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.