Last night, S and I went to see the Vagina Monologues at a local community college. One of my dearest friends was performing in it, so how could I not go? She was fantastic--poor girl had to do the very first monologue, a bit daunting--and she really carried it off. I was pretty surprised at how calm she was! I think I would have been shaking, and my voice would have been shaky, but she did really well.
In fact, the whole show was pretty good. The cast was pretty fantastic, with only a few not-so-good performers. The only problem for me was the rampant nostalgia that had staked out a place inside of me by the time the introduction was over. Almost every monologue brought back a memory of one woman or another, one friend or another. I had to restrain myself from turning to S after every monologue and saying something like, "Julie was in that one." or "Jami did that one." or even "I did that part!" The night was bittersweet for me; it was great watching C perform, and it was her night, but the memories were just so strong, and in a way, so sad.
Once upon a time, the Monologues were the central focus of my life. It's so hard to describe what happened now; it seems surreal, like nothing like that could happen. My college was virulently anti-vagina, an odd state of affairs considering that it is a woman's college. When I was a junior, the Feminist Collective decided to put it on, and they were very popular; they sold out. But the backlash among administration and alumni was wicked. A very bad, very right wing man wrote a very condemning column in a popular Catholic (right-wing) magazine. Our alumni got a hold of it, and took it as gospel, and apparently, stopped giving money. So we were told. And when I was a senior, we intended to do it again, but were told that under no circumstances were we to perform these monologues.
That wasn't acceptable for us. Unacceptable. A woman's college, unable to say the word vagina? No way. So we told the college that the Feminist Collective would not "officially produce the play." (I was at this point one of the officers of the club.) What we then proceeded to do was to "unofficially" perform the play for 150 or so women in one of the largest dorm lounges on campus. It was an amazing experience, and even now, it's hard to put into words how it felt to have these 12 or so women around me, engaging in something profitable for us, and for the community. Even now, I'm filled with gratitude that I could experience a coming together like this.
Obviously, the administration of the school wasn't happy, and the president wasn't happy, and she wanted to meet with the four of us officers. We wanted our advisor present (we had a professor who was fully supportive and involved with everything we did), and the president said no. We declined a meeting without a witness present; we thought it would be a risky move. (And let me add that all four of us, the officers, were in complete agreement about every move we made.) So we all got letters from the president of the college (who is no longer the president, smirky woman that she was. I swear, when she handed me my diploma she smirked.) telling us that we had to apologize to her, and to everyone on the Board of Trustees, because we'd broken their trust, and if we didn't, we'd be placed on probation.
Fuck that! We'd done no such thing. We understood that we'd used language designed to deceive, but we thought that the ends justified the means. So instead of apologizing, we wrote a two page "apologia" justifying every move we made. We sent it to the president, we sent it to the Board of Trustees, we sent it to the faculty and student body, and we sent it to the paper at the college. The faculty was in an uproar, pissed at the closed-minded censorship the administration was engaging in. More than one faculty member wrote a letter to the campus, defending our actions. Students chimed in on both sides of the battle, some supporting the idea of the Monologues, even if they morally objected. Other students asked why we'd want such a vulgar thing on our campus anyway. Reporters from the local press (not the college press) were calling every night, as the community was following. I think it's safe to say that the conflagration ate away at the week before spring break. In the end, we got off, but I think that if the faculty especially wouldn't have acted as it did (I believe a resolution supporting us actually made the floor in the Faculty Senate, though I'm not sure about that.), we would have been dogged by the administration in every move we made during the last month or so of our college careers. I wasn't scared of the prospect, because I believed (and still do) that I acted in the right, that I was on the right side of the fence on this one.
I was fighting for tolerance, open-mindedness and a campaign to raise awareness of, and the end of violence against women. All the money we collected went to a local women's shelter. It was well worth the fight, worth the trouble. It was possibly one of the finest moments of my college life. It will stay with me forever.
Bittersweet, that's what the Monologues are. Beautiful to watch, to experience, but so hard to remember, so hard to process anymore. But I congratulate my friend C, and welcome her to the legion of Vagina Warriors, and hope that her experince meant as much as mine.