September 29, 2001

• Side benefits of doing unpaid work: I got to attend a special benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues Thursday night! WHEEL is a member of the Women's Funding Alliance, which sent all member organizations two free tickets. I was asked if I could go (can I?) and find someone else to use the other ticket. (Why would it be so difficult? Shelter check-in times prevented most of the homeless women from attending, while most of the formerly homeless women are living in inexpensive housing, i.e. out-of-town, and were kept away by transportation problems. And the older women usually blushed at the very idea.)
  
  Just six hours from showtime I called StreetLife Gallery for the third time and found Rango there. I asked, "Do you want to go see The Vagina Monologues?" and she yelled, "Wow! Yeah!"
  
  I didn't even tell her until we were on our way that there was an extra bonus to the evening: a Q&A session afterward with the play's author Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem Herself, the play's cast and two local politicians.
  
  The Vagina Monologues was a whole lot more than I expected from it. I thought it would be fun, but I expected humor along the lines of "Aren't we clever, we can say 'vagina'!"
  
  I was blown away. When Shirley Knight told the monologue of a refined Englishwoman finding her clitoris late in life for the first time in "The Vagina Workshop" it was humorous, joyful and poignant all at the same time. The way Tracey Knight delivered "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy," there probably wasn't a dry seat left in the house. After Amy Love gave us the monologue of a Bosnian refugee, "My vagina was my village," describing the beauty and the destruction of both, there probably wasn't a dry eye left. (This was a piece that had extra impact just now.)
  
  The show is used as a fund-raiser, centerpiece and major talking-point for "V-Day," a movement to stop violence against women and girls. It certainly stirred up a lot of thought, including "Just why are we uncomfortable talking about vaginas, anyway?" Then the play pushes the envelope even farther with "Reclaiming Cunt"!
  
  I'm not at all sure I agree all the way with "If we valued women more we wouldn't have war" but I do think that it's a part of our whole self-destructive human complex. I want to write a nice long essay working out my thoughts and post it on my main site.
  I won't make you read such a long entry here, though. : )
  
  I did get a chance on the way out to tell Gloria Steinem that my partner Wes wanted her to know that the line about the bicycle was his favorite quote ever. She said, "Thank you, now you can tell Wes that I confess I didn't invent it. I got it from an Australian woman who got it from a religious debate in which someone said, 'Man without God is like a fish without a bicycle.'" I reported that to Wes and, unreconstructed pagan that he is, he loves the original even more.
  
  At the time I talked to her, she didn't remember the name of the Australian woman, but it might have been Florence (or Florynce) Kennedy, who is the one credited with the quote in some online sources.
  Odd bits you can learn at the theater. : )

  • 5:08 am
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