Sunday, February 29, 2004

Because Some People Don’t Get Vaginas



THAT IS WHY VArt and Poetry—a celebration of and for women just in time for the annual Women’s Month this March—has become a necessity, even though the rug was almost pulled underneath our feet just a few days before things would have unfolded, in the middle of planning, in the middle of situating things, and in the middle of a creative flow that has seen the city’s visual artists and the country’s top women poets work towards a celebration that will be more than a occasion for joy.



But the show will go on, it would seem, in CocoAmigos, on March 5, 2004 at 5:45 p.m.



It will make a mark, in Dumaguete at least, in the growing advocacy for women’s rights.



It will be a night of cultural affirmation, drinking beer in the bar aside.



It will make CocoAmigos, finally, the center of artistry and local culture—an image it has been trying to cultivate since last year.



All this is a sigh of relief. Because it almost wasn’t. VDay had promised to be a gathering of the province’s top culturati and women’s activists. Imagine National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo gracing the event as a performer reads her poetry on women beyond motherhood. Literary giants Ma. Fatima Lim Wilson, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, Marjorie Evasco, Erlinda Kintanar Alburo, among others—who themselves chose and furnished the poems to be read in the event—will make the night sparkle with their poetry. Art luminaries like Kitty Taniguchi will show us why is it that her paintings, steeped in the explorations of women’s cultured bodies, continue to inspire us, continue to make us talk. We will be saluting, too, in the program, several of the city’s so-called Vagina Warriors—Cecille Hoffman, Phoebe Tan, and Betsy Joy Tan—for taking the cause of women in the city forward despite the odds of prevalent macho dominion.



Still, the search for a new venue is on (just in case), a little less than a week before the scheduled March 5, 2004 show. Because we need to go on, despite troubles and wishy-washy people. Because this cause is too important to be bogged down by mere accidents of finding a home for the performance. It’s been hard. How do you find people to help fight for a good cause when too many are embarrassed to even acknowledge a problem exists in our society?



In the end, this paints only too clearly how it is to grapple hard and fight for a cause nobody else wants to bother with, because the enslavement of women in our society has become so much a part of our lives people are actually scared of change. This advocacy has been termed “fanatic” at best, “pornographic” at worst.



When The Vagina Monologues was first presented in Manila about three years ago, Monique Wilson, the artistic director of New Voice Company (the theatrical group who dared to take this powerful play into the consciousness of Filipinos), lamented in her notes for the first performance of the show:



“Now this is apparently where the problem lies with some people. The word ‘vagina.’ Sponsor after sponsor turned us down because they didn’t like the title. ‘It doesn’t fit with our image,’ they said. ‘Our clients would get turned off.’ Of course, I had to respect these decisions (albeit with a heavy heart)—no matter that more than half our population are women, and they have vaginas; no matter that it talked about life-changing, life-affirming positive things; and no matter that it would change the way they would look at the world and at women. I guess these things are not as important as ‘image.’ The issues of women are not as important as, say, supporting a work that played up the stereotypes of Asian women as prostitutes—where women are docile, weak, and submissive. I guess I don’t understand...”



Three years later, a lot has changed. The Vagina Monologues now gets yearly reruns because the public can’t seem to get enough. And those who perform it consist of some of our biggest and brightest showbiz and media and literary and business and political stars. All women, of course. People like Ces Drilon, Lakambini Sitoy, Zenaida Amador, Jaya, and so on.



Three years ago, nobody could say “vagina” on TV. Ms. Wilson, going on talk shows then to convince the public this play was worth seeing, had to resort to creative means to talk about “it.” Today, because of her advocacy, we now have advertisements for women’s hygiene saying the word “vagina”—three years after the same companies behind these products turned down her request for sponsorship.



Are we seeing the same thing here in Dumaguete? Maybe. Maybe not. What we know now is that the final venue for the show is still up for grabs. We first tried for the Luce Auditorium lobby, which traditionally holds exhibitions. But we were given strange run-arounds, and we couldn’t get a date. Hayahay then, like last year? Maybe. Hayahay has always been a friendly place. And the food there is great, too. That’s a plus. But we hope we can settle with CocoAmigos, which depends a great deal on Australian owner Mike Butler



It would be great to stage it in CocoAmigos, if only to showcase the paradox of the place.



We would have enlightened the place of some inbred associations with majestic female poetry.



* * *



WE WILL ALSO Be hearing powerful pieces such as the one below, for that show. An excerpt of what we hope it will be, in CocoAmigos, or wherever):

The Hymen is There For a Purpose

By Kristyn Maslog-Levis



The hymen. It is not just a piece of tissue, thank you very much. It is there for a purpose.



It is there to protect the woman, to let her know that, hey, I’m supposed to be taken gently, not roughly. You don’t have to break me down like breaking the barriers of a castle door using a ramming rod. I am supposed to be touched, felt, smelled… kissed.



Take me slow. Enter me gently. If my vagina was a road, it would say, “Slow Down/Slippery When Wet.”



I was sixteen. It was a cheap motel. It was his birthday. He said we were going to a cottage, somewhere near the beach perhaps. I don’t know what his definition of a cottage was, but to me it looked like he meant a “motel.”



We’ve only been going out for two weeks. He was the Class Bad Boy. I was the Class Genius. Bottles of beer were there in the dingy little room, but so was fear. And the more I got scared, the more that excited him.



The pain was excruciating. Like a knife was being pushed up my vagina and wiggled around. I heard myself cry. I heard myself say no. I felt myself pulling away, to avoid the pain of his rough ramming. And then it was all over. And I was bleeding.



He looked at me, confused. “You’re a virgin?” he said, like it was impossible. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” As if I had the time to tell him in between the pushing and groping, and the ripping of the clothes.



He smiled, proud of his trophy for that birthday. He carved our names on the cabinet top as a remembrance of that night. I still haven’t gotten around to burning that place down. Maybe one of these days, I will.



I felt humiliated, violated, and mostly confused. It hurt, but should I really feel bad? Why should I feel violated and hurt when he was my boyfriend? Wasn’t I supposed to be happy that I’d shared something special with him?



That was the start of a year-and-a-half of sleepless, tear-filled nights. I’ve always thought that non-virgins were sluts. Thus, I was one. I was “used goods”—tainted, battered, bruised, and will never be worthy of love by another man again. I had to cling on to him. He had taken my special gift.



Then Michael began acting like he owned me. I was his cow, marked by his semen. Abused by his manhood. I had no choice but to let him do whatever he pleased. Although I was battling societal pressure to be “clean,” inside I knew I was tied to him.



Escaping our city was the best thing I had ever done. And slowly I saw different points of view. I swore to myself that I would never be a victim, that I would never listen to norms, and that I would never be a prey for male predators again.



He was a slut. Michael was a whore. He just didn’t know it.



But now, looking back at that dreadful memory, I feel bad, yet also grateful. Bad that I wasted all those times acting like I was enjoying sex just so I won’t be victimized anymore. But I also feel grateful for the liberation that night brought me. The anger gave way to strength, and the strength to dominance, and dominance to wisdom, until I found love.



I am grateful that although my vagina was abused, it has survived to tell the tale and teach younger vaginas some lessons in life, while Michael’s manhood still hangs around somewhere, probably filled with puss from being with whores.



Virginity is nothing more than a mind-frame. The hymen is not just a hymen. It is me.

The Vagina Monologues, directed by Laurie Raymundo from the play by Eve Ensler, will be staged in the Luce Auditorium on 12 March 2004. Tickets will soon be available at Silliman University’s Department of Psychology. Please see Ms. Bing Valbuena for more details, or you can email me at icasocot (at) yahoo (dot) com.


[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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