My vagina is angry

Or even, if you’re feeling risky, c**t c**t c**t c**t, that’s right scream it at the screen. Now picture yourself in a theatre of women screaming along with you… liberating? Empowering? Educative?

Or is something lacking?

On one hand it does feel rather thrilling to be talking about vaginas, that much ignored and maligned female organ. And talked about it was: how it looks, how it smells, how it tastes, the pleasure it can give, the shame that can be attached to it, the pain that can be inflicted on it.

And yet, how much will anyone in this audience really take away from this performance? Will the woman behind me who snorted in derision at the idea of a lesbian, tutted at the reclaiming of the word ‘c**t’ and practically vomited at the beautifully graphic description of birth really change the attitude she has to her (or anyone else’s) vagina?

So what’s wrong with the Vagina Monologues?

It was one of my closest friends who first burst my Vagina Monologue bubble: why is it, she loudly demanded, that all the "white c**ts are happy c**ts and all the black and muslim c**ts are oppressed or tortured". It especially didn’t help, in this production, that the only black actress read both the rape monologues.

But over and above this there is something more profoundly at fault with the monologues...the night felt like a comedy night.

But over and above this there is something more profoundly at fault with the monologues: from the high bar stools to the high adrenalin feeling in the audience, the night felt like a comedy night. But how educative is laughing about vaginas? And everything is laughed at. There may be a respectful strained silence at the descriptions of rape and abuse, yet the audience were positively gasping for some comic relief, falling over themselves to laugh as soon as decently possible. Women who’ve never had an orgasm are laughed at, women who find their clitoris; hilarious, women having smear tests; side splitting, men who like vaginas; riotous.

Surely this is just PC toilet humour? Surely our vaginas demand more respect?

I’m hoping this isn’t an ingrained problem, I think both the idea of the production and the monologues themselves are revealing and uniquely frank, and indeed when I first saw the monologues it did feel more shocking and more revolutionary, but maybe that was because it was America, the audience more palpably angry, and, I was with my mum.

Perhaps turning it into a travelling show, complete with local ‘celebrities’ attracts an audience which isn’t ready to engage with their vaginas in any other way except through humour, and maybe, hopefully they took something deeper and more meaningful away from the hilarity.

Our society has a seriously schizophrenic attitude to vaginas.

And even more hopefully, the York University production will be a more meaningful affair at which the audience will realise that our society has a seriously schizophrenic attitude to vaginas – they are the source of life, yet they are ignored and not talked about; they must respond to male sexual advances, yet be unexplored by ourselves; they are the root of our sexuality, yet are hairy, dirty and smelly. I find this thought incredibly sobering and hope a University of York audience will also recognise this enough to stop the nervous laughter.

And if they don’t, well at least you’ll know why the girl in the front row is glaring at you!

The University of York Women’s Committee performance of The Vagina Monologues is on Saturday 9th May at the Dixon Theatre, Wentworth at 7.30pm. Tickets on the door, or at Vanbrugh stalls Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Week 2.

Click here for the Facebook event.

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