The Vagina Monologues: Just Another Part of Raunch Culture?

2/4/10

WMST 202

Media Culture Project

The Vagina Monologues: Just Another Part of Raunch Culture?

So I was originally cast as “the Moaner” in Colgate’s production of the Vagina Monologues, which will be performed Thursday, February 25^th and Friday, February 26^th at the Palace Theater. Then I thought to myself, “hmmm what would Ariel Levy think about this play?”.

The Vagina Monologues is an off Broadway play written and directed by “feminist” Eve Ensler, only women are allowed to perform in it, and the majority of the audience tends to be female: a classic scenario of “female chauvinist pigs”—women “make[ing] sex objects of other women and of themselves” (Levy 4). The monologues cover a wide array of “women’s issues” from “sex, love, rape, menstruation, mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the variety of names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body” (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues).

“The Moaner” monologue, entitled “the Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy,” is about a former straight tax attorney turned lesbian dominatrix. Here’s the monologue in full:

I love vaginas. I love women. I do not see them as separate things. Women pay me to dominate them, to excite them, to make them come. I did not start out like this. No, to the contrary: I started out as a lawyer, but in my late thirties, I became obsessed with making women happy. There were so many unfulfilled women. So many women who had no access to their sexual happiness. It began as a mission of sorts, but then I got involved in it. I got very good at it, kind of brilliant. It was my art.
I started getting paid for it. It was as if I had found my calling. I wore outrageous outfits when I dominated women--lace and silk and leather--and I used props: whips, handcuffs, rope, dildoes. There was nothing like this in tax law.
There were no props, no excitement, and I hated those blue corporate suits, although I wear them now from time to time in my new line of work and they serve quite nicely. Context is all.
There were no props in corporate law. There was no wetness. There was no dark mysterious foreplay. There were no erect nipples. There were no delicious mouths, but mainly there was no moaning. Not the kind I'm talking about anyway. This was the key, I see now; moaning was the thing that ultimately seduced me and got me addicted to making women happy. When I was a little girl and I would see women in the movies making love, making strange orgasmic moaning noises,
I used to laugh.
I got strangely hysterical.
I couldn't believe that big, outrageous, ungoverned sounds like that came out of women. I longed to moan.
I practiced in front of my mirror,
on a tape recorder,
moaning in various keys,
various tones,
but always when I played it back, it sounded fake. It was fake. It wasn't rooted in anything sexual really, only in my desire to be sexual. But then when I was 10 I had to pee really badly once. On a car trip. It went on for almost an hour and when I finally got to pee in this dirty little gas station, it was so exciting, I moaned. I moaned as I peed. I couldn't believe it, me moaning in a Texaco station in the middle of Louisiana. I realized right then that moans are connected with not getting what you want right away,with putting things off. I realized moans were best when they caught you by surprise, they came out of this hidden mysterious part of you that was speaking its own language. I realized that moans were, in fact, that language. I became a moaner. It made most men anxious. Frankly, it terrified them. I was loud and they couldn't concentrate on what they were doing. They'd lose focus. Then they'd lose everything. We couldn't make love in people's homes. The walls were too thin. I got a reputation in my building and people stared at me with contempt in the elevator. Men thought I was too intense, some called me insane. I began to feel bad about moaning. I got quiet and polite. I made noise into a pillow.
I learned to choke my moan, hold it back like a sneeze. I began to get headaches and stress-related disorders.I was becoming hopeless when I discovered women.
I discovered that most women loved my moaning, but more importantly I discovered how deeply excited I got when other women moaned, when I could make other women moan. I made love to quiet women and I found this place inside them and they shocked themselves in their moaning. I made love to moaners and they found a deeper, more penetrating moan. It was a kind of surgery, a kind of delicate science, finding the tempo,
the exact location or home of the moan. That's what I called it. Sometimes I found it over a woman's jeans. Sometimes I snuck up on it, off the record, quietly disarming the surrounding alarms and moving in. Sometimes I used force, but not violent, oppressing force, more like dominating, "I'm going to take you some place, don't worry, lay back and enjoy the ride" kind of force. Sometimes it was simply mundane. I found the moan before things even started, while we were eating salad or chicken just casual just right there, with my fingers. "Here it is like that,"real simple,in the kitchen, all mixed in with the balsamic vinegar. Sometimes I used props--I loved props--sometimes I made the woman find her own moan in front of me. I waited, stuck it out until she opened herself.
I wasn't fooled by the minor, more obvious moans. No, I pushed her further all the way into her power moan. There's the clit moan, (a soft in-the-mouth sound),
the vaginal moan, (a deep in-the-throat sound),
the combo, clit-vaginal moan.
There's the pre-moan, (a hint of sound),
the almost moan (a circling sound),
the right on it moan (a deeper definite sound),
the elegant moan (a sophisticated laughing sound),
the Grace Slick moan (a rock singing sound),
the WASP moan (no sound), the catholic moan (forgive me), the jewish moan (no, no, no), the african american moan (oh shit, oh shit), the mountaintop moan (yodeling sound), the baby moan (googie googie googie goo sound),
the doggy moan (a panting sound),
the uninhibited militant bisexual moan (a deep, aggressive, pounding sound),
the machine-gun moan,
the tortured Zen moan (a twisted hungry sound),
the Diva moan (a high operatic note), and finally,the surprise triple orgasm moan (intense, multifaceted climactic moan).

The monologue includes a wide array of raunchy details: “come,” “open mouths,” “wetness,” “dildos,” “props” etc — Sounds like a porno flick, right? Furthermore, it stereotypes women: as if women of different races and religions have different moans. Aren’t feminists trying to get away from stereotyping women? Also, why is sex treated so lightly here, why is sex being portrayed as a humorous experience? This monologue is quite racy, concluding with various orgasmic moans as seen in this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5FfVY-5Mcw. I imagine Levy would think these moans are borderline pornographic. With out porn, no one would really know all the possible versions of moaning because moaning should be a private experience. Levy would see this “moaner” as a terrible role model: a human who achieved success as a lawyer has now stooped to become a prostitute?! — ABSURD. If both men and women watched this performance, Levy may feel that men would get more gratification from watching her moan while many women would merely feel uncomfortable.

Levy talks about the difference between the performance of sexuality and the experience—all of these monologues are a mere performance. In the first chapter of Female Chauvinist Pigs, Levy discusses the Girls Gone Wild phenomena. On page ten, Levy quotes a young woman named Cope who is a regular participant in Girls Gone Wild. Cope states: “People watch the videos and think the girls in them are really slutty, but I’m a virgin! —As if that fact justifies her behavior. This statement especially struck me as I debated whether or not to perform in the Vagina Monologues. I called a friend from another college who had performed the role of “the Moaner” a couple of years ago. And guess what? She is a virgin too! Her performance of moans was a complete charade, a complete performance of sex, something she had never actually experienced. It reminds me of the young virginal Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson who danced around barely clothed and imitated sexual behavior even though they themselves never had sex.

Furthermore, the monologues portray an extremely slanted point of view. The monologues are quite male bashing: most, but not all, of the monologues associate sex with a man as rape and sex with a woman as fulfilling. But not all women are lesbians. If the Vagina Monologues was truly about female empowerment, it should speak to all women. In addition to the moaning monologue, another monologue I believe Levy would especially disapprove of is “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could”—a story of a younger girl who enters an illegal sexual relationship with a much older woman. This is not love or discovering one’s self. This is rape, statutory rape. The Vagina Monologues, perhaps in Levy’s opinion, is the view of sex positive “feminists” like Candida Royalle, Emily Kramer, and Melinda Gallagher who are pro porn and overtly sexual. The Vagina Monologues may also share the views of separatist feminists, radical feminists who say you must be a lesbian and refuse to get married if you truly believe in female empowerment.

And again as I’ve stressed in my other blogs, we must think of the double standard here. Would men ever put their sexuality on display? Why isn’t there a Penis Monologues? Why do women feel the need to be overtly sexual in order to show their power? The Vagina Monologues has a monologue entitled cunt. Why should we venerate a derogatory word like cunt? —A word that was created by men to oppress women.

I believe Ariel Levy would think the Vagina Monologues, a play supposed to be about female empowerment, actually plays into today’s raunch culture. And if Levy does indeed believe this, I’d agree with her. So today, after much thought and consideration, I sent out an email to the cast of Vagina Monologues telling them I’ve dropped out.