It’s Vagina. Don’t Just Say It. Shout It.

Fe Bongolan is recovering from a mild bout of adrenal exhaustion, having completed a successful creation and run of a new play — a collaboration with Planned Parenthood of Northern California. In her stead, Fe’s uterus has kindly volunteered to write today’s “Fe-911”.  — amanda

Someone tell me, because I really want to know. Have lethal doses of moron gas been pumped into the ventilation systems in state legislatures around the country? Starting in February this year with Virginia and heading westward, apparently so. In the state legislature of Michigan for example, it seems male moronic behavior is fast approaching idiocy, soon to reach dangerous levels of cretinism, threatening democracy itself.

Last week in the state building in Lansing, two Michigan legislators, Rep. Lisa Brown and Rep. Barb Byrum, were silenced for speaking out against proposed legislation banning abortions needed to save the life of the mother. Brown’s purportedly offensive remarks were: “Finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no’.” Byrum followed suit drawing punishment for introducing an amendment to ban vasectomies except when one is required to save a man’s life.

Their objections were answered by the legislature’s refusal to hear them speak on other bills the next day of session, or as the speaker of the state house stated, they “will not be recognized to speak on the House floor today after being gaveled down for their comments and actions yesterday that failed to maintain the decorum of the House of Representatives.” Yes. It has come to this. In American politics in the year 2012, we cannot say the word vagina without some poor frightened men, mostly Republican, getting a severe case of the vapors.

For nearly the entire history of the republic we’ve been assaulted with every possible word used to describe and deploy the war culture of the world’s superpower: missiles, nukes, projectiles, rockets, tickers, torpedoes, lateral insertions, unmanned drones, cannons, bazookas, battery. All of these are permutations on penis. What could possibly scare these men into uncontrollable emotional trauma by hearing a woman say vagina in reference to herself, and thereby disrupting the business of the state? I’m not bringing this up because I don’t know. We all know the answer. Women owning their lady bits are a big threat to the party of Big-Daddy-as-King. Now their refusal to even hear a woman say the medically correct term vagina is a one-way ticket flight into infantilism.

With the onslaught of conservative legislation geared to end reproductive freedom throughout the country, we may be politically close to the river’s edge, if not already there. And I actually believe this is a good sign. You can’t close up or bear down so hard to stop something or someone without it bleeding on you or freeing itself from your grasp. If this weak-assed shit of being unable to hear the word for my punani is too much for these teeny wittle men, the walls surrounding them and their antiquated notions of power are about to crumble.

Last night Eve Ensler, the writer-producer of The Vagina Monologues,  flew in all the way from California to perform The Vagina Monologues on the steps of Michigan’s state legislature building as protest of Brown’s and Byrum’s silencing. 2,500 men and women showed up. Having seen the play more than once, the number of times the word “vagina” appears in the play could technically, given last week’s precedent, close down the state legislature for more than a year.

And maybe that is the point. Unless and until government gets to the actual business of really governing instead of micro-managing what we do with our vaginas and our reproductive freedom, their representatives need to be shamed, ridiculed, and mandated out of political office. From saying “vagina” without shame or a giggle and a hand held over your mouth, to going out to register new voters, to voting the buggers out. It’s got to be one, two, three.

Time to say it, and to claim it again and again. Say it until it naturally flows from the lips of our babes without a ‘hush’. Say it like you would name off items on a grocery list. Milk, eggs, butter, bread, pineapples, vagina. Use it every day in a sentence. This is my vagina, how pretty it looks! See how simple this can be?

Let this now be our prayer, our mantra. We claim it proudly as our own to carry between our thighs. We shout that prayer into the heavens to make the heavens shake because they recognize one of their own lying in wait under our skirts. It is still beautiful and powerful as ever, and it belongs clearly and eternally to us. Repeat after me, just as Eve Ensler does: Vagina. Vagina. Vagina. Shout it out. Loud, strong and proud. It’s ours and ours alone.

31 thoughts on “It’s Vagina. Don’t Just Say It. Shout It.”

  2. The conversation is already happening and I got on the train pretty late not having been born until the sixties were cooling off halfway through the 70’s, but yeah what I perceive is a lack of men paying attention to our own interiors in a real way. While the majority of people haven’t yet had the initiation of Feminism, it’s an older current than anything equivalent from men. Being real about our parts is beyond any kind of ism. I think Feminism can only go so far cause women aren’t a separate species, but people like us. Being real about our parts means not having to pretend we’re invincible. Imagine the bullshit that crumbles when you can stop pretending to be invincible. I think this has to come from the men folk first for many men folk to hear the message. This is a key issue for human survival as I see it. Nothing else matters for human if there’s no living world to host our adventures. Our fear of vulnerability has us acting like invincible morons marching to our doom. Our anxiety about our bodies is fear of the planet, fear of waking up to the horror of what we’ve done and what we’re doing. But in order to stop hacking up the biosphere to sell it off for money we have to feel the planet through our bodies. And that means not locking the nether regions out of the meetings in heart and head. That means brains that are fully aware of their structure…like luminous fibrous squid snaking in and around the skeletal structure, and from there the senses of subtler currents can be turned on. The issues of how women feel about their bodies, how men think about women and our own bodies, and how we treat the world of non human intelligence that sustains us are all facets of the same toxic crystal.

  3. As far as sex organs go, we all start off the same. Before the introduction of sex hormones, all proto-humans have what looks like a division sign between their legs. The line becomes either penile or clitoral tissues, and the dots become testes or ovaries.

    In the mid to late 90s, I learned of a study that had been done with violent male prisoners to see if there were any links between testosterone and violence. It was discovered these men all had very low testosterone levels. These results were counter intuitive. Almost all of the men responded to supplemental hormone therapy. Once their testosterone levels had been adjusted, a balanced expression was possible. Without sufficient testosterone, I doubt these men felt *manly* or masculine enough; so their violent behavior can be seen as (unsuccessful) attempts to “be a man”.

  4. I think this fear of vulnerability is what manly men project onto women. Greater muscle and bone mass without having to work for it is a side effect of testosterone so these projections are maintained by tyrannical behavior. Living a lie always has to be forced.

    yeti:

    I think you have something very powerful here. This may be where the cultural and social conversation really needs to begin.

  5. All those metal cylinders make pretty poor penis representations if you ask me. A penis isn’t hard like a metal rod or even a stick. Even in its engorged state it’s a fleshy membrane filled with fluid. A needle, a fingernail or a tooth can make it bleed without much effort. I think rather than being representations of dicks all the metallic cylinders of modern Christendom speak more to a fear of vulnerability. Even a hard penis is soft. We speak of someone having ‘balls’ to mean stupendous courage, but testicles are the most vulnerable gland in a man or a woman. A small tap on the wrong spot can cause a horrendous spike of pain. I think this fear of vulnerability is what manly men project onto women. Greater muscle and bone mass without having to work for it is a side effect of testosterone so these projections are maintained by tyrannical behavior. Living a lie always has to be forced.

  8. Jann – No, it’s not your reading habits ( 🙂 ), but then I was a young lad back in the 60’s. An impressionable young lad, you might say, subject to certain pubescent attractions of a decidedly sexual lust.

    I was thinking turtle neck sweaters myself, but I do like your rosy pink flourishes and accents!

    Of course, we could use a chorus line of men with big letter “P’s” to offer a nice counterpoint for equality. How about the “Prancing Penises?”

  9. Brendan,

    Maybe it should be a bright, fuzzy rosy pink “V”…on white vee neck sweaters. ’60s uniform would mean turtle neck shirts under the sweater, but I guess one could skip the extra shirt. Same rosy pink for the socks … or white socks with the pinky pompons on them…

    Go Virginal Vaginals!!!

    JannKinz

    PS: Your head? Maybe I’ve read too much “erotic” literature…

  10. Zerosity – What were you doing in my brain? Sixties outfits are exactkt what I was thinking of! Virginal white, tight-fitting sweaters with white short skirts, and a huge scarlet V on the front, with the bottom of the “V” centered, pointing right at their vaginas.

    Fe – welcome back, it was good to hear your uterus again!

  11. Mystelissima:

    If you are talking about the natural expression of the Male and Female, then we actually agree.

    What I object to is the one over the other, the enslavement of one for the dominion by the other, and in the case of reproductive freedom, that is a form of enslavement.

  12. Hey Sweets,

    First, I failed to congratulate you on “Our Daily Bread.” Way to go, Ms. Fe!! I look forward to seeing it hit the touring trail and make its way through the country.

    Second, just as penises often beg for expression in ways that are not entirely germane to their penishood (hmmmm…), vaginas sometimes seek enfoldment via pathways that obstruct more than they facilitate.

    Synecdochal enough for you?

    Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on the ‘shouting vagina’ tactic. I’m not a huge fan of Annie Sprinkle’s act, either (though I think she’s a swell gal in person).

    Under and in,
    ***
    **
    *

  14. Ooooh!!! Check out the facebook pics of signs. Love the twat/cunt one… I’m still laughing. And lawd knows I needed a laugh.

    JannKinz

  15. Oh Ho Ho!!!! Check out the facebook pics of signs. Love the twat/cunt one… I’m still laughing. And lawd knows I needed a laugh.

    JannKinz

  16. Jann:

    Oh my dear, heaven help Michigan. But then again, we have Darrell Issa, so that right there is a one-way drain of intellect down the flushhole keeping a seat warm on Capitol Hill.

  18. Fe,

    Bleating sheep might be a major improvement in Michigan. Then again, I’m not sure the male members (sic) could be trusted with sheep.

    As was seen one local farmer’s t-shirt : “What happens in the barn, stays in the barn.”

    JannKinz

  20. Oh, yeah, Brendan, make ’em look like cheerleaders from high school in the 1960s. Parade them, cheering, across the floor of the legislature. It will That should stir up their unacknowledged erotic phantasies.

    I wonder how the MI legislature might describe the construction of a new bridge to Canada: “Snyder’s Last Erection”?

    JannKinz

  21. “GIMME A V!” “VEEE!!”
    “GIMME AN A!” “AAAA!”
    “GIMME A G!” “GEEE!”
    “GIMME AN I!” “IIII!”
    “GIMME AN N!” “NNNN!”
    “GIMME AN A!” “AAAA!”

    “WHAT’S THAT SPELL?” “VAGINA!”

    Now, this particular cheer should be done by sultry young women in traditional cheerleader outfits with a huge scarlet “V” on the front. It would both attract and repel those legislators who are so short sighted and mentally ill-equipped to be where they are.

    It grabs them by the balls and humiliates them… 🙂

  22. Funny how something that means –at its heart–
    inwardness
    (‘envagination’ is to be gathered up into the folds and crannies of deepest interiority)
    is being turned out here, like rolling down a sleeve.

    I would go gently with the ‘vagina=cauliflower’ equivalence.

    Those who find the utterance offensive
    may be afraid of all that twirling, uptucked and mucosal mauve.

    Or they may be attending in a way that our
    politics cannot account for.
    Distracted, intracted, refracted
    inactive at that gate,
    waiting for the
    pearl
    to
    *

  23. Speaking of decorum in the Michigan legislature, I am reminded of the words from one of the late great Molly Ivins columns when she said:

    “The collective IQ of the Texas State legislature just went up ten points by the introduction of a herd of sheep into the lawmakers chambers.”

  24. JannKinz:

    I think we need to continue exploding all the myths that are part of history and continue to write new chapters. Our daughters and nieces and granddaughters are doing it now on the streets — see the article below on the attempt to arrest the body-painted artist model in New York.

    This not a war of who shouts loudest, but who blinks first. We don’t need to blink ever again.

  25. Fe and Carrie:

    “Down there”? Might end up with a rectal exam. No, wait, I must be confused, because that would be “back there”.

    JannKinz

  26. Sometime around 1976, the Indiana State Bar exam had an essay question, which read in part: “At a State-owned and-operated university in the Middle Western U.S., Clytemnestra Toris is the only thorn in the side of Mr. Strait Mouth, Dean of Students. Ms. (of course!) Toris, a career student, who most recently has been pursuing a graduate degree in ‘Mind-Leveling,’ publishes and distributes on campus and environs a newspaper ‘devoted to the elimination of men.’ Despite many counseling sessions, she insists on calling her publication The Daily Dildo. . . .”

    Yes, that did happen thirty-five years ago. I remember the uproar. The male bar examiners could write something like that, and today, a woman can’t say “vagina” in the legislature of the neighboring state.

    Progress? Apparently not.

    JannKinz

  27. Carrie, thank you. Exactly. If you went to the doctor with inflammation “down there”, how would you be able to stop your doctor from treating your strained quadricep muscle?

  28. Dear Fe’s Vagina: I think your wonderful essays should be mandatory reading for all legislators (especially in Michigan). Perhaps a magic elf will zip over to a printing place for a quickie job and it will be on all their desks by morning.

    Decorum in the Michigan legislature? Ha, ha, ha.

    JannKinz

  29. Thanks Fe’s Uterus!

    I remember my peers saying (in hushed tones of disbelief and giggles) behind my back that my use of the word “vulva” and the word “vagina” to my daughters to name their body parts was just too much. They called theirs a “cookie” and laughed at me for using the proper terminology with my toddlers. It was especially fun when my smallest daughter would say it in her teeny, little-girl voice “That’s my vulva, it is private.” People would gasp in shock at her use of a perfectly normal word. When they gave me grief about it, I said “Why should they not use the right word? We don’t call our ears something else or our noses, why call those parts something else? Doing that only makes the kids think that part of themselves is somehow bad or wrong and in need of secrecy. Well that part isn’t bad or wrong or secret; all women have one.” The look on their faces was priceless.

    VAGINA! VULVA! LABIA! CLITORIS! UTERUS! These are part of me and not to be hushed up as though somehow dirty or obscene. They are the pleasure centers and the gateway and nurturer of life.

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