Lyssa Beyer

The beauty of a liberal arts education is challenging our minds and beliefs on a daily basis. While at UW-Eau Claire, I’ve heard new opinions on everything from religion to politics, which has opened my eyes to a thousand new ideas.

But one on-campus event not only challenges beliefs, it also demoralizes the status of women. “The Vagina Monologues” have opened my eyes to a lot on Eau Claire and college campuses across the nation. The saddest part is that most people – especially women – have turned a blind eye to the ulterior message of this annual on-campus event. Let’s take a second look.

“The Vagina Monologues” are presented at Eau Claire with the premise of being “a play about women’s issues with the purpose of empowering women.” The proceeds from this year’s event go to very honorable causes – the Bolton Refuge House, 404 Broadway St., the Center for Awareness of Sexual Assault and the foundation for Hurricane Katrina victim.

But this graphic play is merely an underhanded means to portray the serious problem of violence against women. Hiding behind humor does nothing to change the fact participants are degrading women to nothing more than their most intimate anatomy.

I know what “The Vagina Monologues” really is. I read the book by Eve Ensler that contains the play and I attended the show my freshman year. I’ve drawn my own conclusions about the play’s message, instead of accepting the “empowerment” line thrown around campus.

Instead of feeling “empowered” by what I read and viewed, I was shocked by the explicit stories. As a woman, I am at a loss to comprehend how skits depicting child rape, what my privates look like and descriptions of sex and masturbation techniques are advancing women’s status in the world.

Many argue participating in “The Vagina Monologues” is an empowering and liberating experience. Here is my question – if you tell a woman her identity is wrapped up in her genitals, how are you empowering her mind? Because whether or not the organizers of this event want to admit it, the fundamental message of “The Vagina Monologues” is women are defined by their sexual organs.

As a freshman, I was deeply offended and bothered by the show’s content. I knew others who felt the same way I did, but it’s difficult to voice that opinion when everyone around you is enraptured in their peers’ over-acting of sexual moans and yelling expletives referring to female genitalia on-stage.

Don’t get me wrong – a handful of the skits I saw that spring were thought-provoking and unoffensive. But most were unnecessarily graphic and perpetuated every female stereotype I’d been raised to abhor.

Let’s take a look at the skit entitled “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy.” In this demeaning sketch, a young lawyer decides to forfeit her success to become a prostitute. Instead of taking this person out of her humiliating circumstances – as I would have expected a true feminist to do – the writer allows the woman to glorify her occupation with detailed descriptions.

I feel sick with the implications that praising prostitution could have. Isn’t this a degrading lifestyle we have worked for centuries to help women overcome?

Another example is “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could” skit. Using explicit language, the performer describes her experience as a 13-year-old girl getting raped by an older woman. The purpose of this rape was to show the girl that she will “never need to rely on a man.”

Some performances of the play change the age of the 13-year-old to 16, which just goes to show how Ensler’s book bothers even the show’s most ardent supporters.

No one can argue rape is a form of violence against women. Ask any Women’s and Gender Equity Center or CASA employee about the horrific effects of rape. So how does this skit, with its outright glorification of rape, fulfill the goal to educate about such atrocities?

According to an article written by Monique Stuart for the conservative news Web site Online Human Events, Ensler said during one of her V-Day workshops, “the vagina is like the meter of your life, the motor, and if all works there it all works everywhere.” Ensler went on to say she would rather think “with her vagina” than with her brain.

Maybe I missed something, but I always thought a modern, intelligent woman wanted to be viewed as more than her sex organ.

Ensler’s attitude is setting women back hundreds of years. Are V-Day participants forgetting all the advancements women have made? Women such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony dedicated their lives to prove they are worth much more than their reproductive organs. Yet “The Vagina Monologues” only serve to propagate the stereotype women have been struggling to overcome for centuries.

According to the day’s official Web site, “V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls.” I fully support efforts to decrease violence against women. Rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sexual slavery are all reprehensible crimes that need to be confronted around the world. But this can be accomplished without the suffocating, cult-like message of Ensler’s play.

V-Day supporters, I respect your First Amendment rights. Go ahead and say the word “vagina” in a hundred different ways, join others to talk about how great it is to be a woman – I don’t have a problem with exercising free speech.

What I have a problem with is your ulterior motive. By using Ensler’s book as your Bible, you are telling people that a woman is not “real” unless she is worried about what her genitals look and smell like or is able to tell a crowd of people what her vagina would wear if it got dressed.

I feel sorry for the unsuspecting freshman woman who attends the show tonight. Her Resident Assistant flooded the dorm with bright posters and everyone was talking about the play with the unusual name, so she bought a ticket. She thinks she is in for “a play about women’s issues with the purpose of empowering women” and will instead be confronted with a series of offensive skits about her body parts, which will leave her questioning what real “women’s issues” are.

She might learn from the previous few skits that are worthwhile, but will still have to sit through an embarrassing display of skewed feminism. Her hard-earned money easily could have been given directly to the Bolton Refuge House or another great charity, but instead she must endure an appalling program.

This year, men and women of UW-Eau Claire, join me in rising above the debasing stereotype maintained by “The Vagina Monologues.”

Hartwig is a junior print journalism major and staff writer of The Spectator.