Eve Ensler
I Monologhi della Vagina

THE REVIEW

Have you, debaserian friends, ever listened to your vagina?

It may seem silly, but it's a serious issue. Men spend a good chunk of their lives playing with their gadget, measuring, comparing, strutting around... my partner talks to his with familiarity, he's even given it a name! We had to act quickly and christen my vagina in haste, but do you have any idea of the difference? Only remembering now? Because we've always been made to think that "down there" is a world best ignored, something dark and vile best not bragged about. And then it's easy to see why a woman hardly ever addresses her vagina. Yet, it’s there, it’s not disconnected from the rest of the body, and it demands respect, consideration, attention, it has a dignity that wants to be recognized.

The feminist movements of the '60s understood that acceptance and knowledge were fundamental issues. Many promoted the "self-awareness process." The Woman's Health Center, for example, spread self-help around the world. Born as a practice of knowing one's body to recognize symptoms of genital disorders, it showed, using a mirror and a flashlight, how beautiful the "world" is down there, quite a revolution! Because the first step to having respect for something is to know it. And by observing it, women not only began not to be ashamed of it, but they also got acquainted with the most intimate and astonishing part of their body, designed specifically to give pleasure. The next step was to demand respect from others for the vagina, a victim of the cruelest acts. Rapes, child abuse, sexual molestation, mutilation. In the nineteenth century, the amputation or cauterization of the clitoris was the normal and usual cure for the long-standing problem of girls practicing self-pleasure. It's curious that in the medical literature, there are no cases of similar removal or amputation to prevent boys from doing the same. And unfortunately, female genital mutilation is still a sadly too widespread custom in many countries, practiced to prevent the vagina from fulfilling its natural task. But even in the "fortunate" side of the World, the vagina doesn't have an easy life. Tortured by tampons, cold speculums, and tight thongs... It's not an easy world for vaginas!

So, friends, if you’ve also been taught to distance yourself from your vagina, to call it by all sorts of silly nicknames, to disdain it, to pretend it doesn’t exist... remedy it. Be proud of her, for she is our truest part.