

THE HEART IS CAPABLE OF SACRIFICE.

SO IS THE VAGINA.

THE HEART IS ABLE TO FORGIVE AND REPAIR.

IT CAN CHANGE ITS SHAPE TO LET US IN.

IT CAN EXPAND TO LET US OUT.

SO CAN THE VAGINA.

IT CAN ACHE FOR US AND STRETCH FOR US,

AND DIE FOR US.

AND BLEED AND BLEED US INTO THIS DIFFICULT...

WONDROUS WORLD.

SO CAN THE VAGINA.

Imagine someone reading that with tears streaming down their face and feeling those words reverberating throughout your being.

Monologues written to the freaking idiot congressman Todd Akin who said that a woman wouldn't get pregnant from a legitimate rape--claiming that somehow a woman's body wouldn't let her get pregnant if she didn't want the sex she was getting and therefore, abortion should not be allowed in the cases of rape (because if it was rape you wouldn't have gotten pregnant).  Did you know the Republican Party backed him on this sentiment?  I reiterate the monologue when I say "Dear Todd Akin, let a stranger, friend or family member violate your most intimate and spiritual self by shoving something into your most private of places and then feel the fear as the semen runs through your body, terrified of the life that you are creating, knowing you can't get an abortion because abortion is wrong and being told that you should have the baby with the face of your rapist and love it anyway because it is a part of you and then be told that you obviously were not legitimately raped because you got pregnant." 

Did you know that the rate of female genital mutilation and cutting has been reduced in Egypt from 97% to 91% in the last few years?  It has gone down 6% in the last ten years, but still 91 out of every 100 girls will have their clitoris cut off, some by a scalpel, but others by shards of glass, razor blades, knives or whatever else their mutilators can get their hands on.  The equivalent in cutting off the clitoris of a man would be to cut off his entire penis.  But he could keep his testicles.  Female genital mutilation and cutting can lead to tetanus, infection, bladder and kidney problems, death, sepsis, and problems with child birth.  Not to mention a loss of physical satisfaction derived from sex, BUT OH WAIT because women aren't men and don't need to enjoy sex anyway.  Especially if they're from an African country. 

This was the most powerful monologue to me.  Maybe one day I can perform it:

"I am over rape.
I am over rape culture, rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook.
I am over the thousands of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame.
I am over people demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it freedom of speech or justifying it as a joke.
I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don’t have a sense of humor, and women don’t have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don’t think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.
I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape.
I am over Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages.
I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable.
I am over the thousands of women in Bosnia, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice.
I am over rape happening in broad daylight.
I am over the 207 clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that are capturing, raping, and torturing lesbians to make them straight.
I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their so-called 'comrades.'
I am over the forces that deny women who have been raped the right to have an abortion.
I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he is still running for the President of the United States.
And I’m over CNBC debate host Maria Bartiromo getting booed when she asked him about it. She was booed, not Herman Cain.
Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who protested the justice system instead of the alleged rapist pedophile of at least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect those children after knowing what was happening to them.
I am over rape victims becoming re-raped when they go public.
I am over starving Somalian women being raped at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, and I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.
I am over women still being silent about rape, because they are made to believe it’s their fault or they did something to make it happen.
I am over violence against women not being a #1 international priority when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime — the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.
No women, no future, duh.
I am over this rape culture where the privileged with political and physical and economic might, take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.
I am over the endless resurrection of the careers of rapists and sexual exploiters — film directors, world leaders, corporate executives, movie stars, athletes — while the lives of the women they violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live in social and emotional exile.
I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?
You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren’t you standing with us? Why aren’t you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?
I am over years and years of being over rape.
And thinking about rape every day of my life since I was 5-years-old.
And getting sick from rape, and depressed from rape, and enraged by rape.
And reading my insanely crowded inbox of rape horror stories every hour of every single day.
I am over being polite about rape. It’s been too long now, we have been too understanding.
We need to OCCUPYRAPE in every school, park, radio, TV station, household, office, factory, refugee camp, military base, back room, night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We need people to truly try and imagine — once and for all — what it feels like to have your body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need to let our rage and our compassion connect us so we can change the paradigm of global rape.
There are approximately one billion women on the planet who have been violated.
ONE BILLION WOMEN.
The time is now. Prepare for the escalation.
Today it begins, moving toward February 14, 2013, when one billion women will rise to end rape.
Because we are over it."

Did you know that 1/3 of women world wide will be raped or beaten in their lifetime?  That is 1 BILLION people that are currently on this earth.  That statistic does not change in Utah.  According to the Utah Department of Health, rape is the only violent crime rate that is higher in Utah than it is in the rest of the nation.  1 in 3 Utah women will be sexually assaulted, 1 in 8 will be raped.  This does not account for women that are abused in a physical, non sexual way.

Watch this, and try not to cry:



And this, my beloved friends, is why The Vagina Monologues is not only great, but important.  And while there was a $10 ticket price, that $10 is going to help women in Utah County in need.  And that is a cause I can get behind.