![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/251\/2014\/02\/vday.png\" "\\"vday\\"")
<\/a>Rehearsals for The Vagina Monologues<\/em> have begun on my campus again this year and I have a lot of jumbled thoughts and reactions to taking the stage with students once again.\u00a0 Things I want the students to know, things I want the world to know, things I want to remember.<\/p>\nWhen the brave first group of students staged this production on campus here in 2005, they were met with some resistance around use of space.\u00a0 From religious leaders.\u00a0 Participants had anti-feminist and anti-VDay fliers left on their cars.\u00a0 From a religious organization.\u00a0 We had to communicate with security to ensure a safe and successful event.<\/p>\n
Today, this is an annual and expected event that barely raises an eyebrow.\u00a0 In some ways, its continued presence has been part of the reason that conversations about gender on campus have changed.<\/p>\n
This will be the fifth time I\u2019ve been on stage in our productions of the Monologues, and about the millionth time I have seen and heard them.\u00a0 I remember the first time, a professional production in Denver with my friend Stacie about fifteen years ago\u2026 I think we might have bought scalped tickets outside the theatre, it was such a hot show back then.\u00a0 Now, I can almost recite every one of them.\u00a0 In my head, they live on in the voices of specific women I know who have memorably brought them to life over the past decade.\u00a0 Kelsey\u2019s The Flood, Kaitlin and \u201cBob,\u201d Alisia\u2019s moaning, Nikki\u2019s Angry Vagina, Kelly whose own mother was there in the room, Chandra\u2019s tale of the little coochi snorcher, Jenny asking the nurse to \u201cbring me the vagina!\u201d, Sarah\u2019s lists, Jen and the taffeta ball gown, Jordan and her really smart brain.<\/p>\n
I remember trying to explain the concept of a triple orgasm to a young performer \u2026 more than once.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen this show affect and empower survivors of violence in life-saving ways, which is why I continue to support it \u2026 and yet there\u2019s a lot of substantial feminist critique of The Vagina Monologues<\/em> out there now \u2026 do you young performers know this?\u00a0 You need to.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a flawed piece, in many ways.\u00a0 It\u2019s relatively dated in cultural references, it\u2019s heteronormative, East-coast situated (our small-town Midwestern audience never gets the \u201csplit knish\u201d reference, among other things), and its author is now widely critiqued for her colonial feminist tendencies. \u00a0Your organization took a photo of Ashley Callingbull, and used it to promote V-Day Canada and One Billion Rising, without her consent. You then wrote the word \u201cvanishing<\/a>\u201d on the photo, and implied that Indigenous women are disappearing, and inherently suggested that we are in some type of dire need of your saving<\/strong>. You then said that Indigenous women were V-Day Canada\u2019s \u201cspotlight\u201d. V-Day completely ignored the fact that February 14th is an iconic day for Indigenous women in Canada, and marches, vigils, and rallies had already been happening for decades<\/strong> to honor the missing and murdered Indigenous women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Pittsburgh One Billion Rising Campaign<\/a> this year has responded to this and other criticism of Ensler\u2019s campaign by renaming themselves the \u201cOne Billion Been Rising\u201d Campaign, \u201crecognizing the long herstory of indigenous and women of color resisting gender based violence and modeling the transformative leadership<\/strong> and vision of young women of color.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrea Smith<\/a> has begun a list describing what a \u201cjustice-based movement to end gender violence\u201d would look like in order to move us all \u201cBeyond Eve Ensler,\u201d and it includes things like this:<\/p>\n \u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This movement would interrogate how the very category of \u201cwoman\u201d<\/strong> has served as a tool of violence.\u00a0 It would examine how colonialism has operated by imposing a gender binary system in indigenous communities<\/strong> in order to facilitate the imposition of colonial heteropatriarchy.<\/p>\n \u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This movement would recognize the<\/strong> state as a primary perpetrator <\/strong>of gender violence.\u00a0 Through chattel slavery, the sexual colonization of Indigenous women, the sexualized exploitation of immigrant workers, gender-based crimes in war, etc., the state has continually used and benefited from gender violence<\/strong> as a strategy to enforce white supremacy, imperialism and anti-Black racism.<\/p>\n \u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This movement would recognize capitalism as inextricably linked to gender violence<\/strong> through the constant commodification of bodies, identities, lands, and resources.<\/p>\n \u2013\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The movement would recognize the central role of western imperialism<\/strong> in contributing to gender violence globally.\u00a0 It would thus stop presuming a simple solidarity with victims of violence in countries around the world<\/strong> without a critical examination of how people in Western countries benefit from the imperialism<\/strong> that helps shape conditions of gender violence globally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is a lot to understand when you\u2019re a 19 year old student at a small Midwestern college.\u00a0 And yet this is what happens when you take a stand for justice on a stage or in a street or online:\u00a0 You become part of a larger discourse and are called to be accountable to a larger community of activists.\u00a0 It might not be easy.\u00a0 It is important.<\/p>\n My hope is that for the students who cross our stage and who enter our theatre, for whom this production really is a catalyst and a consciousness-raising experience, this is a beginning and not an ending.\u00a0 That it become the start of a learning process rather than the culmination of it.<\/p>\n Because it\u2019s not just about breaking boundaries on stage and on campus, it\u2019s about breaking up the structures and systems of oppression that seem to require it.<\/p>\n For more information on the 23rd<\/sup> Annual Women\u2019s Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women that Lauren Chief Elk mentioned, click here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rehearsals for The Vagina Monologues have begun on my campus again this year and I have a lot of jumbled thoughts and reactions to taking the stage with students once again.\u00a0 Things I want the students to know, things I want the world to know, things I want to remember. When the brave first group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":2064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441,4,19,6],"tags":[725,315,450,727,724,726,723],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-feminism","category-gender","category-race","tag-andrea-smith","tag-eve-ensler","tag-gender-justice","tag-indigenous-women","tag-lauren-chief-elk","tag-the-vagina-monologues","tag-vday"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>Last year, Lauren Chief Elk<\/a> critiqued Eve Ensler for her use of indigenous women\u2019s images in service of white feminist activism, calling out Ensler\u2019s ignorance of indigenous women\u2019s activism:<\/p>\n