The War on Women - Part II

Nothing could be more boring, I thought, when I saw “The Vagina Monologues.” Maybe it was radical in 1970 but, today, who could care? The vagina was just a part of the body like a hand or a heart – a necessary organ for the creation and functions of life.

I learned just how wrong I was earlier this week when two women legislators were “banned from speaking” by the Republican leadership of the State House in Michigan because they had used the word “vagina,” which the male Republicans considered obscene.

Perhaps it is the fact that the vagina contains the same fluids as do sharks that fills men with trepidation. Or perhaps it is the fact that vaginas can expand to 200 percent their original size that makes men quake. But these very qualities are the ones that allow the vagina to be the entry point through which all of us pass to experience the fullness of life.

In the past year Republican legislators, in Michigan and in 29 other states in which Republicans hold the majority of seats, have introduced more than 1,000 pieces of legislation to control “the word that cannot be uttered” – from legislation that would prohibit the contraception that protects the vagina from intrusion by sperm, to legislation that mandates the insertion of medical equipment into a woman’s vagina before she is allowed to have an abortion. In fact, all together, Republican legislators have introduced more legislation about the vagina than on any other topic – more than on education, crime, the economy or even health care. It is especially ironic that those who wish to control the vagina cannot even say the name of the body part with which they are so obsessed.

The attempt of ruling men to control women’s bodies is as old as history itself –and the demonization of the vagina has long been part of it. For centuries, women were banned from various religious activities (and the company of men) when they menstruated – as they were considered to be “unclean.” In a variety of societies – even today – women are “required” to have sex but not allowed to expose the body part that is being penetrated. And as we know, in vast parts of the world young girls’ genitals are mutilated in what is euphemistically called female circumcision to ensure that as women they get no pleasure from sex and will therefore be “protected from infidelity.”

As events unfold – shockingly in the U.S. as well as in countries we in the west have long considered more traditional, it appears Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” is right: that to protect women – our health, our lives, our equality – we have to rescue this orifice from ignominy, celebrate it, and claim our right to control and protect it. It will take more than a play to do that, however. The only real protection will be when women take their vaginas or vajayjays or whatever other silly terms are used, march to the voting booth in November and assert their primacy and power over the penises that would subjugate them to their rule.