{"id":294,"date":"2008-02-17T23:52:05","date_gmt":"2008-02-18T04:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=294"},"modified":"2013-11-02T19:51:22","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T00:51:22","slug":"v-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=294","title":{"rendered":"V-Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 17, 2008
\nSunday<\/strong><\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter how many times you say the word, it never sounds like a word you want to say.
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201dEve Ensler, b. 1953
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0American playwright<\/p>\n

The word Eve Ensler is referring to above is “vagina,” and the line comes from the opening of her iconic and controversial play, The Vagina Monologues<\/em>. Originally a performance piece intended to celebrate women’s sexuality, it has become the centerpiece of V-Day<\/a>, a movement to stop violence, particularly sexual violence, against women.<\/p>\n

The Vagina Monologues<\/em> has many words that people don’t want to say. One of them was uttered\u00c2\u00a0by Jane Fonda on The Today Show<\/em> last Thursday. Fonda is appearing in\u00c2\u00a0a production of the play celebrating V-Day’s tenth anniversary. Meredith Viera\u00c2\u00a0asked her about her initial reluctance to take part. “I was asked to do a monologue called ‘Cunt,'” Fonda answered, “and I said, ‘I don’t think so, I’ve got enough problems.’ Then I came to New York to see Eve and it changed my life.”<\/p>\n

The Today Show <\/em>is broadcast live in the Eastern time zone and, because it is part of the network’s news division, is not subject to a delay so that\u00c2\u00a0problematic material can be cut or altered. After the segment in which Fonda and Ensler appeared, Viera issued an apology on behalf of the network and Fonda for the “slip” that resulted in the use of the word. “We would do nothing to offend the audience,” Viera said. In subsequent airings of the segment in feeds for the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones, Fonda’s face was replaced\u00c2\u00a0with a still photo and the word was not heard.<\/p>\n

I have seen the play,\u00c2\u00a0more than once. I’ve laughed, been moved, been motivated to examine my own history of sexual awakening and sexual experience. I’ve read critical\u00c2\u00a0analyses of the play and been given food for thought about the ways in which it might be promoting some\u00c2\u00a0negative stereotypes and biases while\u00c2\u00a0seeking to change others.<\/p>\n

I did not see The Today Show<\/em> segment in its entirety, only clips of the relevant utterance. The incident came to my attention from a mention on one of the discussion lists that I read. The list member who brought up the matter is an editor,\u00c2\u00a0thus someone attuned to words and their nuances, but he is also a former career\u00c2\u00a0military man about five years older than I am, and thus someone who historically is not a fan of Jane Fonda. A different list member who provided the link to the video clip labeled it “not for delicate\u00c2\u00a0ears.”<\/p>\n

Those would, indeed, be delicate ears that could not withstand a single utterance of the word in a fairly benign context. Fonda was not using it as an insult and was not\u00c2\u00a0referring to her\u00c2\u00a0genitalia nor to anyone else’s. She was merely giving the title of one section of the play.\u00c2\u00a0In looking for the clip and discussion of it, I fell into\u00c2\u00a0commentary on it that quickly devolved into a discussion of Fonda herself rather than of the word,\u00c2\u00a0most of it fostered by people who remain angry with her for her perceived unpatriotic (unto treasonous) actions during the Vietnam\u00c2\u00a0War,\u00c2\u00a0actions which she has said she regrets and which she insists were\u00c2\u00a0misrepresented.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that a lot of people get offended by words and put their energies into condemning both the utterances and the utterer while ignoring\u00c2\u00a0the serious issues that gave rise to the utterances in the first place. When Janet Jackson had her “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl in 2004, the hue and cry was over bad behavior by various members of the Jackson family and a fleeting glimpse of a\u00c2\u00a0body part. What bothered me is that the action that caused Jackson’s breast to be exposed appeared to be a simulated assault. It was in the context of a “song” (we shall use the term broadly here) in which the speaker expresses a wish to have physical relations with the individual he is addressing. “Dance with me” is apparently used as a euphemism for “have sex with me.” He tries to counteract the subject’s reluctance by suggesting that her “no” actually means “yes.” (“Don’t be so quick to walk away .\u00c2\u00a0 .\u00c2\u00a0 .You don’t have to admit you wanna play.”) Finally, he declares “gotta have you naked by the end of the song” and rips off her clothes. (My academic training means I can talk about almost anything in standard lit-crit terms.)<\/p>\n

But the brouhaha was not over the fact that a performance piece considered entertainment at a football halftime show seemed to glorify assault, but over the exposure of nearly the whole of\u00c2\u00a0Jackson’s breast, including the nipple and areola. Worse, to my way of thinking, many news stories and commentators used the term “boob.” I found that really demeaning and tiring. And I wondered, if a man’s penis had been exposed in this way, would slang terms for it have been used in supposedly serious print pieces about the incident?<\/p>\n

On Thursday evening,\u00c2\u00a0some ten hours after the Fonda follies, I found myself on the campus of my alma mater, Millersville University, to attend a double header\u00c2\u00a0basketball game (both the women’s and the men’s teams). As is my usual habit, I picked up a copy of The Snapper<\/em>, the school’s student-run newspaper. Like many college campuses, Millersville had its own V-Day program. The newspaper ran a review of the performance of The Vagina Monologues<\/em>. The article devoted two paragraphs to the energy created by “Cunt,” energy which got the audience to stand and try to cheer away the word’s taboo status. More space, however, was devoted to “Say It,” a monologue that calls attention to the atrocities perpetrated on “comfort girls,” young Asian women forced into sexual slavery in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II. I applauded the sensibility that choice indicated.<\/p>\n

Millersville is in a fairly conservative area of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, it seems that The Snapper<\/em> has a history of not shrinking from the use of frank but problematic\u00c2\u00a0terms.\u00c2\u00a0I was in the audience on November 11, 1968 when\u00c2\u00a0civil rights activist Julian Bond gave a speech in which he compared the U.S. presence in Vietnam to rape. “Would the victim like gradual deescalation or complete withdrawal?” he asked.\u00c2\u00a0The Snapper<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0accurately reported that portion of his remarks. The Lancaster city newspaper, as I recall,\u00c2\u00a0wrote around it.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

My feminist consciousness is more heightened, and more militant, now than it was when I was 21, and I would now caution Mr. Bond (whom I still revere) about using the word “rape” to refer to any act other than forced sexual intercourse. But I am happy to see that the campus community which my daughter now\u00c2\u00a0inhabits does not shrink from forthright presentation of these important issues, and does not mince words about it.<\/p>\n

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


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