The Vagina Monologues

“Here’s the place to think about our vaginas, to learn about other women’s vaginas, to hear stories and interviews, to answer questions and ask them. Here’s the place to release the myths, shame, and fear. Here’s the place to practice saying the word, because, as we know, the word is what propels us and sets us free. ‘VAGINA.’”

The play becomes a container and a movement for women to name their vaginas and connect to each other. This is further embodied by the many movements born from the original production of the play and uses the motif of repetition and the symbol of the vagina to do so.

“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.”

From the Introduction, V shares her motivations for creating the play and interviewing women about their vaginas. This quote represents the stigma and silence surrounding vaginas, both of which V sets out to break.

“You have to love hair in order to love the vagina. You cannot pick the parts you want.”

This quote contains within it an empowering comment against misogyny; by naming the “whole” vagina (though the vagina itself is only a portion of the female reproductive system), women lay claim to the entirety of their bodies even if society does not.

“What’s a smart girl like you going around talking to old ladies about their down-theres for? We didn’t do this kind of thing when I was a girl.”

This excerpt conveys the generational differences between women and therefore how different generations of women view and talk about their bodies due to patriarchal culture. In this instance, the quote reveals the privacy and silence surrounding the feminine experience before the 1990s—even while, in the 1990s, the word “vagina” was still censored and silenced.

“My mother told me I had to use a rag. My mother said no tampons. You couldn’t put anything in your sugar dish.”

This quote demonstrates an expectation within patriarchal culture that women should avoid inserting anything into the vagina—including menstrual products—to remain “pure” and “virginal.” The speaker’s mother simultaneously refers to the female genitals as a “sugar dish,” a sweet nickname instead of “vagina.” Even while discussing menstruation, the vagina is not named.

“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.”

The disassociation of women from their bodies, and therefore their sexual experience, is heavily explored throughout The Vagina Monologues. In this instance, the narrator describes her own estrangement from her vagina, a part of her body that she later discovered is a source of both strength and pleasure.

“I did not raise my hand because although I had had orgasms, I did not know how to make one happen. I had never tried to make one happen. I thought it was a mystical, magical thing.”

Orgasm, or feminine pleasure, has long been a taboo subject for women. In patriarchal cultures that emphasize sexual “purity,” especially, the primary goal and role of sex is reproduction, rather than pleasure. To seek pleasure outside the goal of reproducing is, in such cultural environments, shameful or sinful. Such notions of feminine sexuality can estrange women from their bodies, as evidenced in this quote. The play itself suggests that because “vagina” and women’s relationships to their vaginas are silenced, women do not know their bodies, and their pleasure, as they could.

“Vaginas are beautiful. Our self-hatred is only the internalized repression and hatred of the patriarchal culture.”

This quote, which assumes that women do not talk about or look at their vaginas out of self-hatred, places the responsibility of this loathing on patriarchy. The patriarchy purports that women are lesser than men, and women are subject to the same kinds of beliefs as men that grow up in such a system. The Vagina Monologues works to counter these notions through praise and truth.

“There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since.”

During the Bosnian War, women were brutally tortured and raped. The monologue about this historical event, “My Vagina Was My Village,” explores the trauma of this violence and the way it leads women who experienced it to disassociate from their bodies. While some women are estranged from their vaginas because their culture considers it improper to discuss them, this monologue conveys that still more are estranged from their vaginas because of violence—and more often than not, it’s both.

“That’s why girdles are so bad. We need to move and spread and talk and talk. Vaginas need comfort. Make something like that, something to give them pleasure. No, of course they won’t do that. Hate to see a woman having pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure.”

Women often must deal with product designs and procedures that are uncomfortable, including girdles and visits to the gynecologist, which involve a series of undignified discomforts despite being focused on a woman’s body. The narrator of “My Angry Vagina” argues that instead, women’s comfort should be not only considered but also championed.

“It’s a site for mishaps. It’s a bad-luck zone. I imagine a freeway between my legs and, girl, I am traveling, going far away from here.”

The narrator throughout “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could,” who has experienced various forms of sexual trauma throughout her life, describes her vagina as symbolizing various things. In this instance, the vagina becomes the reason this narrator has experienced bad luck. She suggests nothing good happens there, so the narrator wishes to be far from it and “here.”

“I call it cunt. I’ve reclaimed it, ‘cunt.’”

Just like saying “vagina” is an act of resistance, so too is reclaiming words used against marginalized or oppressed groups. In this instance, the narrator takes back “cunt” to use as she pleases, defying its use as a derogatory word.

“We forget the vagina, all of us. What else would explain our lack of awe, our lack of wonder?”

An homage to the vagina, this excerpt pays tribute to the amazing capacity of this organ. The narrator, while recounting childbirth, suggests that the only way to explain a lack of reverence for the vagina is by misremembering what it is and what it can do.

“I am caught there, I am lost there inside the cloth which is your head.”

The burqa is often protested against, often through a Western lens, as a tool of oppression for women. This passage suggests that, for the women who are forced to wear them and do not wish to, burqas are both a trap and a suppression of identity.

“It’s like when you’re trying to sleep and there is a loud car alarm. When I got my vagina, it was like someone finally turned it off. I live now in the female zone.”

Trans women were not explicitly included in the first edition of the play. This quote from a “Spotlight Monologue,” “They Beat the Girl out of My Boy…or so They Tried” depicts the vagina as a symbol of identity and liberation after the speaker’s surgical transition. The speaker finally feels comfortable in her body, finding peace in her identity as a woman.

“Japanese government say it please we are sorry, Comfort Women. Say it to me. We are sorry to me. We are sorry to me.”

Repetition functions here to emphasize both the demand for an apology and the silence of the Japanese government regarding the comfort women. The quote, using repetition, conveys the intensity of this violent history and the need for reparations.

“I’m cooking up a remedy. I’m cooking up some serious rage. I’m cooking up a levee that will hold and a government that will care.”

The act of cooking, which is generally considered positive and nurturing but has also long been an unpaid domestic task for women, is juxtaposed with an alternative interpretation of cooking: that of brewing rage. The narrator suggests that as well as cooking for the community, she is working toward actionable change that will ensure better care for women in her area and the local community more widely.

“I am over violence against women not being an international priority when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime—the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.”

The statistic that one in three women will experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetime is central to the motivations of The Vagina Monologues, V, and the people who carry on the V-Day and One Billion Rising movements. The urgency inherent in this passage, that this violence is the destruction of life itself, demonstrates the need for immediate change and the anger underpinning the narrator’s motivations to create change.

“My revolution is in this body, in these hips gripped by misogyny, in this jaw wired mute by hunger and atrocity.”

The body can be a site of violence, but it can also be a site of revolution. This quote suggests that though patriarchal systems will oppress the body, they will not stop its revolution and its efforts to fight back.

“V-Day believes a worldwide cultural shift that could help end forms of violence against women and girls—and address the interconnected issues of race, class, and gender—is within our grasp.”

A worldwide cultural shift toward the liberation of women from violence and oppression is a tremendous task. This quote, and The Vagina Monologues at large, are representative of the possibilities inherent in movements like V-Day and artistic productions that build community and gain revolutionary momentum.

“People—women—live intersectionally—sites where sexism overlaps with economic marginality, racism, environmental degradation, queerphobia, able-ism, xenophobia, and the like.”

Intersectional feminism is a central component to understanding violence against women, as it recognizes the layers of oppression women face. The rates at which women experience violence are affected by environment, socioeconomic status, race, and identity. In order to address this violence, it is critical to understand how various forms of oppression operate for women across the world.

“One Billion Rising has demonstrated the power of art and dance and the astonishing political alchemy that occurs when art and activism happen simultaneously.”

The Power of Art as Activism is central to The Vagina Monologues and the achievements of the play across the globe. One Billion Rising is one such achievement, and it exemplifies the role of art in changing cultural systems of violence and oppression while building communities of safety and growth.

“In the Philippine language there is no biological word for ‘vagina,’ only a derogatory term. When you do not have a name for your vagina, how can you speak about being raped, trafficked, incested, or sold into sexual slavery?”

Much like not being able to say “vagina” aloud, language operates as a tool of liberation and oppression, in particular when there is no language to describe instances of systemic violence. This quote is another indication of how larger cultural systems influence personal experiences of intimacy, pleasure, pain, and violence.