Eve Ensler is a kick-ass lady. Me and my vagina are both psyched that she’s on our side. Like a billion other women, seeing the Vagina Monologues for the first time gave me a new perspective on feminism – to borrow a phrase from Inga Muscio, a cuntlovin’ one. Recently I had the opportunity to attend an evening of performances as part of Eve’s V-Day festival in NYC. Talented and sometimes famous women and men performed pieces submitted by over fifty writers on the topic of violence against women. Bracing myself for an incredibly depressing wake-up call to the dire condition of women worldwide, I was pleased that the emphasis was placed on women resisting and overcoming victimization. In “Maurice,” by Kathy Najimy, an overweight sixteen year-old skillfully dumps her date rapist… out the door of his car onto the ground. In “Blueberry Hill” by Christine House, a woman about to be gang-raped decides to fight back, and succeeds in scaring off her attackers. Stories from Haiti to Palestine, from El Salvador to Rwanda spoke of violence against women as anything but monolithic. Rather than male bashing, the pieces traced root causes of violence to colonization, patriarchy, racism and militarism. In her electrifying piece, “Give it back,” Suheir Hammad called out women warmongers for their failure to act like women, admonishing them to “Give your coochies back!”
Somewhere in the midst of this cuntlovin’ frenzy, however, I began to feel a little uncomfortable. Not because I disagreed with Kimberle Crenshaw’s suggestion that we begin to demand respect for vaginas – I get a little giddy imagining all phallic architecture being replaced by vagina-themed structures! Wheee! And not because I disagree with the goal of ending violence against women and girls (um, hello!). Rather, it was the connection between the two – demanding respect for the vagina as an avenue for ending violence against women – that left me slightly confused. What might that mean for women who weren’t born with vaginas? Or for transmen who aren’t necessarily all about signing their vaginas up for goddess worship? And furthermore, how does the movement to end violence against women relate to the issue of violence against a whole spectrum of folks who don’t fit into the gender binary (trannies, genderqueers, intersexuals, bulldykes, queens, stone butches, and queers of all stripes)?
Of course, Eve Ensler and the V-day crowd are far from participating in the kind of discourse that draws on sexist stereotypes to posit women and children as helpless victims (say, Muslim women in need of rescue by the U.S. military), separating them from the homos whose sexual practices and preferences have always already jeopardized their innocent victim status. But the goal to “make NYC the safest place on earth for women and girls” still leaves it plenty dangerous for many others.
Even for those of us who fit fairly comfortably inside the parameters of the term “woman,” I am not so sure that demanding recognition of our value as women is the most viable solution for ending violence against us. In “True,” Carol Kaplan suggests that if our oppressors could simply “see us for who we are” then they would have a change of heart. Seemingly, if women were valued and loved, rather than despised and hated, no one would have cause to inflict violence on us. I have to admit, I am somewhat skeptical. I recently read Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog, a book in which men’s love for women is precisely the cause of their violence. Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon just wants to help the woman he loves get her house back. So he holds a family hostage and threatens them at gunpoint, his actions finally resulting in the death of their son. Meanwhile, all Colonel Behrani could desire is for his beloved wife Nadereh to be happy. That’s why he smothers her to death so she won’t have to find out about the death of their son. What a guy.
What’s the moral of the story? Well, I for one am not comfortable trusting men (or anyone) to act in my or my vagina’s best interest, no matter how much they might profess to love and respect us. And frankly, I’m not all that interested in convincing men to stop hurting us, because I’m not wiling to concede that men are the ones with the power to end violence against women. Women are the ones with that power – the power to open a car door at a crucial moment, the power to fight and fight and fight and fight until your attackers finally realize it’s not worth it.
In both of those stories, a woman went through a moment of realization of what was about to happen to her, and then decided that there was no way in hell she was just going to sit there and let it happen. I’m not suggesting that it is always possible to win a fight. But considering that one of the main reasons women become targets of violence is our perceived submissiveness, refusing to act like a victim can go a long way in turning the tables on an attacker. A 1998 study showed that women who screamed or yelled were more likely to avoid being raped than women who used a more passive approach of pleading or crying.
Of course, the pattern of violence against women is etched deeply in the collective consciousness. But perhaps as we begin to disrupt this pattern more and more frequently, we will eventually succeed in completely changing its shape. While we’re marching on the path to pussy power, however, let’s not forget that the ol’ patriarchy is pretty damn reliant on heterosexism, racism, and imperialism. Back in 1851, former slave Sojourner Truth delivered her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman,” pointing out that black women were excluded from the protections and privileges of the term “woman.” Today, queer theorists like Judith “Jack” Halberstam are redefining the boundaries of what it means to be female altogether. I hope that the movement to end violence against women is more open to redefinition than the women’s suffrage movement was. After all, what’s the point of making NYC a safe place to be a woman, if that’s not who you feel like being?
