{"id":58235,"date":"2012-06-19T18:30:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T22:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=58235"},"modified":"2012-06-19T18:15:36","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T22:15:36","slug":"dont-just-say-it-shout-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/dont-just-say-it-shout-it\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Vagina. Don’t Just Say It. Shout It."},"content":{"rendered":"

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”.\u00a0 — amanda<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Someone tell me, because I really want to know.\u00a0Have 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.<\/p>\n

Last week in the state building in Lansing, two Michigan legislators, Rep. Lisa Brown and Rep. Barb Byrum, were silenced <\/a>for speaking out against proposed legislation banning abortions needed to save the life of the mother.\u00a0Brown’s purportedly offensive remarks\u00a0were:\u00a0“Finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no’.”<\/em> Byrum followed suit drawing punishment for introducing an amendment to ban vasectomies except when one is required to save a man\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u201cwill 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.\u201d Yes. It has come to this. In American politics in the year 2012, we cannot say the word vagina<\/em> without some poor frightened men, mostly Republican, getting a severe case of the vapors.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/em> What could possibly scare these men into uncontrollable emotional trauma by hearing a woman say vagina <\/em>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<\/em> is a one-way ticket flight into infantilism.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0You 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<\/em> is too much for these teeny wittle men, the walls surrounding them and their antiquated notions of power are about to crumble.<\/p>\n

Last night Eve Ensler, the writer-producer of The Vagina Monologues<\/em>, \u00a0flew in all the way from California to perform The Vagina Monologues<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

And maybe that is the point.\u00a0Unless 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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Repeat after me, just as Eve Ensler does: Vagina. Vagina. Vagina.\u00a0Shout it out. Loud, strong and proud. It’s ours and ours alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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”.\u00a0 — amanda Someone tell me, because I really want to know.\u00a0Have lethal … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}