I Am An Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler

            “About one in three high school students have been or will be involved in an abusive relationship.”  p. 70.  One in three high school students -- are the statistics really that high?   We educate our children about right and wrong behavior.  We tell them that no one, absolutely no one, is allowed to hit them.  How can one out of three children not get it?  They are either the hitters or the hittee, but they don’t get it.  Keep your hands to yourself.  How many times does a parent or teacher say that to a child?  So many that it amazes me that one out of three still will hit or be hit.

            As I read this letter to Rihanna on pages 71-73, again, I am astonished.  I guess that’s why I chose this passage to blog about.  This young writer is asking Rihanna how she can dump Chris because he really loves her.  Rihanna is the pretty one, the talented one.  It is so hard for poor Chris to be dumped like that after he beat you. 

            He apologized in a video and put himself “out there.”  “That’s what happens after.  I mean they feel so bad.  They don’t have anyone to help them.  They don’t know how to talk.”  Who has brainwashed this girl?  She has the mentality that it’s okay to take the beating because “they feel so bad” afterwards.  She thinks this behavior is love!  Pain and hurt is not love.  It is just that – pain and hurt.  It is heinous and disgusting, certainly in no way love.

            She goes on to say that her mother hates Brad (writer’s boyfriend) because she is judging him on this one aspect of his personality.  That would be enough for me as a father.  Brad has this young girl believing that somehow she deserves this treatment because she’s not perfect either.  She feels that Rihanna deserved the beating she got from Chris because she threw his keys and made him angry.  She made him feel bad about himself and that’s why he hit her.

            That’s the way this young girl was raised – with a father that said someone was always asking for it.  Yet seeing sadness in her father’s face and seeing sadness in Brad’s face bothers her so much that she feels they are justified in hitting her.

            I know in today’s society there isn’t the respect given to women they once enjoyed.  But what are parents teaching their children about self-respect.  You can’t respect yourself as the abused or the abuser.  If the parents aren’t educating these children, what about the school system?  I agree that too much is being passed off to the schools, but these are life and death issues.  I don’t believe it would be necessary to have a full term of domestic violence training; however, a guest speaker twice a year, every year, to talk with the high school students about both ends of this spectrum is a good place to start.  No one living in this country in the year 2011 should even remotely feel that it is okay to give or to take the beating.  Something needs to change if this is truly how our young people are feeling.

I am an Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler

My focus is on “Bad Boys” on pages 18-20.  This story seems to be more open to our interpretations.  I believe it’s not true that boys can express themselves easily.  Our pains and heartaches are there.  Unfortunately we are told not to show them or to express them in any way.  I believe it is a societal thing.  

Is there really a difference in how two teenagers feel?  What would be the difference in the emotions between the girl who was never asked out or the boy in the wheelchair who could not walk up to the same girl to ask her out?  Both these young adults would have the same emotions.  The girl would be able to express her emotions to her friends and/or family.  This young man would probably hold his emotions buried deep within himself.  We’ve all been there -- the “could- have-beens or should-have-beens.”  

If we were to look at this situation from a legal perspective, we would probably say that this boy is not conforming to the rules and needs to be punished accordingly.  From a psychological perspective, this boy needs to behave more appropriately.  From a parent’s perspective, he is just acting out and he is mad.  

I believe, in this case, his mother is trying to adjust herself physically, emotionally and financially to their new life.  This so called “Bad Boy” apparently came from a well-established home.  He had friends that accepted him for who he was even though he was not the most handsome boy around.  “He is not the most handsome boy.” p. 20.  He probably had his bedroom arranged just the way he wanted with all the things that boys put on their walls to make it part of their identity.  He created a “safe haven” for himself and his friends. 

Now all of that has been turned upside down.  He lives in an apartment with his mother.  It is a small apartment.  He feels confined.  This “Bad Boy” is having a difficult time accepting what has happened to him and his home.  The image he created of mom and dad together has been destroyed.  He is very angry at dad for leaving him and his mother in the small apartment he doesn’t want to call home.  Now they have to struggle to fend for themselves.  He couldn’t go to the school counselor or his friends. 

When he talks at the end about being “angry at his father for leaving his mother” and “this stupid place where they are living,” (p. 20) I believe it would be very difficult for him to find the right resources to show these strong emotions.  He needs to confide in someone.  He needs a safe place to empty his frustrations.  This teenager is not a “bad boy.”  He is simply a boy trying to get through adolescence and his parent’s divorce and his having to move, leave his friends, start a new school and make new friends.  That’s a lot to ask of a young teenager.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

            Maybe I missed the point of this book.  I believe in raising domestic violence awareness.  I believe in the concept of V-Day.  I believe that female mutilation is atrocious.  I believe that society should be as comfortable saying vagina as it is saying penis.  I even believe that women should be more aware of their own bodies and what gives them pleasure.

            What bothers me about this book is the sexual assaults that took place and seemed to be overlooked or underemphasized as an assault.  Children being assaulted by grown males and females should have had the emphasis placed on the act as a wrongful assault on an innocent child.  Maybe if someone had told these children sooner that they didn’t do anything wrong and that they were the child-victims of monsters in our society, they could have had a better life.

I don’t think that talking about and reading about women masturbating raises awareness to domestic violence.  I didn’t care to read about masturbation or sexual relations between two women, woman on child, man on child or for that matter man on woman/woman on man.  It makes me uncomfortable and I just didn’t enjoy reading this book at all.

The stage performance received rave reviews by all accounts.  The V-Day celebrations have raised thousands of dollars for the victims of domestic abuse.  I do believe that the V-Day celebrations have even raised awareness in colleges across America and abroad.  These young adult males and females need to be aware of abuse.  They need to be able to recognize the signs and strong enough to get themselves out of the situation before it gets worse – and it always gets worse.

Abuse takes on many forms.  It is no longer just men abusing women.  Women are abusing men as well.  Women are leaving their children behind and doing all of the things that men were damned for doing in the past.  It’s a different world today than it was 30 or even 20 years ago. 

Maybe I did get the point of this book.  Maybe my passion against abuse in all forms has surfaced.  Maybe my objections are because women are worth so much more than what this book portrays.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

            Although Eve Ensler is presenting the section as the story of a survivor, I found pages 77-82 to be quite disturbing.  Ensler says that this interview is related by a woman she met in a shelter for homeless women.  This woman met another homeless woman at the shelter and they fell in love.  They now are out of the homeless system and have created a good life for themselves.  However, in these pages Ensler is relating stories of horrific sexual abuse bestowed upon this poor woman when she was just a child. 

The first sexual assault took place when she was just a mere ten years old.  The man that abused her was her father’s best friend.  He was an invited guest into her father’s home.  Home is where every person should feel the safest.  She goes on to say that her father caught his friend in the act of abusing this poor child.  What did the father do?  He shot his friend (adding to this child’s trauma); blood spattered on all of them (more excruciating trauma); the friend was paralyzed for life; and, her mother didn’t allow her to see her father for seven years!  This message is delivered as though not seeing her father is her punishment for doing something wrong.

            What did she do wrong?  Here she is a ten-year-old child being raped by a grown man.  This man shattered her safety in her home and certainly betrayed her father’s friendship.  It sounds as though this child’s rendition as an adult still feels some guilt for the disgusting behavior of an adult.

            At the age of 13, this same young child is again sexually assaulted.  This time it is by a trusted female neighbor.  This 24-year-old woman takes this young and impressionable girl into her car, kisses her and invites her to her home.  When this young girl arrives at this woman’s home, she is scantily dressed.  She proceeds to undress and redress this young girl into a sexy teddy.  She plows alcohol into her and then sexually abuses her for hours. 

            Now one might say that this 13-year-old girl did not object to the sexual advances and maybe she even enjoyed them.  A 24-year-old male or female having sexual relations with a

13-year-old child is rape.  There is no “gray area” here.  It is abuse.

            How can this youngster trust anyone?  She has been stripped of the warmth and safety she felt in her father’s home.  Then she was sexually assaulted.  She witnessed the shooting of the abuser by her father.  And then, to top it all off, she was made to feel that somehow it was her fault.  No one seemed to ever address with her that it was never her fault – it was the abuser’s fault.  She was the child-victim of a pedophile. 

Three short years later, she was once again the victim of a pedophile.  This time the abuser was a woman.  This now 13-year-old girl knew what was happening was wrong and she was afraid of getting “caught.”  In light of the fact that it came up so readily in these interviews, she still feels the guilt of this assault.  I guess it is no wonder that this child grew to be a woman found in a homeless shelter.  Where else could her shattered self-esteem have taken her.  Ensler says that this woman has found love and is making a good life for herself.  I hope that is true.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

            Ensler’s purpose of celebrating vaginas is insightful.  There are so many women that she interviewed who had never looked at their vaginas until the interview.  Others used their vaginas as a way of defining themselves. 

            I think Ensler’s purpose is to raise awareness of women in general.  It is to raise women to a higher standard – the standards of many years ago.  Not in the sexual sense but in the more liberal sense of every day living.  Women are still underpaid and overworked.   Men still make more money than women doing the exact same job.  I think these are things that Ensler really wanted to raise awareness about.

            Obviously, she also wanted to raise awareness about domestic violence.  Violence against women is at epidemic proportions.  Until reading this book, I truly believed that female mutilation had seized to exist.  I was wrong.  Children – female children – are being mutilated still today.  Male children are “worshiped.”  Examine China, only one child per family, and the females have no worth.  Female babies are still being left on roadsides to die.  They are being put in orphanages simply because they were born with a vagina.  This is violence against women from the time of birth.  What will the Chinese do without women to bear their sons?  Will they revert back to the baby-making machines of years ago?  Maybe they will.  Is this any less offensive than the genocides against the Jews?  I don’t think so.  Our generation of world leaders have become complacent in these areas.  Babies are being killed merely because of the vagina and no one is standing up ready to fight for them.

            Is Ensler successful in touching emotions in her writings?  Oh, most definitely, yes.  If more people would see this play or read this book, maybe some of the atrocities against women would be recognized as such and laws and rules of simple consciousness would be increased.  It would be wonderful to see an end to all violence whether against women, children or men.  This book makes you think that we haven’t come all that far in humanity.  We continue to hurt and destroy one another without a single ounce of remorse for doing so. 

Vagina Monologues

I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function other than to feel pleasure.  (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it – and what it would be used to justify?)” 

Those two sentences on pages x-xi caught my attention.  I never thought about a vagina in such a way.  I guess I never really thought in any academic sense about the vagina.  I also found the references to the Hindu temples and shrines featuring the yoni very interesting and a long way from American views even today.

I was quite disgusted to read that women and young girls are still being subjected to the atrocities of genital mutilation and that the monies from V-Day are being donated toward the cause.  This and other atrocities done to young women and girls should never be happening anywhere on the face of this earth.  An end should have been put to these practices long ago.  (I guess you could say that Gloria Steinem stirred up the emotion in me when reading those particular pages.) 

I am finding this book very entertaining.  In all honesty I didn’t think that I would.  I am pleasantly surprised at the way Eve Ensler is presenting her interviews.  I was particularly intrigued by the older woman who spoke about her basement.  The other interview that I found fascinating was the woman with the dreams of water after her first experience kissing a boy.  That very first experience with that boy ruined her for life.  She never was able to overcome that embarrassing scene that played over and over in her mind’s eye.  She was never able to experience a “normal” relationship with anyone.  More importantly, to me, she never once spoke of the incident until she was interviewed for the Vagina Monologues many years later.  Her dreams stopped after having a complete hysterectomy as an older woman.  She went through her whole life not being able to speak of the incident that certainly haunted her every day of her life.  She finally felt at peace after giving this interview and talking about it for the first time.

Krik? Krak! By Edwidge Danticat

            As I began to read pages 125-127, at first I was disgusted at the thought of the cock fight taking place.  But as I continued reading, it was so clear that this is a way of life.  This happens every single day.  The children grow up seeing and hearing the roosters fight to the death.  The men place bets on which rooster will remain standing alive at the end of the fight. 

            This “entertainment” also created jobs for the people around the fight ring.  “During the days the villagers held animal fights there, and sometimes even weddings and funerals.  Outside the fight ring, a few women sold iced drinks and tickets to the Dominican lottery.”  These cock fights were a source of income for some, entertainment for others, and addiction for a few more.

            I became intrigued by the old man in the front of the yard.  It seemed like he wanted to go in and join the others at the ring, but something was holding him back.  It wasn’t his wife’s urging him to leave that held him back.  It was something deeper inside of him.  He seems like a “broken soul” to me.  He appears empty inside.  He talks about spells he is going to put on his wife every day.  Yet every day those spells fail to become a reality – he fails.

            “He was a former schoolteacher from the capital who had moved to Ville Rose, as far as anyone could tell, to get drunk.”  Something devastated this man’s life.  He was a well-educated school teacher held in high esteem.  Now he was nothing but the town drunk standing outside the cock fights listening but not participating. 

            He suffers with a limp that may have been caused by whatever hardship he had endured.  Maybe the excessive daily drinking eases his pain – both physical and emotional.  This is a man who was well-respected in society; someone who was contributing to society; someone who was shaping the lives of children and young people every single day.  Now he is an empty shell of his former self.  He is the useless town drunk standing on the outside looking in.