Vagina Facts of Life

Last class' vagina fact provoked a pretty intense emotional response. Between the clitoris being the "only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure" as well as having "twice the nerves as those contained within the penis," I'd have to agree that the clitoris is an amazing part of the body. However, don't get too excited yet. This fact is only steeped in science. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised the same author who wrote "I Am An Emotional Creature" would include a purely scientific fact in her book. What ever became of the angry vagina - the "pissed off" vagina who wanted people to "stop shoving things into me" like "dry fucking wads of cotton?" I mean, "I Am An Emotional Creature's" title poem is all but lambasting men because "thoughts do not come to me (not men) as hard-shaped ideas or scientific theories." Well, in that case...why did she include this particular vagina fact if she seems to have such an aversion to science? The simplest answer is that Ensler is a writer of dualities, much like Danticat, who appeals to both the mind and the heart - science and raw emotionality - logos and pathos. She knows her audience isn't going to just be militant feminists who blindly agree with everything she says. She wants people from every categorization to read what she has to say. Not just feminists; in fact, I get the impression Ensler wants people to challenge her ideas, as the best "shock writers" often want. Transgendered people, androgynes, tired housewives, chauvinistic businessmen, and ambivalent people who don't care much for women's issues all have a place in Ensler's audience. This is all a testament to Ensler's skill as an effective writer. She knows that in order to reach the largest audience, to change the world's preconceptions (as well as create ideas where nothing else may have existed previously), you need to write something which can be relevant to anyone and everyone.

However, as an aside, I want to add an unscientific dimension to Ensler's vagina fact. It's a dimension Ensler surprisingly looks over, especially when her track record for relying mostly on her own experiences, the experiences of others, and her vulnerable writing style is brought into question. Let's take a look at the protaganist in Danticat's "Night Women." It's obvious the mother hates her profession, and is wholly unsatisfied. Why is that? If this fact showed the entire truth, she'd be the happiest, most fulfilled woman in New York City. All prostitutes would. There's more to feeling pleasure than nerves, science, and "hard-shaped ideas." Pleasure and sensuality is an art form which appeals as much to the brain as it does to the eye, the heart, and virtually every other sense unseen. I don't think the clitoris is the "only organ in the body designed for pleasure," and it is just as capable of feeling pain as any other organ of the body is. Furthermore, the 'pleasure' felt by the clitoris seems awfully one-sided and shallow. The clitoris does not have the raw passion of the heart, the aesthetics of the eye, nor depth of the brain. Sexual organs themselves do not have depth of emotions like the other senses do.

However, when the clitoris and all the other organs are able to join together on the same plane...that's when you've got a machine gun.

Voyeur

For those who see Ensler's Vagina Monologues as unrefined at best or tittilating and stereotypically (sometimes militantly) feminist at worst, the "I Was There In The Room" poem-monologue is a challenge to whatever criticisms have been levelled at Eve or her works. The opening line, "I was there when her vagina opened," would sound ridiculous in the hands of anyone else. Silly or sophmoric, even. Honestly, using the word 'vagina' provokes laughing or horniness more often than "deep worship" (sorry, Eve), and when 'vagina' is thrown towards us bluntly and immediately and with such unabashed frequency in a poem the author introduces as a serious tribute to her granddaughter and mother-in-law, the chances of a typical college audience taking the poem seriously - or in 'good taste' - might be pretty low. However, between Ensler's totally straight intent and the artful language she uses, it'd be difficult to read "I Was There In The Room" as anything less than a honest, brazenly realistic tribute to birth and the orifice most of us come from.

Stark comparisons could be drawn between Ensler and Danticat here. Although Danticat only refers to sexuality in veiled ways, their styles are similar: the juxtapositioning of the beautiful against the ugly, humanity against inhumanity. I usually feel like great writing should be full of dualities, and Danticat and Ensler have mastered this art. I've never smiled, nor laughed, nor groaned, nor felt reactions get as painfully stuck in my throat as when I've read through Krik! Krak? and The Vagina Monologues. Shouldn't the best artwork provoke conflict as well as appeal to our sense of what is attractive? The fourth stanza, in particular, is full of these beautifully awkward moments. "I saw the colors of her vagina," begins Ensler, her tone brusque and stripped entirely of her usual humor. "Saw the bruised broken blue, the blistering tomato red, the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges, saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots pushing out all the holes, pushing harder and harder." Like Allen Ginsberg years before her, these lines - Ensler's entire poem - beg to be howled aloud. Ensler was there when "her vagina changed from a shy sexual hole to an archaeological tunnel, a sacred vessel, a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny child stuck inside," and we are there, too. The linear structure is easily digestible; each stanza begans with the phrase "I", with last replacing "I" with "so can a vagina," repetition which involves the audience more and more as the poem is read further, whether the audience is a willing participant or a disgusted and reluctant voyeur - or perhaps more likely, both. What's more, the lines themselves leave little to interpretation, nor uses much in the way of obtuse words, and as a result it cuts itself into our brains and hearts and souls the moment they escape Ensler's mouth. There are no barriers between the poet and audience here. The poem is as immediate and as vulnerable as the act of giving birth itself.