Monologues give voice to women's issues

By: Mark DeWitt

Posted: 2/23/09

EDITOR"S NOTE: This article includes some language that may be considered offensive to some readers.

On Feb. 12 and 13 SSU's Women's Center presented Eve Ensler's award winning play, "The Vagina Monologues."

Shawnee students, faculty as well as members of the community packed into the Kahl Theatre for Shawnee's third annual presentation of the play. "The Vagina Monologues" helps raise funds for the global movement to end violence against women and girls, the day on which it is presented having become known as "V-day."

"It's good to be involved with a project that raises awareness about violence against women," narrator Stephanie Bush said.

This year's cast included students, faculty, and alumni. Twenty-one women participated in this year's event over the course of 18 scenes, including the introduction.

A complex play, It consists of actual monologues from women from all over the world, talking about their vaginas. The subjects discussed differ greatly from scene to scene. They range from the natural beauty of hair ("Hair") to a woman who discovers she is beautiful because she met a man obsessed with the anatomy of vaginas ("Because He Liked to Look at it") to the exploitation of women and girls in prison camps ("Say It").

The tone of each scene differs as well. The comical "My Angry Vagina," explained why her vagina was "pissed off" to the call to have women take back a word that many consider derogatory in "Reclaiming Cunt." The play finished with the heart wrenching "Baptized" which described how soldiers in the Congo were raping young girls and women because they are prisoners of an ongoing conflict that has been occurring since 1996.

"My favorite part was the chant where the negative connotation of cunt was taken away," said Derek Dawson, a senior majoring in English.

To date, V-Day has raised over $60 million and educated countless people on issues involving violence against women and efforts to end it.

All of the proceeds from this year's event went to the Southern Ohio Shelter (S.O.S.), a non-profit domestic violence agency that primarily serves the residents of Scioto County.

Each year V-Day wishes to increase awareness of a specific group of women who are resisting violence with courage and wisdom. This year focused on the women and girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo where rape is used as a weapon of war.

"It is not too strong to call this (what is going on in DRC) a femicide" Ensler said in a Glamour magazine article.