Van der Feltz's Vagina
Monologues criticism dead on
Though I missed this weekend's performance of The Vagina Monologues, reading a transcript of them gave me the same impression that they gave Francesca van der Feltz.
My freshman year, my closest group of female friends was smart and freethinking. Naturally, they were attracted to The Vagina Monologues.
Waxing eloquent by day about their newfound vaginal acceptance, they would blow off my friends and me by night in order to go hang out with frat guys, then complain to us the next day about how the frat guys treated them like nothing more than vaginas. The next night, however, it was always back to the frat parties.
The Monologues teach that few to no men are capable of properly respecting a vagina, so why even expect them to? With only one exception, the male touch always invades, tears, violates and destroys. The female touch, even when forced and without consent, nourishes and heals.
This mentality remains strong in spite of the monologues' paradoxical effort to dispel it by furthering ideas that reinforce it.
Perhaps some participate in The Vagina Monologues for the right reasons, but most people see the Monologues for the wrong reasons.
This is common among organizations: for example, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving resigned because she felt it had become a Prohibitionist group.
As for van der Feltz, I respect her for refraining from criticism until witnessing the monologues, and I commend her for thinking for herself afterward.
Ian Sean Montgomery
GRADUATE STUDENT
Vagina Monologues
not anti-feministt
I am a feminist who watched The Vagina Monologues and did not find it offensive at all. I think that Francesca van der Feltz's article on the Monologues was completely off the mark, especially when she said that its message was freedom through "uninhibited sexual liberation" or "self-serving sexual pleasure."
Is she implying that the play encouraged sexual promiscuity and lack of regard for one's own self or morals? I can't believe we watched the same play, because throughout the show I never for one instant felt the Monologues were preaching this notion at all.
In addition, some of the meaningful and powerful discourses van der Feltz downsized were some of the longest and most important monologues in the show.
The Vagina Monologues claimed to raise awareness of violence against women, as well as to celebrate the vagina, and I think it did just that. I believe van der Feltz distorted some of the acts she saw to such an extent that the way she explained them was flat out wrong and out of context.
Let's take a look at Bob, who loved to look at vaginas. The woman involved says she began to see herself the way he saw her. One word: beautiful.
Bob didn't see her as just a vagina and she certainly didn't see herself as just a vagina, but as beautiful. If Bob were only interested in "a vagina for consumption," then he wouldn't have wasted an entire hour just looking at her, would he?
A vagina does not make up a woman; it is merely a part of her, and a play like The Vagina Monologues cannot try to persuade you otherwise.
Jackie Medrano
SENIOR
