The Vagina Monologues

Vagina. It’s a word that most people are uncomfortable with using in everyday conversation. I felt the same way until I attended an event called the Vagina Monologues that not only embraced the word but also made it a mission for all women to own it. The purpose of the Monologues is to not only to entertain but to inform and raise awareness about violence toward women by using public forums to speak out. The performances consisted of many testimonies about violence, rape, masturbation, and other real-life experiences of women that are considered taboo to talk about. The Monologues provide women a voice to express their resistance to terror and fear brought on by violence. The language of the performances was beautifully descriptive, eloquently delivered and at times disturbingly graphic. I found the event very powerful mainly because the Monologues were depicting real-life events. The stories the women on stage were telling were not fictional accounts dreamed up by a play writer sitting safely in his/her home. The accounts were real and it made the violence real. I thought one of the most important messages of the event was that by speaking out against sexual and physical violence against women, we were taking the power away from predators and giving in back to the victims. So when these victimized women allowed their stories to be told they were empowering an entirely new generation of women to fight back and resist oppression. They were saying that silence is never the answer.