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Монологи вагіни
Наразі читачі тримають в руках незвич(ай)ну книгу. Це ювілейне видання приурочене до 20-ї річниці публікації збірки п’єс «Монологи вагіни» знаної в усьому світі авторки Ів Енслер. Такою само знаною є і її п’єса, що стала своєрідним перформансом-маніфестом, мовою виклику, звільнення й самовираження з метою подолання замовчування щодо жіночих тіл і життів, притаманного маскулінній людській спільноті. Це книга-сповідь, книга-крик і книга-одкровення, яке осяває кожну жінку, даючи їй змогу усвідомити своє начало й не соромитися його. П’єса «Монологи вагіни», попри художність тексту, є белетристичним синопсисом найгостріших питань сьогодення щодо ґендеру, фемінізму, сексуальності, людяності й рівності представників людської спільноти.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
887 people are currently reading
40571 people want to read
About the author
V (formerly Eve Ensler)
27 books1,433 followersV is an internationally bestselling author and an award-winning playwright whose works include The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body, Insecure at Last, and I Am an Emotional Creature, since adapted for the stage as Emotional Creature. She is the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, which has raised more than $90 million for local groups and activists, and inspired the global action One Billion Rising. V lives in Paris and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,914 reviews
March 4, 2021
Hiding this in spoilers now, because I no longer stand by this old, old review and I'm rather embarrassed at how it's the top rated one when the book is obviously aimed at a different audience from me. I won't remove it because obviously a lot of people agreed with it (most of them women), but I still wouldn't write this now and I'm not sure why I felt the need to do so then.
February 7, 2018
“I bet you're worried. I was worried. I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them.”
To be honest, I was worried as well. I didn't want to think about vaginas. I still don't want to think about vaginas (simply because I've got the gay, you know.) But it is important that we do.
Thinking, reading, talking about vaginas in a feminist way, that's what I'm here for. We use the word penis in so many different situations and variations, without cringing, careless even.
But we never say "vagina" out loud. We hardly ever think it. And when we do, we cringe and lower our voices, or we shout it out loud as an insult. Why is that?
Because the female sex organ, in comparison to the male opposite, is at least as oppressed, shunned and mistreated as the female sex in comparison to the male one. This tiny book holds the power to not only normalise but to praise and strengthen the way we treat and talk about vaginas, which praises and empowers females as individuals in our society.
My only criticism is the overwhelming and tiring amount of letters and listing of stars who support this movement (which only appear in this special V-Day edition). It sounded more like a praise of personal fame, than giving evidence of the movement's influence. Sometimes, less is more.
Thanks for Emma Watson and Our shared shelf for bringing this book to my attention!
In a nutshell: an empowering and revolutionary read.
Find more of my books on Instagram
To be honest, I was worried as well. I didn't want to think about vaginas. I still don't want to think about vaginas (simply because I've got the gay, you know.) But it is important that we do.
Thinking, reading, talking about vaginas in a feminist way, that's what I'm here for. We use the word penis in so many different situations and variations, without cringing, careless even.
But we never say "vagina" out loud. We hardly ever think it. And when we do, we cringe and lower our voices, or we shout it out loud as an insult. Why is that?
Because the female sex organ, in comparison to the male opposite, is at least as oppressed, shunned and mistreated as the female sex in comparison to the male one. This tiny book holds the power to not only normalise but to praise and strengthen the way we treat and talk about vaginas, which praises and empowers females as individuals in our society.
My only criticism is the overwhelming and tiring amount of letters and listing of stars who support this movement (which only appear in this special V-Day edition). It sounded more like a praise of personal fame, than giving evidence of the movement's influence. Sometimes, less is more.
Thanks for Emma Watson and Our shared shelf for bringing this book to my attention!
In a nutshell: an empowering and revolutionary read.
Find more of my books on Instagram
June 8, 2012
It's disturbingly tempting to give this book a high rating just so everyone knows that I'm a feminist (which I am) and that I'm comfortable talking about sex (you mean coitus?). And I think Ensler depends on that tendency. Because here's the thing- VM's politics may be admirable, but as theatre it's really quite bad. Also, Ensler is a self-serving egomaniac. Think about it- she could fund an endowment for female playwrights and premiere a new feminist play every year, but instead she's set up an organization to promote the performance of this same play every single year all over the country (with strict rules so that no one takes too many liberties with her vision), and apparently the plan is to continue this for all time. Don't get me wrong, I see why this play is so eye-opening for so many people, and I think everyone should see it once, just to get the ideas out in the open. After several years of V-Days, though, I'm through.
February 13, 2017
Thank you, Secret Santa. ♥
5 It May Not Be Perfect, but it’s a start! Stars
I may not have grown up in a “down there” age, but I most definitely grew up in a “down there” house. I don’t remember ever having open dialogue with my mother about vaginas growing up, not once. Or maybe once, actually, when we discussed menstruation. This sign of womanhood that brought about nightmares of waking up in puddles of blood that could be hidden with scraps of material bunched around your underwear making you waddle like a duck or awkward looking fingers of cotton wrapped in plastic to look like candy.
So yeah, not all that much sex ed at home. And the watered down sterilization of sex at school was little more illuminating. It would be an act of violence that initiated my self-discovery as a card-carrying member of the vagina brigade.
At sixteen I hated my vagina!! It was a cause of great suffrage for me, it had never done a damn thing in my life that didn’t cause pain. From it I got humiliating blood and cramps that would knock me flat with their sharp spiking fissures of agony. And then to add insult to injury, rape. A space in my body that someone could force themselves into against my will simply because it was there. A whole new pain, not just physical but spiritual.
Years later, when I was in my mid-twenties I remember sitting in the living room with my best friend and her daughter, who was five. I remember hearing her whisper something to her daughter about going to her room if she wanted to do that and not really paying attention…. Until her daughter said, “Is it because my vagina is gross?” That got my attention. I turned my head from the book I was reading and froze, staring onto a scene that perplexed me. And her mother, my friend, said – without a bit of discomfort, “No. Your vagina is not now and will never be gross.”
And I started to silently cry as their conversation continued, and her mother explained that it was perfectly acceptable to explore her body and her vagina but that she shouldn’t do it in the living room. That if she wanted to do that she should go to her room and close the door. I looked over at this five year old and she was smiling at her mommy with wide blue eyes and rosy pink cheeks. I left the room to go wipe away the tears and came back and hugged my friend, startling her. She laughed it off when I told her how amazing of a mother she was.
But you see, I thought my vagina was gross. My whole life. Because it was a secret I couldn’t talk about. It was a cunt. It was a pussy. It was words used to describe someone who was weak and inferior…
The heart is capable of sacrifice.
So is the vagina.
The heart is capable to forgive and repair.
It can change its shape to let us in.
It can expand to let us out.
So can the vagina.
It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us
and bleed and bleed us into this difficult,
wondrous world.
So can the vagina.
I don’t know that I think vaginas are flowers or our centres, or anything like that. BUT I do think they are something we need to talk about, openly, because living in terror, disgust or simple ignorance of our own bodies is no way to live. No way at all.
5 It May Not Be Perfect, but it’s a start! Stars
I may not have grown up in a “down there” age, but I most definitely grew up in a “down there” house. I don’t remember ever having open dialogue with my mother about vaginas growing up, not once. Or maybe once, actually, when we discussed menstruation. This sign of womanhood that brought about nightmares of waking up in puddles of blood that could be hidden with scraps of material bunched around your underwear making you waddle like a duck or awkward looking fingers of cotton wrapped in plastic to look like candy.
So yeah, not all that much sex ed at home. And the watered down sterilization of sex at school was little more illuminating. It would be an act of violence that initiated my self-discovery as a card-carrying member of the vagina brigade.
At sixteen I hated my vagina!! It was a cause of great suffrage for me, it had never done a damn thing in my life that didn’t cause pain. From it I got humiliating blood and cramps that would knock me flat with their sharp spiking fissures of agony. And then to add insult to injury, rape. A space in my body that someone could force themselves into against my will simply because it was there. A whole new pain, not just physical but spiritual.
Years later, when I was in my mid-twenties I remember sitting in the living room with my best friend and her daughter, who was five. I remember hearing her whisper something to her daughter about going to her room if she wanted to do that and not really paying attention…. Until her daughter said, “Is it because my vagina is gross?” That got my attention. I turned my head from the book I was reading and froze, staring onto a scene that perplexed me. And her mother, my friend, said – without a bit of discomfort, “No. Your vagina is not now and will never be gross.”
And I started to silently cry as their conversation continued, and her mother explained that it was perfectly acceptable to explore her body and her vagina but that she shouldn’t do it in the living room. That if she wanted to do that she should go to her room and close the door. I looked over at this five year old and she was smiling at her mommy with wide blue eyes and rosy pink cheeks. I left the room to go wipe away the tears and came back and hugged my friend, startling her. She laughed it off when I told her how amazing of a mother she was.
But you see, I thought my vagina was gross. My whole life. Because it was a secret I couldn’t talk about. It was a cunt. It was a pussy. It was words used to describe someone who was weak and inferior…
The heart is capable of sacrifice.
So is the vagina.
The heart is capable to forgive and repair.
It can change its shape to let us in.
It can expand to let us out.
So can the vagina.
It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us
and bleed and bleed us into this difficult,
wondrous world.
So can the vagina.
I don’t know that I think vaginas are flowers or our centres, or anything like that. BUT I do think they are something we need to talk about, openly, because living in terror, disgust or simple ignorance of our own bodies is no way to live. No way at all.
November 12, 2014
I don't really see the need for the stances of overwhelming crassness many of the reviews take against this book here on the GR. Is Ensler's collection of performance pieces the final word on feminist ideology? No, not at all. But is it a sincere work that approaches with humor and gravity the notion that especially men and especially women should view the female body outside of the bullshit male-centric, patriarchal perception that many people seem utterly oblivious to their own culpability in helping perpetuate? And by breaking out of this narrow longview of gender identity, help the reader - the female and, by extension, the male reader - learn to appreciate their own owness that is neither defined by societal expectations nor cultural pressures? Emphatically yes and yes. Besides, how can you not find joy in a work that has a section entitled "My Vagina is Angry"? The Vagina Monologues is another welcome bit of social upheaval in the never-ending, variegated discussion of gender identity.
November 6, 2015
LOVE. Wish this was longer.
September 18, 2025
Catching Up...
Have you seen this book performed?
I did, years ago.
To me, this was the most amazing stage experience I have ever witnessed.
It was powerful, spell-binding, and shared a critical and important and empowering message.
The intention…Let us end violence against girls and women.
Please.
It is a testament to the complex and sometimes trivial experiences women have with their own body. Parts.
This book isn’t a typical book.
It is a strong message.
It is a need to love ourselves.
The organ we typically don’t even say the name out loud. In some countries where freedom isn’t even free.
Parts of the story are sad. Sharing of first experiences. Not knowing how to understand first experiences. Or the feelings between heart and body.
The names we give to our body part. You can see I am even being sensitive in this review and not even using the word(s).
And yet…If we use the word, we give power to ourselves as women. This is Ensler’s focus. To empower women. Not to just bring pleasure to men.
She chooses to use this book as a political forum – a deliberate statement: violence against women is rampant. She sees it as a pandemic in itself. Using the “V” word won’t end the war on women, but it will bring women back to life, she feels and states vehemently throughout.
“We are here; we exist.”
She wants women to reclaim their power – their bodies – because, she tells us, with each growing day, the number of rapes, genital mutilations, domestic violence, murders against women, honor killings, sex slavery, and rage towards women will continue to increase.
So…As a play…
It has humor, and it has a message…a powerful one.
The book…Only makes readers see it closer, in front of them, between the pages.
Have you seen this book performed?
I did, years ago.
To me, this was the most amazing stage experience I have ever witnessed.
It was powerful, spell-binding, and shared a critical and important and empowering message.
The intention…Let us end violence against girls and women.
Please.
It is a testament to the complex and sometimes trivial experiences women have with their own body. Parts.
This book isn’t a typical book.
It is a strong message.
It is a need to love ourselves.
The organ we typically don’t even say the name out loud. In some countries where freedom isn’t even free.
Parts of the story are sad. Sharing of first experiences. Not knowing how to understand first experiences. Or the feelings between heart and body.
The names we give to our body part. You can see I am even being sensitive in this review and not even using the word(s).
And yet…If we use the word, we give power to ourselves as women. This is Ensler’s focus. To empower women. Not to just bring pleasure to men.
She chooses to use this book as a political forum – a deliberate statement: violence against women is rampant. She sees it as a pandemic in itself. Using the “V” word won’t end the war on women, but it will bring women back to life, she feels and states vehemently throughout.
“We are here; we exist.”
She wants women to reclaim their power – their bodies – because, she tells us, with each growing day, the number of rapes, genital mutilations, domestic violence, murders against women, honor killings, sex slavery, and rage towards women will continue to increase.
So…As a play…
It has humor, and it has a message…a powerful one.
The book…Only makes readers see it closer, in front of them, between the pages.
February 22, 2008
There's a lot to critique about this - but I really don't feel like getting into it. I will say this, though: Eve Ensler doesn't know what a vagina is. If you're unclear: a vagina is "the passage leading from the uterus to the vulva in certain female mammals". Everyone in this play says "vagina" when they really usually mean "vulva". I'm not being oddly specific, they are completely different parts of the anatomy. COME ON. Vulva is a prettier word than vagina anyway. I liked the reclaiming cunt speech. That was about it.
September 14, 2025
OMG – I was missing something all my life by not having read this book!
First of all, I would love to thank my PGCITE professor and mentor Dr. Rekha Bajaj ma’am for having recommended this book to me during one of her latest awesome class sessions. The revelations of this book gave me more ah-ha moments than the Book of Revelation in the Bible did!
And I can afford to make that statement because I am officially studying to become a Catholic Biblical Theologian – so basically, I am an expert on this. So all you Conservative Christians and Catholics – keep your Bible Trivia to yourself while reading this review of mine lol! Also I am a Catholic Religious or Consecrated Virgin, so again – keep your ‘holier than thou’ opinions also to yourselves, because I know that officially in Catholicism, in our Moral as well as Dogmatic Theology – it is like we and our vaginas are estranged couples who just don’t want to own up that they technically ‘belong to the same family and live under the same roof’!
In fact, if suddenly we realize that that part of our body exists, well meaning Catholic individuals then try to either mentally and emotionally castrate us women – like a Catholic Mental FGM - or they just get obsessed about getting us married off so that we can think ‘sexual perversities’ ‘within the Holy Sacrament of Marriage’. And where Catholic Religious like me are concerned, our Church in this case is totally devoted to creating a miracle…. that is to turn us women-religious into amoebas.
And as you can see, I am totally devoted to disturbing the peace of this very toxically patriarchal Roman Catholic Church!
I do this by reading, reviewing, analysing and creating content about books like these.
‘The Vagina Monologues’ is one of the best books in the world right now on Feminism. It is a must read for anyone concerned about the deplorable plight of women and girls globally and of the new type of sexism that has emerged in the world because of the AI Revolution. It is therefore a compulsory read for any young girl who feels confused about her sexual desires and the reasons why she has to hide the fact that she feels erotic compared to her male counterparts. I was especially taken up by that fact that the author of this book and the play managed to create a worldwide welfare group for women, girls and others who wish to work towards stopping violence against women. I hope to be a part of this voluntary organization someday really soon, so that I too as a Catholic Religious and High School teacher and Theologian can do my part in this regard. This is because I feel that now with the rise of the conservative Right as well as the very nationalist Left in most parts of the world, the plight of young girls and women have become worse. Added to that, there is, as I have mentioned before, a new form of deplorable sexism and misogynous behaviour being imparted to the young via the biases of AI, which we as adults and intellectuals have to combat and rectify before it is too late.
In this regard, and in my own working experience as a high school teacher, I’ve noticed that teenage boys these days have little or no concern for the privacy rights of young girls or even older unmarried women. They tend to abuse the rights of women by taking unauthorized videos of them, without their permission uploading the same on INSTAGRAM, TikTok, Meta and other social media outlets and even tend to upload such videos of the private moments they spend with their female friends on the dark web or hard core pornographic sites for monetary gains to fund their ambitions, their online games, their drugs, etc.
Women, especially young Gen-X and Gen-Alpha girls are being subjected to a very dangerous and detrimental type of online misogyny that could have destroyed the best of us adults if we were of their age. It is time we nip this issue in the bud by first taking cognisance of the way we are bringing up our boys and secondly by limiting their unsupervised screentime, even if we lose their affection in this regard. And lastly, we need to set some ground rules about the way they are supposed to handle the young girls in their schools, life, and online because the situation is getting out of control. We need ‘The Vagina Monologues’ more now than we did back in the year 1998.
My copy of the book is the ten-year anniversary edition, which is therefore a 2008 paperback copy which I purchase from a curated boutique bookstore back in the year 2017. It is a wonderful copy with added monologues concerning the transgender community, Comfort Women of Japan, and the timeline of events that chronicle meticulously how the V-Day Welfare Organization and Movement has grown to help and save a lot of women world over since the year 1999. I was totally motivated by this organization, and I think it would be beneficial to them (and me too!) to have a Catholic Religious and theologian on their side so I hope to be part of their work soon. Will keep my readers and friends here on GR updated about the same. Stay tuned.
Another thing that touched me about this book is the way a former Principal of an internationally prestigious Catholic University stood up for the enactment and celebration of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ and the V-Day Festival respectively on his otherwise orthodox and very conservative Catholic campus. I loved the fact that he felt that this play was not against but totally for what we as a Catholic community want to see happen in the world and especially for the betterment of our own young girls and women in the community and so I highly applaud him for his bravery – God bless you sir! We need more Catholic Heads of Academic Departments and Deans like you on our campuses especially during these very crucial times when the rights of Western Catholic women are being trampled upon in broad daylight – let alone what is happening here in the East.
The monologues mentioned in this book were gut-wrenchingly real and agonizing at times to read but many a times ‘roll on the floor laugh-worthy’. But we women are not emancipated totally at all yet. It is great that we are mostly aware of our rights and our freedoms, et al., but we still need to really connect with the reality of the plight of our fellow sisters worldwide, especially in third-world countries and I think this book can teach us that aspect – that crucial aspect related to our complete emancipation. Gen-Alpha and Gen-Z girls especially need to realize global sisterhood and the need to listen to the problems of others different from them if they want even their own conditions to improve.
As a Catholic Religious, I need to emphasize this point that we nuns are looked very poorly at by the youth of today – especially young girls who see us as these ‘cold’ ‘codfish’ women who probably are asexual and so don’t act or feel like them. I feel that the V-Day Movement should encompass not only women who want to activate themselves sexually but even those who wish not to for a sublimation effort towards a higher purpose. Being emancipated does not mean that you have to be saying ‘yes’ to whoever and whatever comes your way. Instead, being totally sexually emancipated means that you know what you want from your lover and how your lover should respect and know how to love you, and even if you are in that category that chooses not to indulge in it – because that is not your thing - and also because you want to give your life in complete 24/7, 365 days of the year service to aid those young girls and women to make sure they achieve that right to love the way they wish, whenever they wish and with whomever they wish and not be judged at all for the same.
This latter category of service sisters would be like most of us Catholic Nuns like me who want something better for our Catholic girls and women. So don’t judge us, most of us believe me are on your side and we are trying to work in the system to change the system for your benefit. We nuns especially feel disgusted that we are treated with respect or not according to the status of our hymens. We are aware that the condition of our hymens does not determine who we are as people and what kind of lovers towards Jesus we are or can be, period. Our hymens do not define us – the presence or absence of it – it should be unnecessary in our vocations but sadly where Catholic nuns are concerned – the status of your hymen is a prime factor in the status you are accorded as a Catholic Religious.
I have met and even have had close male Catholic Priest friends who have informed me that most of them are not virgins when they enter seminaries in the priesthood and they do not stay virgins thereafter either at all. But they don’t get checked upon entry or later on under a false or fake medical pretext.
But we women are checked.
This is so unfair and so medieval of the Catholic Church.
It is pukeworthy, period.
So, my addition to ‘The Vagina Monologues’ would be for the author to even include probably in the near future feminist and emancipated nuns like me (there are a heck of a lot of us from all ages! Yeah!) who are sublimating the desires and needs of their vaginas to make sure that other women get the freedom to not dissociate themselves EVER from their own vaginas and the way they wish to love and be loved. We religious sisters need everyone’s love, support and resources to make even our lives better in the Catholic Church. Most of us don’t even get to be graduates even if we have IQs as high as Einstein, all because of Church Politics, Sexual abuse by the clergy, convent politics or simply because these young nuns are kick-ass!
Other things I adored about the book would include the monologues about the transgender community, that made me weep and remember all my LGBTQIA+ friends, Catholic and otherwise, who I work with on an everyday basis ever since the year 2014 when I was in the process of writing my award winning book ‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’ and being filmed for a LGBTQIA+ documentary for the same. I can’t bear to see the pain and agony and rejection this community of beautiful people are going through also in the Roman Catholic Church either and I think this madness has to stop ASAP.
Another monologue that broke my heart was the monologue about the Comfort Women of Japan, needless to say – I could not bear to read it – but I did and now I’m left numb. My very ‘not really used’ vagina was aching in metaphorical pain when I read that monologue and so will yours – even if you technically don’t even have a vagina. The monologue about FGM is briefly discussed and I wish more could have been said about this heinous custom which is even practiced sadly in my own Mumbai, India at large. Yes, (surprise) it is! It is practiced among Bohra Muslim community of women, and they get cut by a woman shaman who normally resides in secret in the Muslim ghettos of Mumbai, mostly town area, and there young girls of 9- to 11-year-old get cut. Sometimes their whole clitoris is cut off, sometimes part of it and sometimes the shaman even goes to the extent of cutting off parts of the two labias, stitching together the walls around the cut clitoris to cover the whole thing up and only leave the vagina opening free.
In fact, I knew a woman shaman who I encountered online on Meta (then in 2016 Facebook) who informed me that she would fake it and just nip the clitoris and pretend to the elder granny clients of her young victims that she cut the whole thing off. She said she had mercy on these girls but couldn’t help it because this trade is something that they had to carry on from generation to generation. Luckily, she said, she made sure she did not get married or had children and was the last of her line living in Mumbai. If she had an option in life, she said she wished to study English Literature, especially African Literature Studies and become a professor in a college along with focussing on activism work against the practice of FGM worldwide.
So, these were the monologues I had to say something about. Otherwise, the book is a winner and can really change society if we allow it in our schools, colleges and our other campuses as freely as we did way back in the first decade of the theatre performance and selling of the book. I learnt this from my favourite USA – that until we all our free, none of us are free. I hope the urban Gen-Alpha and Gen-Z girls of our age realize that and put some efforts into getting a good education and listen to the stories of others around the globe and try and make their lives better through support, compassion, resources, education and some hard-core activism and policy changes. The activism can be online, but we need to also take things to the streets because blocked traffic can really push the pen towards policy changes more easily than a signature campaign on Meta or X. If you don’t believe me, then come down to Mumbai, India and check out how we are working things out back here in the midst of bumper to bumper to bumper to bumper traffic!
‘The Vagina Monologues’ is art that leads to inspiration and then action.
It gets 5 stars from me easily.
Officially the best investment I’ve made in the name of books!
First of all, I would love to thank my PGCITE professor and mentor Dr. Rekha Bajaj ma’am for having recommended this book to me during one of her latest awesome class sessions. The revelations of this book gave me more ah-ha moments than the Book of Revelation in the Bible did!
And I can afford to make that statement because I am officially studying to become a Catholic Biblical Theologian – so basically, I am an expert on this. So all you Conservative Christians and Catholics – keep your Bible Trivia to yourself while reading this review of mine lol! Also I am a Catholic Religious or Consecrated Virgin, so again – keep your ‘holier than thou’ opinions also to yourselves, because I know that officially in Catholicism, in our Moral as well as Dogmatic Theology – it is like we and our vaginas are estranged couples who just don’t want to own up that they technically ‘belong to the same family and live under the same roof’!
In fact, if suddenly we realize that that part of our body exists, well meaning Catholic individuals then try to either mentally and emotionally castrate us women – like a Catholic Mental FGM - or they just get obsessed about getting us married off so that we can think ‘sexual perversities’ ‘within the Holy Sacrament of Marriage’. And where Catholic Religious like me are concerned, our Church in this case is totally devoted to creating a miracle…. that is to turn us women-religious into amoebas.
And as you can see, I am totally devoted to disturbing the peace of this very toxically patriarchal Roman Catholic Church!
I do this by reading, reviewing, analysing and creating content about books like these.
‘The Vagina Monologues’ is one of the best books in the world right now on Feminism. It is a must read for anyone concerned about the deplorable plight of women and girls globally and of the new type of sexism that has emerged in the world because of the AI Revolution. It is therefore a compulsory read for any young girl who feels confused about her sexual desires and the reasons why she has to hide the fact that she feels erotic compared to her male counterparts. I was especially taken up by that fact that the author of this book and the play managed to create a worldwide welfare group for women, girls and others who wish to work towards stopping violence against women. I hope to be a part of this voluntary organization someday really soon, so that I too as a Catholic Religious and High School teacher and Theologian can do my part in this regard. This is because I feel that now with the rise of the conservative Right as well as the very nationalist Left in most parts of the world, the plight of young girls and women have become worse. Added to that, there is, as I have mentioned before, a new form of deplorable sexism and misogynous behaviour being imparted to the young via the biases of AI, which we as adults and intellectuals have to combat and rectify before it is too late.
In this regard, and in my own working experience as a high school teacher, I’ve noticed that teenage boys these days have little or no concern for the privacy rights of young girls or even older unmarried women. They tend to abuse the rights of women by taking unauthorized videos of them, without their permission uploading the same on INSTAGRAM, TikTok, Meta and other social media outlets and even tend to upload such videos of the private moments they spend with their female friends on the dark web or hard core pornographic sites for monetary gains to fund their ambitions, their online games, their drugs, etc.
Women, especially young Gen-X and Gen-Alpha girls are being subjected to a very dangerous and detrimental type of online misogyny that could have destroyed the best of us adults if we were of their age. It is time we nip this issue in the bud by first taking cognisance of the way we are bringing up our boys and secondly by limiting their unsupervised screentime, even if we lose their affection in this regard. And lastly, we need to set some ground rules about the way they are supposed to handle the young girls in their schools, life, and online because the situation is getting out of control. We need ‘The Vagina Monologues’ more now than we did back in the year 1998.
My copy of the book is the ten-year anniversary edition, which is therefore a 2008 paperback copy which I purchase from a curated boutique bookstore back in the year 2017. It is a wonderful copy with added monologues concerning the transgender community, Comfort Women of Japan, and the timeline of events that chronicle meticulously how the V-Day Welfare Organization and Movement has grown to help and save a lot of women world over since the year 1999. I was totally motivated by this organization, and I think it would be beneficial to them (and me too!) to have a Catholic Religious and theologian on their side so I hope to be part of their work soon. Will keep my readers and friends here on GR updated about the same. Stay tuned.
Another thing that touched me about this book is the way a former Principal of an internationally prestigious Catholic University stood up for the enactment and celebration of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ and the V-Day Festival respectively on his otherwise orthodox and very conservative Catholic campus. I loved the fact that he felt that this play was not against but totally for what we as a Catholic community want to see happen in the world and especially for the betterment of our own young girls and women in the community and so I highly applaud him for his bravery – God bless you sir! We need more Catholic Heads of Academic Departments and Deans like you on our campuses especially during these very crucial times when the rights of Western Catholic women are being trampled upon in broad daylight – let alone what is happening here in the East.
The monologues mentioned in this book were gut-wrenchingly real and agonizing at times to read but many a times ‘roll on the floor laugh-worthy’. But we women are not emancipated totally at all yet. It is great that we are mostly aware of our rights and our freedoms, et al., but we still need to really connect with the reality of the plight of our fellow sisters worldwide, especially in third-world countries and I think this book can teach us that aspect – that crucial aspect related to our complete emancipation. Gen-Alpha and Gen-Z girls especially need to realize global sisterhood and the need to listen to the problems of others different from them if they want even their own conditions to improve.
As a Catholic Religious, I need to emphasize this point that we nuns are looked very poorly at by the youth of today – especially young girls who see us as these ‘cold’ ‘codfish’ women who probably are asexual and so don’t act or feel like them. I feel that the V-Day Movement should encompass not only women who want to activate themselves sexually but even those who wish not to for a sublimation effort towards a higher purpose. Being emancipated does not mean that you have to be saying ‘yes’ to whoever and whatever comes your way. Instead, being totally sexually emancipated means that you know what you want from your lover and how your lover should respect and know how to love you, and even if you are in that category that chooses not to indulge in it – because that is not your thing - and also because you want to give your life in complete 24/7, 365 days of the year service to aid those young girls and women to make sure they achieve that right to love the way they wish, whenever they wish and with whomever they wish and not be judged at all for the same.
This latter category of service sisters would be like most of us Catholic Nuns like me who want something better for our Catholic girls and women. So don’t judge us, most of us believe me are on your side and we are trying to work in the system to change the system for your benefit. We nuns especially feel disgusted that we are treated with respect or not according to the status of our hymens. We are aware that the condition of our hymens does not determine who we are as people and what kind of lovers towards Jesus we are or can be, period. Our hymens do not define us – the presence or absence of it – it should be unnecessary in our vocations but sadly where Catholic nuns are concerned – the status of your hymen is a prime factor in the status you are accorded as a Catholic Religious.
I have met and even have had close male Catholic Priest friends who have informed me that most of them are not virgins when they enter seminaries in the priesthood and they do not stay virgins thereafter either at all. But they don’t get checked upon entry or later on under a false or fake medical pretext.
But we women are checked.
This is so unfair and so medieval of the Catholic Church.
It is pukeworthy, period.
So, my addition to ‘The Vagina Monologues’ would be for the author to even include probably in the near future feminist and emancipated nuns like me (there are a heck of a lot of us from all ages! Yeah!) who are sublimating the desires and needs of their vaginas to make sure that other women get the freedom to not dissociate themselves EVER from their own vaginas and the way they wish to love and be loved. We religious sisters need everyone’s love, support and resources to make even our lives better in the Catholic Church. Most of us don’t even get to be graduates even if we have IQs as high as Einstein, all because of Church Politics, Sexual abuse by the clergy, convent politics or simply because these young nuns are kick-ass!
Other things I adored about the book would include the monologues about the transgender community, that made me weep and remember all my LGBTQIA+ friends, Catholic and otherwise, who I work with on an everyday basis ever since the year 2014 when I was in the process of writing my award winning book ‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’ and being filmed for a LGBTQIA+ documentary for the same. I can’t bear to see the pain and agony and rejection this community of beautiful people are going through also in the Roman Catholic Church either and I think this madness has to stop ASAP.
Another monologue that broke my heart was the monologue about the Comfort Women of Japan, needless to say – I could not bear to read it – but I did and now I’m left numb. My very ‘not really used’ vagina was aching in metaphorical pain when I read that monologue and so will yours – even if you technically don’t even have a vagina. The monologue about FGM is briefly discussed and I wish more could have been said about this heinous custom which is even practiced sadly in my own Mumbai, India at large. Yes, (surprise) it is! It is practiced among Bohra Muslim community of women, and they get cut by a woman shaman who normally resides in secret in the Muslim ghettos of Mumbai, mostly town area, and there young girls of 9- to 11-year-old get cut. Sometimes their whole clitoris is cut off, sometimes part of it and sometimes the shaman even goes to the extent of cutting off parts of the two labias, stitching together the walls around the cut clitoris to cover the whole thing up and only leave the vagina opening free.
In fact, I knew a woman shaman who I encountered online on Meta (then in 2016 Facebook) who informed me that she would fake it and just nip the clitoris and pretend to the elder granny clients of her young victims that she cut the whole thing off. She said she had mercy on these girls but couldn’t help it because this trade is something that they had to carry on from generation to generation. Luckily, she said, she made sure she did not get married or had children and was the last of her line living in Mumbai. If she had an option in life, she said she wished to study English Literature, especially African Literature Studies and become a professor in a college along with focussing on activism work against the practice of FGM worldwide.
So, these were the monologues I had to say something about. Otherwise, the book is a winner and can really change society if we allow it in our schools, colleges and our other campuses as freely as we did way back in the first decade of the theatre performance and selling of the book. I learnt this from my favourite USA – that until we all our free, none of us are free. I hope the urban Gen-Alpha and Gen-Z girls of our age realize that and put some efforts into getting a good education and listen to the stories of others around the globe and try and make their lives better through support, compassion, resources, education and some hard-core activism and policy changes. The activism can be online, but we need to also take things to the streets because blocked traffic can really push the pen towards policy changes more easily than a signature campaign on Meta or X. If you don’t believe me, then come down to Mumbai, India and check out how we are working things out back here in the midst of bumper to bumper to bumper to bumper traffic!
‘The Vagina Monologues’ is art that leads to inspiration and then action.
It gets 5 stars from me easily.
Officially the best investment I’ve made in the name of books!
May 6, 2015
The book itself is very short and because of that several introductions and a afterwords have been included to pad it out. First there is the extremely long introduction by the author which was partly about how the book was written and partly history and what has happened since the Vagina Monologues was created. Then there is a another extremely long (but much better written and more interesting) introduction by the fabulous Gloria Steinem telling us something of her eccentric, interesting and relevant family history. Then there is the preface by the author about Vaginas and finally, sigh, yes finally, on page 38, the book begins.
The next 150 pages are wonderful, five star with a bullet, really, tremendous writing, thought-provoking and very enjoyable to read. I couldn't put it down, all these women's stories transcribed into poetry and prose and something in between, I read until 3 a.m., fascinating stuff.
But then we have the afterwords. 40 or 50 pages to slosh, trudge and wade through about V-Day. It could all have been summed up in a couple of pages, I mean, do you really want to know about which college held V-day in what year and how many people attended? No? Neither me. (Yes? You involved in funding it or something?)
So the Vagina Monologues itself gets 5 stars, the prefaces get 3 stars (because of Gloria Steinem) and the afterword gets 1 star and that's generous. That's an average of 3, so there you have it.
The next 150 pages are wonderful, five star with a bullet, really, tremendous writing, thought-provoking and very enjoyable to read. I couldn't put it down, all these women's stories transcribed into poetry and prose and something in between, I read until 3 a.m., fascinating stuff.
But then we have the afterwords. 40 or 50 pages to slosh, trudge and wade through about V-Day. It could all have been summed up in a couple of pages, I mean, do you really want to know about which college held V-day in what year and how many people attended? No? Neither me. (Yes? You involved in funding it or something?)
So the Vagina Monologues itself gets 5 stars, the prefaces get 3 stars (because of Gloria Steinem) and the afterword gets 1 star and that's generous. That's an average of 3, so there you have it.
April 5, 2007
While I don't necessarily disagree with Ensler's thesis, or the help the project has provided to various women's charities, the whole thing, as a literary or dramatic work, is very problematic. Anything more honest than a fawning critique reveals how shallow the whole thing is; there's hypocrisy, repetitive symbolism and metaphors, a heaping of that empty sort of communal feminism that makes everyone feel good but doesn't actually change anything, and, upon close inspection, evidence of the kind of "creative" editing that awkwardly turns the mundane things people have to say about their sex lives into what is supposed to sound like meaningful drama, but is in fact just forced. I'm sorry, but all the positive vibes of a theater full of people chanting "cunt" isn't going to make it any less awful when the same word is said by some asshole trying to hurl invective at a woman when he is just to trying to make her feel like shit.
August 4, 2025
تکگوییهای واژن نوشتهٔ ایو انسلر، فقط یک نمایشنامه نیست؛ یک فریاد است، یک جشن، یک افشاگری و یک ترمیم. اثریست زنمحور، زنصدا، و زنتنه، که با بیپروایی تمام، بدن را از انحصار شرم بیرون میکشد و آن را تبدیل به عرصهای برای مقاومت، لذت، و روایت میکند.
این متن، روایتیست چندصدایی از واژنهایی که هرکدام چیزی برای گفتن دارند: تجربهٔ درد، لذت، تجاوز، تولد، تنهایی، طرد، خشونت و آزادی. نمایش، مرزهای زبان رسمی را در مینوردد، واژهها را بازآفرینی میکند، و آنچه عموماً "ناگفتنی" تلقی میشود، به سطح گفتمان عمومی میآورد. واژهٔ "واژن" در این متن نه صرفاً به معنای عضو جنسی، بلکه استعارهایست برای بدن زن، هستی زن، و حق زن بر گفتن، بودن، خواستن.
انسلر از خلال این مونولوگها، آن چیزی را که قرنها در خاموشی مانده، با صدای بلند بازگو میکند. تنِ زن در این نمایش، دیگر میدان جنگ نیست؛ تبدیل میشود به میدان گفتوگو. زنانی از زبانهای مختلف، با تجربههایی متفاوت، در یک امر مشترک سهیماند: میل به تصاحب بدن خویش و روایت آن بیمیانجی.
تکگوییهای واژن اثریست که همزمان هم سیاسیست و هم صمیمی، هم زنانهست و هم جهانشمول، هم تلخ است و هم به شکل غریبی رهاییبخش. اگر مخاطب آمادهٔ مواجهه با یک متن بیسانسور باشد، این نمایش میتواند برایش مثل آینهای باشد از آنچه در جامعه، فرهنگ و حتی در درون خودش همیشه پنهان مانده بوده.
خواندن یا دیدن این اثر، مثل تجربهٔ عریانیست؛ هم لذت دارد، هم ترس، هم جسارت، هم پرسش. اما مهمتر از همه، این است که بعد از آن، نمیتوان به تنِ زن، به سکوت، و به روایت، بهسادگی گذشته نگاه کرد.
این متن، روایتیست چندصدایی از واژنهایی که هرکدام چیزی برای گفتن دارند: تجربهٔ درد، لذت، تجاوز، تولد، تنهایی، طرد، خشونت و آزادی. نمایش، مرزهای زبان رسمی را در مینوردد، واژهها را بازآفرینی میکند، و آنچه عموماً "ناگفتنی" تلقی میشود، به سطح گفتمان عمومی میآورد. واژهٔ "واژن" در این متن نه صرفاً به معنای عضو جنسی، بلکه استعارهایست برای بدن زن، هستی زن، و حق زن بر گفتن، بودن، خواستن.
انسلر از خلال این مونولوگها، آن چیزی را که قرنها در خاموشی مانده، با صدای بلند بازگو میکند. تنِ زن در این نمایش، دیگر میدان جنگ نیست؛ تبدیل میشود به میدان گفتوگو. زنانی از زبانهای مختلف، با تجربههایی متفاوت، در یک امر مشترک سهیماند: میل به تصاحب بدن خویش و روایت آن بیمیانجی.
تکگوییهای واژن اثریست که همزمان هم سیاسیست و هم صمیمی، هم زنانهست و هم جهانشمول، هم تلخ است و هم به شکل غریبی رهاییبخش. اگر مخاطب آمادهٔ مواجهه با یک متن بیسانسور باشد، این نمایش میتواند برایش مثل آینهای باشد از آنچه در جامعه، فرهنگ و حتی در درون خودش همیشه پنهان مانده بوده.
خواندن یا دیدن این اثر، مثل تجربهٔ عریانیست؛ هم لذت دارد، هم ترس، هم جسارت، هم پرسش. اما مهمتر از همه، این است که بعد از آن، نمیتوان به تنِ زن، به سکوت، و به روایت، بهسادگی گذشته نگاه کرد.
October 22, 2010
When I was in eighth grade health class, the teacher handed out diagrams of male and female genitalia with lines pointing to the different parts and told us to memorize the names of the parts for a test at the end of the week. After our tests had been graded, the teacher admitted that she’d analyzed the results for boys vs. girls and found some interesting discrepancies. Not terribly surprising, most boys and girls scored the highest when identifying the parts of their own respective genitals. But the girls who achieved the highest scores on the female diagram had a nearly equal success in identifying all the different parts on the male diagram as well. However, even the boys who achieved the highest scores on the male diagram scored very low on identifying the parts on the female diagram (with 1 or 2 exceptions).
After explaining these findings the teacher asked for responses from the class. Some of the more vocal boys complained that it “wasn’t fair” because girls had “more parts” and it wasn’t like they “got to see it all the time.” The teacher said that wasn’t an excuse and she made everyone who scored less than 70% retake the test. Good for her!
Frankly, I wish more health teachers had been like mine. Over the course of my adult, dating life, I met a surprising handful of fully grown men who had no idea where to find the clitoris. And no, they weren’t virgins and hadn’t been for years. In fact, one of them had been sexually active for nearly 10 years. I was surprised by that but glad he’d finally asked such an important question because honestly, there is no reason why a heterosexual man not know where to find it.
Reading this book made me think about these things. It also made me think about a recent conversation I’ve had with another mom about teaching the appropriate names for body parts and how the mantra you teach toddlers goes something like this, “Boys have a penis. Girls have a…a vagina.” And even though we’re too modern to do something embarrassing like whisper the word vagina, or give it a stupid, cutesie name like coochi snorcher or itsy bitsy, we still find ourselves hesitating before we actually say it, almost like you have to first think, “quick, wait, is this the right time to say vagina or…????”
I hate that I do that. It makes me angry that I often feel a need to pause before saying the word and to worry that maybe the other person will have an embarrassing reaction to my saying the word. Whatever I do, I don’t ever want my daughter to think that I’m embarrassed to say the word vagina. It bothers me that she could potentially develop some hang ups with the word in life from other sources, like other family members or friends or boyfriends but Lord help me that it doesn’t come from me.
That is one of the things I really loved about this book. There was no need to feel embarrassed even though I was reading about messy things like pubic hair and menstruation and odor and rape and lesbian sex. And birth. The V-Day edition I read had an amazing piece on birth that gave me chills.
Thanks to the internet, I’ve met a number of moms who’ve had all sorts of different experiences with birth, specifically cesarean birth vs. vaginal birth. I’ve observed that many of the women who had c-sections, especially unplanned, were left feeling distraught and like something had been stolen from them. To some extent, I imagine this can in part be attributed to longer recovery times, scarring, being cut open, etc. But there’s always been some other emotional component that I’ve never fully understood. As someone who experienced a vaginal birth, I’ve looked at some of the c-section mothers and felt those emotions pouring off them and never understood where they were coming from. I’ve heard them say things like, “just because I didn’t give birth doesn’t mean I didn’t give birth.” And I’ve thought, “well, of course” and didn’t understand why the other person felt the need to validate her experience. Reading the birth piece in this book gives me further insight by putting into words the sheer power of my own experience with giving birth and how close it comes to capturing the symbiotic relationship that can exist between woman and vagina. Feeling like the experience has been taken from you might require time to come to terms with. I feel better equipped to respond sensitively having read this.
Intense.
All that said, I can’t rate the book higher than three stars. I usually have a hard time getting on board with in your face “shock politics” and I can’t help but think this book falls under that category. It tries to shock regular people into thinking about things they perhaps never would have thought about otherwise by using socially shocking words like cunt and vagina.
For the record, I had a near perfect score on my eighth grade male and female genital exam. So this means I know when the word vagina is being used properly and when it is being improperly used as a synonym for vulva. I think it’s disappointing the Vagina Monologues barely acknowledges this. This just further convinces me that the primary purpose of this book is shock value rather than to effect actual change.
After explaining these findings the teacher asked for responses from the class. Some of the more vocal boys complained that it “wasn’t fair” because girls had “more parts” and it wasn’t like they “got to see it all the time.” The teacher said that wasn’t an excuse and she made everyone who scored less than 70% retake the test. Good for her!
Frankly, I wish more health teachers had been like mine. Over the course of my adult, dating life, I met a surprising handful of fully grown men who had no idea where to find the clitoris. And no, they weren’t virgins and hadn’t been for years. In fact, one of them had been sexually active for nearly 10 years. I was surprised by that but glad he’d finally asked such an important question because honestly, there is no reason why a heterosexual man not know where to find it.
Reading this book made me think about these things. It also made me think about a recent conversation I’ve had with another mom about teaching the appropriate names for body parts and how the mantra you teach toddlers goes something like this, “Boys have a penis. Girls have a…a vagina.” And even though we’re too modern to do something embarrassing like whisper the word vagina, or give it a stupid, cutesie name like coochi snorcher or itsy bitsy, we still find ourselves hesitating before we actually say it, almost like you have to first think, “quick, wait, is this the right time to say vagina or…????”
I hate that I do that. It makes me angry that I often feel a need to pause before saying the word and to worry that maybe the other person will have an embarrassing reaction to my saying the word. Whatever I do, I don’t ever want my daughter to think that I’m embarrassed to say the word vagina. It bothers me that she could potentially develop some hang ups with the word in life from other sources, like other family members or friends or boyfriends but Lord help me that it doesn’t come from me.
That is one of the things I really loved about this book. There was no need to feel embarrassed even though I was reading about messy things like pubic hair and menstruation and odor and rape and lesbian sex. And birth. The V-Day edition I read had an amazing piece on birth that gave me chills.
Thanks to the internet, I’ve met a number of moms who’ve had all sorts of different experiences with birth, specifically cesarean birth vs. vaginal birth. I’ve observed that many of the women who had c-sections, especially unplanned, were left feeling distraught and like something had been stolen from them. To some extent, I imagine this can in part be attributed to longer recovery times, scarring, being cut open, etc. But there’s always been some other emotional component that I’ve never fully understood. As someone who experienced a vaginal birth, I’ve looked at some of the c-section mothers and felt those emotions pouring off them and never understood where they were coming from. I’ve heard them say things like, “just because I didn’t give birth doesn’t mean I didn’t give birth.” And I’ve thought, “well, of course” and didn’t understand why the other person felt the need to validate her experience. Reading the birth piece in this book gives me further insight by putting into words the sheer power of my own experience with giving birth and how close it comes to capturing the symbiotic relationship that can exist between woman and vagina. Feeling like the experience has been taken from you might require time to come to terms with. I feel better equipped to respond sensitively having read this.
Intense.
All that said, I can’t rate the book higher than three stars. I usually have a hard time getting on board with in your face “shock politics” and I can’t help but think this book falls under that category. It tries to shock regular people into thinking about things they perhaps never would have thought about otherwise by using socially shocking words like cunt and vagina.
For the record, I had a near perfect score on my eighth grade male and female genital exam. So this means I know when the word vagina is being used properly and when it is being improperly used as a synonym for vulva. I think it’s disappointing the Vagina Monologues barely acknowledges this. This just further convinces me that the primary purpose of this book is shock value rather than to effect actual change.
May 17, 2019
”I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas... there's so much secrecy surrounding them- like the Bermuda Triangle."
This book, or rather a play, became a large political movement. The words in this book, even 20ish years after its release, feels radical to read.
Eve Ensler wrote this play after her interactions with women and opening up a rather taboo subject- vaginas. Women's sexuality was a taboo subject, shrouded in darkness and shameful to discuss. Eve Ensler does a groundbreaking job in unearthing this topic by interviewing various women, and once they started talking, stories from all types of women came pouring out. Eve put them together into a series of monologues to perform on stage.
The topic of this book was initially controversial with publishers wanting to pull the book as the title contains the word "Vagina". One review of the book/play on Tv didn't even mention the word Vagina- further shrouding the word into shamefulness. However, Eve Ensler perseveres and this book is now an international phenomenon, with roots in starting important conversation and activism, such as V-day, a day acknowledging and raising awareness of women suffering from abuse and violence.
This book is funny and heart-breaking, shocking and beautiful. It describes women's most intimate experiences and celebrates women's sexuality and the condemnation of its violation. Some stories were upsetting, highlighting the rapes and abuse women faced from the Bosnian war, as well as domestic abuse from family members. Some monologues were hard to dissect and raised conflicting feelings. The realisation that the monologues shouldn't shock you as violence against women happens to 1 in 3 of us and is constantly talked about, however, the shock to these stories are unending.
Throughout the book Vagina facts are sprinkled through and some of these are truly disturbing.
It was great,also, to read the introduction that Eve Ensler gives. She notes her fascination with the vagina as a taboo subject and the struggles she has faced getting the book published and the play produced. She values the importance of this book and the need for it to be published as she is telling women's stories, their intimate stories, from sex to birth.
It was exciting to read the foreword of the book by Gloria Steinem, a power house in the feminist movement. Furthermore, the exploration of the chapters in “V-Day” and “Letters” were so uplifting and liberating. This play has helped numerous women, they are exhilarated and liberated as a reaction from this play. It has given women power over their sexuality, over their autonomy. It has raised consciousness in both men and women. It has given a platform, an important step in acknowledging and raising conversation about women's autonomy, sexuality, and ending violence against women.
From this play/book women are able to reclaim the word Vagina. It is liberating, exhilarating, and empowering. This was an interesting book to read and I would love to see this performed live after some of the reviews I have seen!
This book, or rather a play, became a large political movement. The words in this book, even 20ish years after its release, feels radical to read.
Eve Ensler wrote this play after her interactions with women and opening up a rather taboo subject- vaginas. Women's sexuality was a taboo subject, shrouded in darkness and shameful to discuss. Eve Ensler does a groundbreaking job in unearthing this topic by interviewing various women, and once they started talking, stories from all types of women came pouring out. Eve put them together into a series of monologues to perform on stage.
The topic of this book was initially controversial with publishers wanting to pull the book as the title contains the word "Vagina". One review of the book/play on Tv didn't even mention the word Vagina- further shrouding the word into shamefulness. However, Eve Ensler perseveres and this book is now an international phenomenon, with roots in starting important conversation and activism, such as V-day, a day acknowledging and raising awareness of women suffering from abuse and violence.
This book is funny and heart-breaking, shocking and beautiful. It describes women's most intimate experiences and celebrates women's sexuality and the condemnation of its violation. Some stories were upsetting, highlighting the rapes and abuse women faced from the Bosnian war, as well as domestic abuse from family members. Some monologues were hard to dissect and raised conflicting feelings. The realisation that the monologues shouldn't shock you as violence against women happens to 1 in 3 of us and is constantly talked about, however, the shock to these stories are unending.
Throughout the book Vagina facts are sprinkled through and some of these are truly disturbing.
It was great,also, to read the introduction that Eve Ensler gives. She notes her fascination with the vagina as a taboo subject and the struggles she has faced getting the book published and the play produced. She values the importance of this book and the need for it to be published as she is telling women's stories, their intimate stories, from sex to birth.
It was exciting to read the foreword of the book by Gloria Steinem, a power house in the feminist movement. Furthermore, the exploration of the chapters in “V-Day” and “Letters” were so uplifting and liberating. This play has helped numerous women, they are exhilarated and liberated as a reaction from this play. It has given women power over their sexuality, over their autonomy. It has raised consciousness in both men and women. It has given a platform, an important step in acknowledging and raising conversation about women's autonomy, sexuality, and ending violence against women.
From this play/book women are able to reclaim the word Vagina. It is liberating, exhilarating, and empowering. This was an interesting book to read and I would love to see this performed live after some of the reviews I have seen!
March 31, 2017
3.5 stars
This is my Book Of the Month- January- February 2017, with GR group- Our Shared Shelf.
I really did not know what to expect when starting this book and just thought, What kind of title is that?- The Vagina Monologues... But after reading this book it make's sense. I don't think any other title would have been as fitting as this one for the content of the book.
This book basically deals with topics that women shy away from talking about to even their close one's - to their close girlfriends or even their mothers. And why is that, because it is just not done! It is considered something that is not openly spoken about and if done is heavily frowned about by society.
Some women face guilt for something that is natural....
"I was black and poor. Blood on the back of my dress in church. Didn't show, but I was guilty."
And somethings if spoken any differently is termed as crass in our society
"Dear Miss Carling, Please excuse my daughter from basketball. She has just matured."
It talks about how the society and culture decides what's right for a woman and what's not!
"Like, if we'd grown up in a culture where we were taught that fat thighs were beautiful, we'd all be pounding down milkshakes and cookies, lying on our backs, spending our days thigh-expanding. But we didn't grow up in that culture."
It talks about abuse and violence that women face but are too ashamed or scared to talk about as they may be judged or because no one may really understand what they went through.
"Edgar Montane, who is ten, gets angry at me and punches me with all his might between my legs. It feels like he breaks my entire self. I limp home. I can't pee. My mama asks me what's wrong with my coochi snorcher, and when I tell her what Edgar did to me she yells at me and says never to let anyone touch me down there again. I try to explain he didn't touch it, Mama, he punched it."
Reading this book made me feel the pain that these other women went through and I realized that women even though facing similar kind of problems in life are isolated in what they are dealing with.
Only by speaking about the issues with their close one's can one find a strong support system to fight and deal with any problems that one may be facing.
This is my Book Of the Month- January- February 2017, with GR group- Our Shared Shelf.
I really did not know what to expect when starting this book and just thought, What kind of title is that?- The Vagina Monologues... But after reading this book it make's sense. I don't think any other title would have been as fitting as this one for the content of the book.
This book basically deals with topics that women shy away from talking about to even their close one's - to their close girlfriends or even their mothers. And why is that, because it is just not done! It is considered something that is not openly spoken about and if done is heavily frowned about by society.
Some women face guilt for something that is natural....
"I was black and poor. Blood on the back of my dress in church. Didn't show, but I was guilty."
And somethings if spoken any differently is termed as crass in our society
"Dear Miss Carling, Please excuse my daughter from basketball. She has just matured."
It talks about how the society and culture decides what's right for a woman and what's not!
"Like, if we'd grown up in a culture where we were taught that fat thighs were beautiful, we'd all be pounding down milkshakes and cookies, lying on our backs, spending our days thigh-expanding. But we didn't grow up in that culture."
It talks about abuse and violence that women face but are too ashamed or scared to talk about as they may be judged or because no one may really understand what they went through.
"Edgar Montane, who is ten, gets angry at me and punches me with all his might between my legs. It feels like he breaks my entire self. I limp home. I can't pee. My mama asks me what's wrong with my coochi snorcher, and when I tell her what Edgar did to me she yells at me and says never to let anyone touch me down there again. I try to explain he didn't touch it, Mama, he punched it."
Reading this book made me feel the pain that these other women went through and I realized that women even though facing similar kind of problems in life are isolated in what they are dealing with.
Only by speaking about the issues with their close one's can one find a strong support system to fight and deal with any problems that one may be facing.
February 8, 2019
Una recopilación increíble de testimonios sobre todo tipo de violencia y abuso a los que hemos sido sometidas mujeres de todo el mundo.
Reseña: https://bastvilard.blogspot.com/2019/...
Reseña: https://bastvilard.blogspot.com/2019/...
August 22, 2020
saying vagina 5 times in a sentence doesn't make anyone a feminist. so much of this book felt like contrivance, excessive fillers like these making up the content :
'my vagina was green water, soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw.'
do we really have to romanticize everything to understand it's value? the writing feels so condescending, yes i have a vagina, no i do not blindly worship it, do i really have to incessantly shout vagina from my window to prove my femininity? do i really have to define myself by a body organ?
just...no. there might be people who would benefit from this book..but definitely not me. i think it would have been better if it was written in a more informational, non fiction kinda way.
'my vagina was green water, soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw.'
do we really have to romanticize everything to understand it's value? the writing feels so condescending, yes i have a vagina, no i do not blindly worship it, do i really have to incessantly shout vagina from my window to prove my femininity? do i really have to define myself by a body organ?
just...no. there might be people who would benefit from this book..but definitely not me. i think it would have been better if it was written in a more informational, non fiction kinda way.
June 17, 2019
*TRIGGERING*
“Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women-that the desecration of women indicted the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.
I finished this book in about 45 minutes total while listening to some Black Sabbath and Fleetwood Mac, but it was quite an empowering read. Being a survivor of gang rape and sexual assault myself, I understand the traumatizing affect it can have on the spirit and general feelings toward one’s own vagina. Eve Ensler lets the reader open up (no pun intended) and teaches how to love and respect the vagina and its inner workings. Everyone’s is different, everyone’s is beautiful. This book brought a smile to my face. I’m glad several celebrities have also joined in the V-Day movement, which can reach out to fellow survivors and women who feel trapped. The only reason I gave this book 4 stars is it is not normally the genre I am drawn to. But, everyone should go out of their comfort zone every once in a while. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!
“Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women-that the desecration of women indicted the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.
I finished this book in about 45 minutes total while listening to some Black Sabbath and Fleetwood Mac, but it was quite an empowering read. Being a survivor of gang rape and sexual assault myself, I understand the traumatizing affect it can have on the spirit and general feelings toward one’s own vagina. Eve Ensler lets the reader open up (no pun intended) and teaches how to love and respect the vagina and its inner workings. Everyone’s is different, everyone’s is beautiful. This book brought a smile to my face. I’m glad several celebrities have also joined in the V-Day movement, which can reach out to fellow survivors and women who feel trapped. The only reason I gave this book 4 stars is it is not normally the genre I am drawn to. But, everyone should go out of their comfort zone every once in a while. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!
March 17, 2019
جسارت کتاب در پرداختن به چیزهایی که «شرمآور» تلقی میشوند و به انحاء و درجات مختلف قربانی میگیرند، ستودنیست. موضوع کتاب روان و بدن نیمی از انسانهاست. محتوای کتاب میتوانست با حفظ همین میزان از سادگی و بیآلایشی و همین واژگان پختهتر باشد.
January 4, 2011
I've been meaning to read or see The Vagina Monologues for a long time. Someone was talking about it, as people often do, and I realised it was available on the Kindle store, so I got it.
It's a very quick read. It's not an easy read. There's discussion of self-loathing, of embarrassment and shame, of sexual assault and violence against women, of statutory rape. It might also not be easy for you if you can't read the word 'vagina' without getting uncomfortable, or if you don't like the word 'cunt', or if you wish that women wouldn't talk about 'down there' in public.
It's about that discomfort, and it's about shining a light on something that we don't talk about, that we are often taught to be ashamed of. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to stand the idea of reading it: right now, I can't stand the idea of performing it. And I'm not ready to talk to my grandmother about it! But maybe someday...
In any case, I think it's a very important idea, to talk about these things that we find so discomforting. How often have I heard men talking about their penises in public? Far more often than I've ever heard women do -- and often when we do, it's hushed and breathless and illicit.
On the other hand, I am not my vagina. I am not my physical form at all, personally. And it feels like this book does a lot of that -- distilling women down until the only important part of them is physical, sexual. For many women, that's not the truth, and it doesn't have to be. And the references in the foreword about not being able to write 'politically correctly', not being able to write about transgendered women -- I believe she should have tried until she got it, by talking to transgendered women, and talking to them again, and again, just like the one about the lesbian who said she was doing it wrong. And if she really, truly couldn't do it, then she should have stepped back and let a transgendered woman write it for herself, if her work is truly intended to be inclusive and about all women everywhere.
There's more I don't really engage with: I don't relate to questions like what would my vagina want to dress in, or what it would say. It's a part of me, not separate.
Everything has limitations, though, it's true, and this is a big step for many women. Hopefully fewer and fewer, as society moves on. I'm sure someone has written their own transgendered woman monologue -- I hope many have -- and I hope they're heard, too.
This particular edition, with the introduction by Gloria Steinem, is quite interesting, giving some historical/cultural context. It also includes a lot of stuff about people's reactions to "V-Day", which can be interesting to read. However, do note that the Kindle edition is badly proofread in places.
It's a very quick read. It's not an easy read. There's discussion of self-loathing, of embarrassment and shame, of sexual assault and violence against women, of statutory rape. It might also not be easy for you if you can't read the word 'vagina' without getting uncomfortable, or if you don't like the word 'cunt', or if you wish that women wouldn't talk about 'down there' in public.
It's about that discomfort, and it's about shining a light on something that we don't talk about, that we are often taught to be ashamed of. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to stand the idea of reading it: right now, I can't stand the idea of performing it. And I'm not ready to talk to my grandmother about it! But maybe someday...
In any case, I think it's a very important idea, to talk about these things that we find so discomforting. How often have I heard men talking about their penises in public? Far more often than I've ever heard women do -- and often when we do, it's hushed and breathless and illicit.
On the other hand, I am not my vagina. I am not my physical form at all, personally. And it feels like this book does a lot of that -- distilling women down until the only important part of them is physical, sexual. For many women, that's not the truth, and it doesn't have to be. And the references in the foreword about not being able to write 'politically correctly', not being able to write about transgendered women -- I believe she should have tried until she got it, by talking to transgendered women, and talking to them again, and again, just like the one about the lesbian who said she was doing it wrong. And if she really, truly couldn't do it, then she should have stepped back and let a transgendered woman write it for herself, if her work is truly intended to be inclusive and about all women everywhere.
There's more I don't really engage with: I don't relate to questions like what would my vagina want to dress in, or what it would say. It's a part of me, not separate.
Everything has limitations, though, it's true, and this is a big step for many women. Hopefully fewer and fewer, as society moves on. I'm sure someone has written their own transgendered woman monologue -- I hope many have -- and I hope they're heard, too.
This particular edition, with the introduction by Gloria Steinem, is quite interesting, giving some historical/cultural context. It also includes a lot of stuff about people's reactions to "V-Day", which can be interesting to read. However, do note that the Kindle edition is badly proofread in places.
March 17, 2019
حس ناخوشایندیه. مُمُسی و دودول که میگی، خیلی آدم شیرین و شوخی هستی، اسامی کافدار رو که به کار میبری، به غایت حالت هرزه و نااهلی داری. حد وسط کجاست؟ حد وسط رو کی دزدیده؟ کی؟ مو طحال زانو باسن...فرج؟ مذکرش چیه؟ اینا عربی نیست؟ آره خوب عروق هم آره، اما رگ هم هست؛ پس اینبار حد واسط کجاست؟ میگی به نظرم فرجم ملتهبه؟ نمیدونم. من که میگم وولوا، شما هم میگین وولوا؟ وولوا هنوز بیطرفه، واقعیه، قبح نداره، وولوا همون دسته، همون زانوست. پوسی نه ، نه اون همون کافداره، کافدارم که شده فحش، اسامی کافدار مثل اون فعل کافدار فحشن، به جهت خشونتورزی و تحقیر و با انگیزهی بددهنی به زبون میان. دایرهی لغات و اصطلاحات سکشوالمون با فحاشی و کثافات زبانی همپوشانی داره. برای همین تابو شد؟ یا چون تابو بود این شد؟ برای همینه که عدهای از شنیدن در مورد لذت جنسی به اندازهی خشونت جنسی بیزارن؟ شاید بیشتر.
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کتاب از این حیث که زنان را تشویق به خودشناسی میکند و از خود بیگانگی با سکشوالیته ( هر قسمت آن) بیم میدهد، شایان توجه بسیار است. شاید فمسنیستهای اکتیویست حال حاضر اول بار ایدههای خود حول اندام جنسی زنان و نجات آن را از این کتاب گرفته باشند. مشابهتهای بسیاری به چشمم خورد.
موارد بسیار معذب کنندهای هم در کتاب بود، گاها اروتیک و یا خشن؛ ولی آنقدرها شکایتی ندارم، نیت چیز دیگری بود، و از هر کجای کتاب عبرتی گرفتم، چه انگیزهی نویسنده بوده باشد و چه غیر آن.
«پشم» و «سیلاب» نظرم را به طور خاص جلب کرد و از همه بیشتر « وولوای عصبانی من» رو دوست داشتم ؛خیلی ارتباط بر قرار کردم، بین شکوههای روزمرهی مادر و خود و دوستانم این حرفاها زیاد رد و بدل شده بود.
به هر جهت، وولوای خویشتن را مثل زانوهایم دوست دارم، یا ریههایم یا مژگانم.
پیشنهاد میکنم و نمیکنم. ۲۲ صفحه کتاب. مطالب گاها انتزاعی ، من الباب شناخت عامهی وولوا و واژن، ارگاسم، تجاوز، تروما، هومو سکشوالیته، ابژه انگاری زنان و... بله ۲۲ صفحه، به نوعی نمایشنامه. اگر خواندید، بدون نقد نباشد.
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کتاب از این حیث که زنان را تشویق به خودشناسی میکند و از خود بیگانگی با سکشوالیته ( هر قسمت آن) بیم میدهد، شایان توجه بسیار است. شاید فمسنیستهای اکتیویست حال حاضر اول بار ایدههای خود حول اندام جنسی زنان و نجات آن را از این کتاب گرفته باشند. مشابهتهای بسیاری به چشمم خورد.
موارد بسیار معذب کنندهای هم در کتاب بود، گاها اروتیک و یا خشن؛ ولی آنقدرها شکایتی ندارم، نیت چیز دیگری بود، و از هر کجای کتاب عبرتی گرفتم، چه انگیزهی نویسنده بوده باشد و چه غیر آن.
«پشم» و «سیلاب» نظرم را به طور خاص جلب کرد و از همه بیشتر « وولوای عصبانی من» رو دوست داشتم ؛خیلی ارتباط بر قرار کردم، بین شکوههای روزمرهی مادر و خود و دوستانم این حرفاها زیاد رد و بدل شده بود.
به هر جهت، وولوای خویشتن را مثل زانوهایم دوست دارم، یا ریههایم یا مژگانم.
پیشنهاد میکنم و نمیکنم. ۲۲ صفحه کتاب. مطالب گاها انتزاعی ، من الباب شناخت عامهی وولوا و واژن، ارگاسم، تجاوز، تروما، هومو سکشوالیته، ابژه انگاری زنان و... بله ۲۲ صفحه، به نوعی نمایشنامه. اگر خواندید، بدون نقد نباشد.
February 6, 2017
POPSugar Reading Challenge: #12. A bestseller from a genre you don’t normally read, the genre being non-fiction.
We did parts of The Vagina Monologues as, well, for lack of a better word, plays for various events in college; this was my introduction to this...play. Of course, because performing the whole thing would be too time consuming, we only performed bits of it. I vividly remember In Memory of her Face; I wasn't in it, but I watched it, and what a passionate, heart-rending performance it was!
What makes The Vagina Monologues special is that it isn't fiction. It's true, it's real, and it's the opinions of living, breathing women. The anecdotes, the incidents, the stories - they're human too - warm, passionate, humorous, and of course, meaningful. I would want my daughters to read it; I think all women should read it. In fact, I think men should read it too, 'twould change their perception of what a vagina is, and that is much needed.
We did parts of The Vagina Monologues as, well, for lack of a better word, plays for various events in college; this was my introduction to this...play. Of course, because performing the whole thing would be too time consuming, we only performed bits of it. I vividly remember In Memory of her Face; I wasn't in it, but I watched it, and what a passionate, heart-rending performance it was!
What makes The Vagina Monologues special is that it isn't fiction. It's true, it's real, and it's the opinions of living, breathing women. The anecdotes, the incidents, the stories - they're human too - warm, passionate, humorous, and of course, meaningful. I would want my daughters to read it; I think all women should read it. In fact, I think men should read it too, 'twould change their perception of what a vagina is, and that is much needed.
April 28, 2023
This is a really short book, mainly puffed out with a couple of introductions and play reviews.
I haven't watched the play. This book is my intro to the monologues.
I really enjoyed reading these short essays by women writing about their vaginas. The woman who have been raped and abused to the women experiencing pleasure for the first time and the women who don't have a relationship with their vaginas at all. There's an array for women here putting their vulnerabilities on page.
I'll high-five anyone who puts themselves out there. These women get five stars from me.
I haven't watched the play. This book is my intro to the monologues.
I really enjoyed reading these short essays by women writing about their vaginas. The woman who have been raped and abused to the women experiencing pleasure for the first time and the women who don't have a relationship with their vaginas at all. There's an array for women here putting their vulnerabilities on page.
I'll high-five anyone who puts themselves out there. These women get five stars from me.
April 16, 2007
I have big issues with this play. It essentializes what it means to be a woman, equating femininity with a having a vagina! Not to mention endorsing racial and cultural stereotypes.
September 29, 2019
“ Le vagine sono circondate da tanta oscurità e segretezza... come il triangolo delle Bermuda”. È questo che preoccupa: le donne non si occupano delle loro vagine, nemmeno le guardano, perché non hanno tempo. Sono passati 22 anni da quando Eve Ensler debuttò in teatro con questo testo. A venti anni dalla prima edizione del libro, se ne sente ancora la necessità, non ci si deve dimenticare che lo stesso testo è diventato il manifesto di un movimento contro la violenza sulle donne che al momento sembra in crescita, di fronte a un’incapacità sempre maggiore degli uomini di gestire un rapporto, sia in embrione che ormai consolidato o finito. Attualmente i monologhi sono rappresentati in tutto il mondo, anche nel nostro Paese, dove vengono utilizzati nel rispetto del “V-Day”, il giorno di San Valentino, per raccogliere fondi per qualche attività o associazione sempre legata alle donne. Intanto, dobbiamo continuare a imparare, tutte le donne per prime, a utilizzare la corretta terminologia per tutto quello che riguarda il nostro corpo, soprattutto da un punto di vista sessuale. Così come per le mestruazioni, anche la parola “vagina” ci è risultata sempre ostica, impronunciabile, quasi un suono a noi estraneo, grazie a quel “vizio di forma” per cui era “meglio tacere”.
July 17, 2022
Should be required reading.
‘The Vagina Dialogues”, the 20-Anniversary Edition, was originally a stage monologue created by a performer and artist, Eve Ensler. As she toured cities, first in the United States in 1994 and later in other countries, she discovered women all over the world, including Afghanistan and Pakistan where she had illegal shows, word of which had been spread by word of mouth, had all experienced patriarchal or societal body shaming in being a woman.
This edition includes the comments and stories from women all over the world. Women cried during her shows, and many waited hours to see her backstage to tell her of their personal horrors. Often, women did not know how to speak of what crimes, like rape, that had happened to them until seeing Ensler’s show. Many women do not know the name of the bits of their vaginas. Many women have never had an orgasm. Many woman can’t find, or even know about, their clitoris. They were not permitted to express themselves in any way of their traumas before. Most had never seen their own vaginas since they had been taught all of their lives to see this body part as disgusting and shameful.(Hint: a hand mirror, and *I can’t believe I have to mention this* even courage to go against your societal/religious teaching.)
Gentle reader, do you see most men feeling like this? Tell me true, young women of today, has the man in your life sent you a penis picture? No? That’s a rarity…and it is very likely all men young and old know exactly what every centimeter of their penises look like.
Since men considered women a shameful less-than beast because of their body parts, it’s clear men feel empowered to rape, beat, and use women as they see fit. Men who have been perceived to possess feminine qualities are painted by the same brush of masculine scorn, so the Movement now includes them. The V Movement, as it has been renamed, is still continuing to provide NGO support all over the world today.
Vagina is a dirtier, more shameful word than penis everywhere in all societies. Why is that, gentle reader? After all, it actually is a proper word, used by doctors and medical personnel. Is it possibly because all societies, patriarchal in nature and/or in their early formation, have normalized the belittling of women, including their bodies, and so the sexual-organ shaming of women is an important tool to maintain a Master/Slave relationship? To create an environment where victims willingly victimize themselves? To create an environment where victims refuse to speak out loud of the crimes committed by perpetrators because the words have been taught them to be “dirty” and that it is more shameful to SPEAK of crimes done against women’s vaginas than the crimes themselves?
What crimes am I speaking of? Rape, of course, is the main one. Believe it or not, rape has been normalized in many countries as a natural consequence of war and poverty and going to college or trying to be a professional of any kind, like in acting and sports. But there are the cultural taboos of hiding the facts of menstruation and of women having sexual desire.
Women today are forced to hide the fact they are menstruating because it is not only considered “shameful” in most countries, but it is considered a pollution, a poison, a befoulment, a contamination, in many countries and religions. Check out by googling what women are required to do while menstruating, and afterwords, to “cleanse” themselves back to body and community “purity.” Or just ask your rabbi, minister, cleric or iman - if the primarily religious male leaders can bring themselves to “befoul” themselves speaking on the subject of menstruating. In SOME cases, they will say purification rites are a thing of the past, but in most theological countries, “purification rites” for women who are or have finished menstruating are still required. Mothers are emotional wrecks talking to their daughters about menstruation - why? And why are tampons taxed or made unavailable to many women around the world? Because often tampons are considered unessential or embarrassing (why?), or the men in charge do not want to *think* about it. Or women are, shocker, EMBARRASSED.
Thankfully, agencies, NGO’s, and many organizations are “on it” whether it be in the form of providing women’s doctors and clinics, or in-home private meetings and classes, teaching women everywhere about their vaginas. “The Vagina Monologues” includes an intensive history of and what is happening today in The V Movement.
There is a short bibliography. Of course, googling for further info brings it too.
Let’s get this done, people. Inform yourself. Women, we are all beautifully and gloriously well-designed! Men, if you love your daughters, your mother, your sisters, you know what you should do. Be proud of them.
Btw, the clitoris is the ONLY organ in all bodies, male or female, that is designed explicitly for pleasure alone. Religious folk should reflect on that.
‘The Vagina Dialogues”, the 20-Anniversary Edition, was originally a stage monologue created by a performer and artist, Eve Ensler. As she toured cities, first in the United States in 1994 and later in other countries, she discovered women all over the world, including Afghanistan and Pakistan where she had illegal shows, word of which had been spread by word of mouth, had all experienced patriarchal or societal body shaming in being a woman.
This edition includes the comments and stories from women all over the world. Women cried during her shows, and many waited hours to see her backstage to tell her of their personal horrors. Often, women did not know how to speak of what crimes, like rape, that had happened to them until seeing Ensler’s show. Many women do not know the name of the bits of their vaginas. Many women have never had an orgasm. Many woman can’t find, or even know about, their clitoris. They were not permitted to express themselves in any way of their traumas before. Most had never seen their own vaginas since they had been taught all of their lives to see this body part as disgusting and shameful.(Hint: a hand mirror, and *I can’t believe I have to mention this* even courage to go against your societal/religious teaching.)
Gentle reader, do you see most men feeling like this? Tell me true, young women of today, has the man in your life sent you a penis picture? No? That’s a rarity…and it is very likely all men young and old know exactly what every centimeter of their penises look like.
Since men considered women a shameful less-than beast because of their body parts, it’s clear men feel empowered to rape, beat, and use women as they see fit. Men who have been perceived to possess feminine qualities are painted by the same brush of masculine scorn, so the Movement now includes them. The V Movement, as it has been renamed, is still continuing to provide NGO support all over the world today.
Vagina is a dirtier, more shameful word than penis everywhere in all societies. Why is that, gentle reader? After all, it actually is a proper word, used by doctors and medical personnel. Is it possibly because all societies, patriarchal in nature and/or in their early formation, have normalized the belittling of women, including their bodies, and so the sexual-organ shaming of women is an important tool to maintain a Master/Slave relationship? To create an environment where victims willingly victimize themselves? To create an environment where victims refuse to speak out loud of the crimes committed by perpetrators because the words have been taught them to be “dirty” and that it is more shameful to SPEAK of crimes done against women’s vaginas than the crimes themselves?
What crimes am I speaking of? Rape, of course, is the main one. Believe it or not, rape has been normalized in many countries as a natural consequence of war and poverty and going to college or trying to be a professional of any kind, like in acting and sports. But there are the cultural taboos of hiding the facts of menstruation and of women having sexual desire.
Women today are forced to hide the fact they are menstruating because it is not only considered “shameful” in most countries, but it is considered a pollution, a poison, a befoulment, a contamination, in many countries and religions. Check out by googling what women are required to do while menstruating, and afterwords, to “cleanse” themselves back to body and community “purity.” Or just ask your rabbi, minister, cleric or iman - if the primarily religious male leaders can bring themselves to “befoul” themselves speaking on the subject of menstruating. In SOME cases, they will say purification rites are a thing of the past, but in most theological countries, “purification rites” for women who are or have finished menstruating are still required. Mothers are emotional wrecks talking to their daughters about menstruation - why? And why are tampons taxed or made unavailable to many women around the world? Because often tampons are considered unessential or embarrassing (why?), or the men in charge do not want to *think* about it. Or women are, shocker, EMBARRASSED.
Thankfully, agencies, NGO’s, and many organizations are “on it” whether it be in the form of providing women’s doctors and clinics, or in-home private meetings and classes, teaching women everywhere about their vaginas. “The Vagina Monologues” includes an intensive history of and what is happening today in The V Movement.
There is a short bibliography. Of course, googling for further info brings it too.
Let’s get this done, people. Inform yourself. Women, we are all beautifully and gloriously well-designed! Men, if you love your daughters, your mother, your sisters, you know what you should do. Be proud of them.
Btw, the clitoris is the ONLY organ in all bodies, male or female, that is designed explicitly for pleasure alone. Religious folk should reflect on that.
June 9, 2022
When Eve Ensler started interviewing women about their vaginas she had no idea what an incredible journey she was embarking upon. This was another book recommended to me by my daughter & I'm very grateful that she brought it to my attention.
The interviews here are in turn funny, tragic, informative & compassionate. It's a book that everyone should read, & if you don't want to read it then go & see it performed on stage instead.
The interviews here are in turn funny, tragic, informative & compassionate. It's a book that everyone should read, & if you don't want to read it then go & see it performed on stage instead.
Read
May 28, 2024At a witch trial in 1593, the investigating lawyer (a married man) apparently discovered a clitoris for the first time; [he] identified it as a devil’s teat, sure proof of the witch’s guilt. It was “a little lump of flesh, in manner sticking out as if it had been a teat, to the length of half an inch,” which the gaoler, “perceiving at the first sight thereof, meant not to disclose, because it was adjoining to so secret a place which was not decent to be seen. Yet in the end, not willing to conceal so strange a matter,” he showed it to various bystanders. The bystanders had never seen anything like it. The witch was convicted.
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Quando peguei neste The vagina monologues, queria conhecer o projeto que acompanha a peça, e sobretudo queria perceber os pruridos que o nome da autora causa em muito boas casas. O que percebi foi que a visão de Eve Ensler - ou V - (afora a carga fortemente politizada das suas intervenções) não é mais nem menos extremada do que deveria ser. Ela é, sim, o contraponto de uma cultura misógina e, como tal, pelo poder que procura recuperar, é muitas vezes pobremente acolhida. Todavia, quando o mau acolhimento da obra não recai sobre o exagero poético da autora (com o qual também não concordo), mas sim sobre a realidade que ela expressa, há um outro nome para isso: censura. E o que há aqui para censurar? Muitas verdades desagradáveis que ainda se encontram longe da ordem do dia - há sempre questões ditas maiores que se interpõem no caminho da discussão inequívoca acerca da sujeição da mulher. O que me traz, nem de propósito, ao que ainda hoje ouvi dizer: "Não existe discriminação de género, as mulheres é que se põem na posição de coitadinhas. Isto para mim é um não-assunto". Portanto, chegamos a isto: todo e qualquer debate acerca de igualdade de género é (auto)vitimização. E é aqui que obras como esta ganham particular importância pois expõem, com todas as letras, o privilégio masculino, a dita discriminação, a violência infligida ainda hoje sobre as mulheres - mesmo que lhe chamem um "não-assunto":
When I returned to New York after my first trip, I was in a state of outrage. Outraged that 20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993, as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it. I couldn’t understand it. A friend asked me why I was surprised. She said that over 500,000 women were raped every year in this country, and in theory we were not at war.
[Se for preciso comparação, bastará lembrar que o crime de violência doméstica é o mais praticado em contexto nacional e que, segundo o INE (INQUÉRITO SOBRE SEGURANÇA NO ESPAÇO PÚBLICO E PRIVADO, 2022), um total de "500 mil mulheres foi vítima de agressões físicas ou sexuais por parte do parceiro".]
De todas as formas, e para voltar ao cerne, The Vagina Monologues, começou por ser apresentado como resultado de um conjunto de entrevistas que Ensler conduziu com mais de 200 mulheres de diferentes idades, raças e orientações sexuais, sobre a sua sexualidade. Da peça nasce o projeto / evento V-Day, e dessa combinação nasce então este livro. E aquilo que se percebe dele é que The Vagina Monologues, mais do que uma peça de teatro, mais do que uma evocação, mais do que um momento bolinha vermelha (que o nosso país vende convencido não sei de que patetice perversa) é sobretudo uma celebração - celebração da mulher, da sexualidade feminina, e da autoestima - e, ao mesmo tempo, uma bandeira da causa contra a violência exercida sobre as mulheres, um aviso contra a autofagia cultural e social para a qual esta nos empurra:
Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women—that the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and that this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.
Embora não lhe encontre grande humor (como normalmente se lhe aponta), não há como negar a forma como a sua complexidade é feita parecer singela, e a sua carga emotiva e chocante, oferecida de forma tão honesta, não pode evitar ter um grande impacto - sobretudo junto de quem se identifica, por uma ou outra razão com as palavras proferidas nestes monólogos.
Porque estes monólogos vão muito longe para capturar a realidade feminina e mostrar que a violência que é exercida sobre as mulheres começa em tenra idade e toma várias formas, seja preconceito ou vergonha em relação ao próprio corpo e às suas manifestações fisiológicas:
Nine and a half. I was sure I was bleeding to death, rolled up my underwear and threw them in a corner. Didn’t want to worry my parents.
My mother made me hot water and wine, and I fell asleep.
I was in my bedroom in my mother’s apartment. I had a comic book collection. My mother said, “You mustn’t lift your box of comic books.”
My girlfriends told me you hemorrhage every month.
My mother was in and out of mental hospitals. She couldn’t take me coming of age.
[...]
At camp they told me not to take a bath with my period. They wiped me down with antiseptic.
Scared people would smell it. Scared they’d say I smelled like fish.
Throwing up, couldn’t eat. I got hungry.
Sometimes it’s very red.
I like the drops that drop into the toilet. Like paint.
... passando pela imposição de métodos assépticos para uma purificação daquilo que é encarado como impuro:
All this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up—stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my vagina’s not going away. It’s pissed off and it’s staying right here. Like tampons—what the hell is that? A wad of
dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can’t they find a way to subtly lubricate the tampon? As soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. It says, Forget it. It closes up. You need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. That’s what foreplay’s all about. You got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust. You can’t do that with a dry wad of fucking cotton.
Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like
rose petals. Don’t try to decorate.
...e, claro, terminando na castração (para usar do termo masculino que tem mais impacto porque alguém assim decidiu) física e psicológica como ferramenta de eleição para perpetrar a opressão mais completa:
In the nineteenth century, girls who learned to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation were regarded as medical problems. Often they were “treated” or “corrected” by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or “miniature chastity belts,” sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But there are no references in the medical literature to the surgical removal of testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation in boys.
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948—on a five-year-old girl.
—The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
[....]
Genital mutilation has been inflicted on 80 [million] to 100 million girls and young women. In countries where it is practiced, mostly African, about 2 million youngsters a year can expect the knife—or the razor or a glass shard—to cut their clitoris or remove it altogether, [and] to have part or all of the labia . . . sewn together with catgut or thorns.
[...]
Short-term results include tetanus, septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls, and anal sphincter. Long-term: chronic uterine infection, massive scars that can hinder walking for life, fistula
formation, hugely increased agony and danger during childbirth, and early deaths.
The New York Times, April 12, 1996
Se tudo isto é um "não-assunto" estamos a viver em 1924 e não em 2024. Não está certo o distanciamento que as mulheres ainda sentem do próprio corpo:
In the first session the woman who runs the vagina workshop asked us to draw a picture of our own “unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina.” That’s what she called it. She wanted to know what our own unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina looked like to us. One woman who was pregnant drew a big red mouth screaming with coins spilling out. Another very skinny woman drew a big serving plate with a kind of Devonshire pattern on it. I drew a huge black dot with little squiggly lines around it. The black dot was equal to a black hole in space, and the squiggly lines were meant to be people or things or just your basic atoms that got lost there. I had always thought of my vagina as an anatomical vacuum randomly sucking up particles and objects from the surrounding environment.
[...]
I did not think of my vagina in practical or biological terms. I did not, for example, see it as a part of my body, something between my legs, attached to me.
...não está certo a demonização do corpo, das sensações, do prazer e da liberdade das mulheres:
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That’s a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice . . . twice . . . twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you’ve got a semiautomatic.
—from Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier
[...]
(If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)
Por tudo isso, mesmo que não concorde com todas as reivindicações (ou workshops) de Ensler, admiro a ousadia de levar a palco estes monólogos em 1996 e desde então até hoje, louvo a audácia de fazer imprimir a palavra VAGINA nas capas de livros, em posters e flyers, a coragem de pôr uma audiência a partilhar experiências dolorosas, e o objetivo maior de criar uma cumplicidade que venha um dia a apagar as injustiças que se continuam a levar a palco como ecos do presente e advertência para o futuro.
1 in 3 women on the Earth will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS.
https://www.vday.org/
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Quando peguei neste The vagina monologues, queria conhecer o projeto que acompanha a peça, e sobretudo queria perceber os pruridos que o nome da autora causa em muito boas casas. O que percebi foi que a visão de Eve Ensler - ou V - (afora a carga fortemente politizada das suas intervenções) não é mais nem menos extremada do que deveria ser. Ela é, sim, o contraponto de uma cultura misógina e, como tal, pelo poder que procura recuperar, é muitas vezes pobremente acolhida. Todavia, quando o mau acolhimento da obra não recai sobre o exagero poético da autora (com o qual também não concordo), mas sim sobre a realidade que ela expressa, há um outro nome para isso: censura. E o que há aqui para censurar? Muitas verdades desagradáveis que ainda se encontram longe da ordem do dia - há sempre questões ditas maiores que se interpõem no caminho da discussão inequívoca acerca da sujeição da mulher. O que me traz, nem de propósito, ao que ainda hoje ouvi dizer: "Não existe discriminação de género, as mulheres é que se põem na posição de coitadinhas. Isto para mim é um não-assunto". Portanto, chegamos a isto: todo e qualquer debate acerca de igualdade de género é (auto)vitimização. E é aqui que obras como esta ganham particular importância pois expõem, com todas as letras, o privilégio masculino, a dita discriminação, a violência infligida ainda hoje sobre as mulheres - mesmo que lhe chamem um "não-assunto":
When I returned to New York after my first trip, I was in a state of outrage. Outraged that 20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993, as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it. I couldn’t understand it. A friend asked me why I was surprised. She said that over 500,000 women were raped every year in this country, and in theory we were not at war.
[Se for preciso comparação, bastará lembrar que o crime de violência doméstica é o mais praticado em contexto nacional e que, segundo o INE (INQUÉRITO SOBRE SEGURANÇA NO ESPAÇO PÚBLICO E PRIVADO, 2022), um total de "500 mil mulheres foi vítima de agressões físicas ou sexuais por parte do parceiro".]
De todas as formas, e para voltar ao cerne, The Vagina Monologues, começou por ser apresentado como resultado de um conjunto de entrevistas que Ensler conduziu com mais de 200 mulheres de diferentes idades, raças e orientações sexuais, sobre a sua sexualidade. Da peça nasce o projeto / evento V-Day, e dessa combinação nasce então este livro. E aquilo que se percebe dele é que The Vagina Monologues, mais do que uma peça de teatro, mais do que uma evocação, mais do que um momento bolinha vermelha (que o nosso país vende convencido não sei de que patetice perversa) é sobretudo uma celebração - celebração da mulher, da sexualidade feminina, e da autoestima - e, ao mesmo tempo, uma bandeira da causa contra a violência exercida sobre as mulheres, um aviso contra a autofagia cultural e social para a qual esta nos empurra:
Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women—that the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and that this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.
Embora não lhe encontre grande humor (como normalmente se lhe aponta), não há como negar a forma como a sua complexidade é feita parecer singela, e a sua carga emotiva e chocante, oferecida de forma tão honesta, não pode evitar ter um grande impacto - sobretudo junto de quem se identifica, por uma ou outra razão com as palavras proferidas nestes monólogos.
Porque estes monólogos vão muito longe para capturar a realidade feminina e mostrar que a violência que é exercida sobre as mulheres começa em tenra idade e toma várias formas, seja preconceito ou vergonha em relação ao próprio corpo e às suas manifestações fisiológicas:
Nine and a half. I was sure I was bleeding to death, rolled up my underwear and threw them in a corner. Didn’t want to worry my parents.
My mother made me hot water and wine, and I fell asleep.
I was in my bedroom in my mother’s apartment. I had a comic book collection. My mother said, “You mustn’t lift your box of comic books.”
My girlfriends told me you hemorrhage every month.
My mother was in and out of mental hospitals. She couldn’t take me coming of age.
[...]
At camp they told me not to take a bath with my period. They wiped me down with antiseptic.
Scared people would smell it. Scared they’d say I smelled like fish.
Throwing up, couldn’t eat. I got hungry.
Sometimes it’s very red.
I like the drops that drop into the toilet. Like paint.
... passando pela imposição de métodos assépticos para uma purificação daquilo que é encarado como impuro:
All this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up—stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my vagina’s not going away. It’s pissed off and it’s staying right here. Like tampons—what the hell is that? A wad of
dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can’t they find a way to subtly lubricate the tampon? As soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. It says, Forget it. It closes up. You need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. That’s what foreplay’s all about. You got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust. You can’t do that with a dry wad of fucking cotton.
Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like
rose petals. Don’t try to decorate.
...e, claro, terminando na castração (para usar do termo masculino que tem mais impacto porque alguém assim decidiu) física e psicológica como ferramenta de eleição para perpetrar a opressão mais completa:
In the nineteenth century, girls who learned to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation were regarded as medical problems. Often they were “treated” or “corrected” by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or “miniature chastity belts,” sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But there are no references in the medical literature to the surgical removal of testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation in boys.
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948—on a five-year-old girl.
—The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
[....]
Genital mutilation has been inflicted on 80 [million] to 100 million girls and young women. In countries where it is practiced, mostly African, about 2 million youngsters a year can expect the knife—or the razor or a glass shard—to cut their clitoris or remove it altogether, [and] to have part or all of the labia . . . sewn together with catgut or thorns.
[...]
Short-term results include tetanus, septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls, and anal sphincter. Long-term: chronic uterine infection, massive scars that can hinder walking for life, fistula
formation, hugely increased agony and danger during childbirth, and early deaths.
The New York Times, April 12, 1996
Se tudo isto é um "não-assunto" estamos a viver em 1924 e não em 2024. Não está certo o distanciamento que as mulheres ainda sentem do próprio corpo:
In the first session the woman who runs the vagina workshop asked us to draw a picture of our own “unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina.” That’s what she called it. She wanted to know what our own unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina looked like to us. One woman who was pregnant drew a big red mouth screaming with coins spilling out. Another very skinny woman drew a big serving plate with a kind of Devonshire pattern on it. I drew a huge black dot with little squiggly lines around it. The black dot was equal to a black hole in space, and the squiggly lines were meant to be people or things or just your basic atoms that got lost there. I had always thought of my vagina as an anatomical vacuum randomly sucking up particles and objects from the surrounding environment.
[...]
I did not think of my vagina in practical or biological terms. I did not, for example, see it as a part of my body, something between my legs, attached to me.
...não está certo a demonização do corpo, das sensações, do prazer e da liberdade das mulheres:
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That’s a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice . . . twice . . . twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you’ve got a semiautomatic.
—from Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier
[...]
(If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)
Por tudo isso, mesmo que não concorde com todas as reivindicações (ou workshops) de Ensler, admiro a ousadia de levar a palco estes monólogos em 1996 e desde então até hoje, louvo a audácia de fazer imprimir a palavra VAGINA nas capas de livros, em posters e flyers, a coragem de pôr uma audiência a partilhar experiências dolorosas, e o objetivo maior de criar uma cumplicidade que venha um dia a apagar as injustiças que se continuam a levar a palco como ecos do presente e advertência para o futuro.
1 in 3 women on the Earth will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS.
https://www.vday.org/
February 6, 2019
B.R.A.CE. 2019
Ένα βιβλίο που συνδυάζει 2 κατηγορίες του B.R.A.CE 2019
Αναλυτικά:
Νο 23: Ένα βιβλίο που ντρέπεσαι να διαβάσεις σε δημόσιους χώρους
Νο 26: Ένα βιβλίο που μπορείς να τελειώσεις σε μία μέρα
Για το μήνυμα που περνάει.
"Αιδοίο" [...] Το λέω γιατί ό,τι δεν λέμε δεν υπάρχει, δεν το αναγνωρίζουμε και το ξεχνάμε. Και ό,τι δε λέμε, γίνεται μυστικό και τα μυστικά προκαλούν ντροπή και φόβο και δημιουργούν μύθους. Το λέω, για να μπορέσω κάποια μέρα να το πω άνετα, απενεχοποιημένα.
The Vagina Monologues video
το δικό μου εξώφυλλο:
Αναλυτικά:
Νο 23: Ένα βιβλίο που ντρέπεσαι να διαβάσεις σε δημόσιους χώρους
Νο 26: Ένα βιβλίο που μπορείς να τελειώσεις σε μία μέρα
Για το μήνυμα που περνάει.
"Αιδοίο" [...] Το λέω γιατί ό,τι δεν λέμε δεν υπάρχει, δεν το αναγνωρίζουμε και το ξεχνάμε. Και ό,τι δε λέμε, γίνεται μυστικό και τα μυστικά προκαλούν ντροπή και φόβο και δημιουργούν μύθους. Το λέω, για να μπορέσω κάποια μέρα να το πω άνετα, απενεχοποιημένα.
The Vagina Monologues video
το δικό μου εξώφυλλο:
September 30, 2007
I have such conflicting feelings about this book. On the one hand, I appreciate it for saying out loud some things that haven't been really accepted by society.
On the other hand, Eve Ensler is a self-promoting, self-satisfied twit.
On the other hand, Eve Ensler is a self-promoting, self-satisfied twit.
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