The Complicated Legacy of The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues was written by Eve Ensler and first premiered as a one-woman show at HERE, an Off-Broadway theater in New York City in 1996. These monologues are based on over 200 interviews of women from a range of different identities. Since its premiere, it has been performed countless times, most notably through V-Day, an organization that “demands that violence against all women, girls, and the Earth must end” (V-Day). The Vagina Monologues is produced annually by them to “raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities”. This show is most well-known for the taboo topics that it covers, specifically in relation to sex, sexual assault, periods, and the vagina, which is still considered a “dirty” word. This show’s success was made possible by the work of feminists in the 70s and 80s who argued that the personal is political.

What I find most interesting about this play is the contradictory ways in which Ensler is quoted in talking about the piece. In a Guardian article from 1999, she is quoted as stating that “The story of a woman’s vagina is the story of her life.” In saying this, it could be seen as taking a biological approach to defining gender, essentially saying that to be a woman means having a vagina. Seemingly contradictory to her original quote, an article by TIME Magazine in 2004 quoted her as stating, “The Vagina Monologues never intended to be a play about what it means to be a woman. It is and always has been a play about what it means to have a vagina. In the play, I never defined a woman as a person with a vagina.” It talks about the monologue that was added based on interviews with the all-trans production of the show entitled “They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy,” which was about a transwoman’s experience dealing with transphobia, self-repression, coming out, and living as a woman. Interestingly, though not surprisingly considering the title of the show, the monologue speaks about her wanting a vagina and feeling at peace when she got one. But without any clarification that the experience of wanting or getting a vagina isn’t what validated her identity as a woman, it creates an issue of equating someone’s identity with their genitalia. This could lead the audience, especially those unfamiliar with trans people, to adopt a transmedicalist view of the trans identity. According to “The Trap of Transmedicalization: Holding Communities And Identities Hostage,” “Transmedicalism is a view of transgender identity that holds that experiencing disphoria is required for ‘legitimate’ trans identity… [and] is a condition to be treated through medical intervention…” (Hendrie pg 54). This view reinforces and upholds social norms of the gender binary and encourages surveillance of trans bodies. This biological definition of gender can be a very dangerous one to make. If you can argue that to be a woman is to have a vagina, then it isn’t too far of a stretch to say that to be a woman is to be someone who can give birth. From there, it isn’t too far of a stretch to say that a woman’s job is to give birth. Using that rhetoric, it is very easy to take away a woman’s right to have access to any kind of birth control. This is the slippery slope that you can go down when gender is treated as an essential part of a person’s role in society. This gender essentialism is what some people use as evidence that women belong at home as homemakers, mothers, and nothing else.

This isn’t to say that Vagina Monologues did no good. It was praised for its ability to publicly “break the silence” about women's sex and sexuality. It “challenges us to think of women’s bodies as beautiful, valuable, significant” in a way that modern culture doesn’t (Gallo-Cruz and Tulinski, 2020). I would also like to add that it focuses on women’s pleasure in monologues like “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” and “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could,” which is rarely spoken about even in contemporary media. We can simultaneously take value from the parts that were revolutionary while also criticizing those that don’t keep up with the times, ultimately providing insight into our contemporary situation.