Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues

You can watch it on youtube here.
Eve Ensler dedicates The Vagina Monologues for all the women who moan and matter.
The vagina monologues were premiered in 1996 , and the V-DAY movement was born in 1998, so 2018 marks its 20th anniversary. In the 20 years since the benefit performance and the first edition of the text, “The Vagina Monologues” has been translated into 48 languages and has been performed in more than 140 countries. On January 9th, the20th anniversary edition of the book was released, including six never-before-published monologues.

V-Day mission statement -
" The V-Day is an organised response against violence towards women. V-Day is a vision: We see a world where women live safely and freely. V-Day is a demand: Rape, incest,battery,genital mutilation, and sexual slavery must end now. V-Day is a spirit: We believe women should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.. V-Day is a catalyst: By raising money and consciousness,it will unify and strengthen existing anti-violence efforts. Triggering far- reaching awareness, it will lay the groundwork for new educational, protective, and legislative endeavours throughout the world. V-Day is a process: We will work as long as it takes. We will not stop untill the violence stops. V-Day is a day: We proclaim Valentine's Day as V-Day, to celebrate women and end the violence. V-Day is a fierce, wild, unstoppable movement and community."

Eve Ensler was worried about Vaginas , about what we think of them and more importantly what we don't. So she talked with over 200 women of different ages,races and sexualities. She talked with them about their vaginas , women were shy at first but once they got going ,you couldn't stop them , it's mainly because it's such a taboo topic, no one talks about it at all. In the 20th anniversary edition, there's an introduction by Eve Ensler where she talks about radical anti-racist feminism and patriarchy,how we are stopped even to say the names of the most precious parts of our bodies. But the thing is if something isn't named,it is not seen, it doesn't exist. More than ever,it's time to tell the crucial stories and say the words, whether they're "vagina", "My stepfather raped me ", or "The president is a predator and a racist."

There is a part in the monologues called, I was there in the room , it's about birth , It ends with," 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,die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina." This entire monologue is so surreal, and I couldn't agree more when she says , We forget the vagina, all of us. What else would explain our lack of awe, our lack of wonder? This is in contrast with the woman who said she hadn't seen her vagina for 72 years ,but at the end of the interview when she had finally got out everything from her heart she was pleased and felt better and said the author was the first person she had ever talked with about her vagina .

Therelies aveil of secrecy around certain topics and it'ssomething that is experienced by virtually all women. A large part of the play is about the discovery of the vagina, the feeling of becoming familiar with oneself and holding no shame in experiencing or talking about the pleasures and pains felt within. A section of the play titled ‘The Moaner’ is about the story of a tax lawyer-turned-lesbian-sex-worker and how she had decided to make the jump because she had been fascinated by women’s moans,she loves to make women happy. What lead her was in her own words, “I couldn’t believe that such big, outrageous ungoverned sounds like that came out of women!” . The point of showcasing such moments was not their influence on changing a patriarchal society, atleast it's not the main motive , but that acknowledging sexual desires and loving one selfunashamedly can push the needle in thedirection of healthy discourse. That change can come a little closer by the simple act of respect and recognition. I once read that in older times, not so old ,during the Victorian times women had a specific illness, men called it hysteria , the doctors cured it by inventing the dildo and satisfy women and giving them orgasms . And this is how women became good again . But only if someone could tell the men that women were just sexually frustrated, it's not changed all that much to be honest,even today many men don't "believe" women can experience orgasms or that women enjoy sex .

The Vagina Monologues touches on multiple aspects of feminism, starting from recognising what’s missing to taking control of it, today we sell everything through sex,but people can't sit down with their own children and have a responsible discussion about sex. A spectrum of emotions is on display in sections of the play be it‘My Angry Vagina’ or 'hair' or ' the vagina workshop' .' Because he liked to look at it'and 'Reclaiming Cunt' ,felt more personal because seriously when was the last time you talked about your vagina , when was the last time you actually loved yourself, we say we are more open minded but me for one can't get my mother to have the sex talk with me let alone ask her about her body . What I understand is that vaginas can be as fierce as they can be soft and needs as much respect as they need love.

While some monologues are about reclaiming the body and accepting it without feeling ashamed some other monologues are about more serious concerns like my vagina was my village , The memory of her face ,They beat the girl out of my boy...or so they tried, crooked braid, say it; it's cruelty that we see through these Monologues, it is spine chilling to read a husband smiling after slapping his wife ,buring her in snow , beating her so much that she has five brain surgeries , she has to learn to relearn to talk to mover her arms to cook, also marital rape . Reading the monologue about the comfort women, crying with them, and then reading about a man beating his wife and finally melting her face with acid . In the last monologue called 'over it' has a para ," I am over being told I don't have a sense of humour,and women don't have a sense of humour,when most women I know are really fucking funny, we just don't think that uninvited penises up our anus or our vagina is a laugh riot."

The thing is, it's not like we are unaware of the monstrous things that happen with women, it's about the indifference, there are so many people who now don't even feel surprise when they hear or read about the injustice, the inhumane things that are done to women . Have we accepted it as something that just happens , we can't let this be normalise . The pain the suffering, it's wrong , the word 'wrong ' loses meaning , it's so much more than just wrong . We can't let this be continued, we have to make sure this stops . How does this happen that when victims of rape go out in the society they are re-raped. I am done accepting people justifying the monsters as mentally ill , I do not care what made them do it . They did it , you know it . KILL THEM. Let her kill him, even better . But please just stop doing nothing or just putting them in jail , please don't care for who they are related to and please oh society don't make our lives hell and just let us be .

After two decades since its first production in New York, is “The Vagina Monologues” still important? Some people may argue that the work has lost some of its edge now that such candid discussion can be found in stand-up comedy and mainstream television drama alike butMs Ensler’s creation is still urgent, particularly in light of the current #MeToo movement.Vagina Monologues has been performed in India since 2003, by artists including Mody-Kotwal, Dolly Thakore and Jayati Bhatia. The monologues , while still maintaining the authenticity of the original play have been carefully adapted to an Indian audience, with the names, locations and cultural references changed, like the accent in a monologue of the character of a couples’ counsellor changed from German to Bengali, or an episode of a girl falling in love at a pani-puri stand instead of a bar. An entire monologue narrating the story of a woman who performs plays to remove taboos associated with the word “cunt” turned into a nukkad natak which is by a loud Punjabi woman trying to get people to say the word “chut”.

The vagina monologues has also faced many backlashes, like criticism from feminists, The Vagina Monologues has been criticized by some within the feminist movement, including pro-sex feminists and individualist feminists.Betty Dodson, a sex positive feminist, author of several books about female sexuality, saw the play as having a narrow and restrictive view of sexuality. Her main concern seemed to be the lack of the term "clitoris" throughout the play.Dodson believes that the play sends a message that the vagina is the main sex organ, not the clitoris .She also has noted that the "V" in V-Day no longer stands for vagina, but for violence.

The Vagina Monologues has also been criticised about its conflation of vaginas as women, more specifically for the message of the play that women are their vaginas, as Susan E. Bell and Susan M. Reverby haveargued, "Generations of feminists have argued that we are more than our bodies, more than a vagina or 'the sex'. Yet, TVM re-inscribes women's politics in our bodies, indeed in our vaginas alone".The focus on women finding themselves through their vaginas, many say, seems more like a Second Wave consciousness-raising group rather than a ground-breaking, inter-sectional, Third Wave cornerstone.

Eve Ensler is the founder of the V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls that has raised more that $100 million for local groups and activists. Ensler is also the founder of One Billion Rising,the biggest global mass action campaign to end violence against women in human history, which is active in more than two hundred countries,and the co-founder of the City Of Joy, the revolutionary leadership centre for survivors of gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.