I noticed a political dispute on facebook. A woman had posted an article by Eve Ensler called Drill, Drill, Drill. The Vagina Monologues was one of the many sources of inspiration for my blog triligy (Cindy, Dating, Cindy, Working, and Cindy, Living). A man posted a response to the article that was…negative. It wasn’t even clear what he was disagreeing with specifically…he was just offended by the article as a whole. The woman ended up deleting his comment and then later wondering if she should have.
The man posted another response that was somewhat apologetic, even though he wasn’t totally clear about why his first response had been deleted. Another woman posted a lengthy response that included the following:
We both read the same essay, but walked away with two very different ideas of what it was saying. Yes, open discussion is a wonderful thing. However, you may not have realized how your words would be interpreted given the fact that you are male. On one level, yes, it is about Palin, McCain, Republicans, and Christians in general. I know it’s hard to set politics and religion aside, but I hope you are interested in hearing about why your response was hurtful.
The essay is about the objectification of – and violence against – women, minorities, and anyone or anything else that can be treated as a commodity (including animals and the environment). This objectification is a painful daily reality for women and members of certain ethnic groups. Women and girls are molested, raped, prostituted, kidnapped, and/or sold into sexual slavery every day. This is a horrifying reality.
We (most women) are sick of being objectified. We’re sick of cat calls, we’re sick of being afraid to walk alone at night, and we’re sick of being afraid to walk too close to vehicles with tinted windows for fear we will be abducted, raped, and tossed into a dumpster afterwards.
We’re sick of living in a “boys will be boys” society (and world) where men get away with things like rape and sexual solicitation and the women are left with little or no recourse…or are put in jail (prostitutes). In other countries, girls are disowned by their families if they are raped. They are no longer “valuable” to the family and are discarded like trash. In yet other countries, women carry the burden of wearing burqas in public…so as not to “tempt” men into lusting after them while they are outside their homes.
We’re sick of paying the price for men’s bad behavior. Men have to go to war to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We barely have to leave our homes. Do you know how many of my friends were raped before they were 10 years old by family members? One of my friends was raped when she was 6 years old by a male family member. Another friend, who was adopted from outside the US at age 5…and grew up in Michigan, by the way, was used by the father as a sex slave until she was a teenager. She had brown skin and was treated as less than human by her entire (white) adoptive family.
So, now we are living in an era where we (women) are minimally protected from predatory sexual behavior AND our right to control our bodies (specifically, our uterus) is in danger. As women and mothers, we are offended when the earth’s resources are exploited for commercial gain. Our hearts break when animals are killed for sport. We do not promote violence; after all, it’s our children who will be killed…and it is us who will be raped. What happens to women during war? We are raped en masse. We are either raped in our communities or we are transported to “rape camps” to be raped ad nauseam.
Last but not least, this essay was written by Eve Ensler, who created the The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into 45 different languages and performed in over 119 countries. We, women from all over the planet, take the plight of our vaginas and uteri very seriously. The psychological damage cause by the ways in which our bodies are violated is immeasurable. I suspect your intent was not to dismiss our collective experience. Men have been dismissing our value and basic rights as human beings pretty much since the beginning of time. Forgive us if we sometimes come across as being too sensitive.
I sincerely appreciate your attempt to make things right. The world would be a better place if we could sort through complex and sensitive issues…together…as human beings. Not as men vs. women, old people vs. young people, Christians vs. non-Christians, or Democrats vs. Republicans. I suspect we ultimately want the same things out of life.
Posted by Cindy Thomas 