The Vagina Monologues
Encyclopedia
The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler
which ran at the Off Broadway Westside Theatre
after a limited run at AFRICA in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit
, Mike Skipper and the West Side Theater. When she left the play it was recast with three celebrity
monologists
. The production has been staged internationally, and a television version featuring Ensler was produced by cable TV channel HBO. In 1998, Ensler and others, including Willa Shalit
, a producer of the Westside Theatre production, launched V-Day, a global non-profit movement that has raised over $75 million for women's anti-violence
groups through benefits of The Vagina Monologues.
performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses, and more recent versions featuring a different actress for every role). Every monologue somehow relates to the vagina
, be it through sex, love
, rape
, menstruation
, female genital mutilation, masturbation
, birth
, orgasm
, the variety of names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality. Some monologues include:
Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue affecting women around the world. Every V-Day thousands of local benefit productions are staged to raise funds for local groups, shelters, crisis centers working to end violence against women. In 2003, for example, Ensler wrote a new monologue about the plight of women in Afghanistan
under Taliban rule. This Monologue is known as "Under the Burqa."
. All of these things are deeply connected to our vaginas."
Ensler wrote the piece to "celebrate the vagina." Ensler states that in 1998, the purpose of the piece changed from a celebration of vaginas and femininity to a movement to stop violence against women.
The play first opened at HERE Arts Center
in New York City
on 3 October 1996 with a limited run that ran through November. The play gained popularity through a word of mouth campaign that culminated with a performance at Madison Square Garden
in 2001, which featured Melissa Etheridge
and Whoopi Goldberg
performing segments of the play.
The Vagina Monologues is the cornerstone
of the V-Day movement, whose participants stage benefit performances of the show and/or host other related events in their communities. Such events take place worldwide each year between February 1 and April 30. The performances generally benefit rape crisis centers and similar resource centers for women. During the rest of the year the play is performed in thousands of communities and colleges worldwide.
On February 21, 2004, Eve Ensler in conjunction with Jane Fonda
and Deep Stealth Productions
produced and directed the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues, with readings by eighteen notable trans women, and including a new monologue documenting the experiences of transwomen. It debuted in connection with "LA V-DAY Until the Violence Stops" with monologues documenting the violence against transgender people. Since that debut, many university and college productions have included these three "Transgender Monologues". Beautiful Daughters (2006) is a documentary about the cast of the first performance by trans women.
, gender egalitarian, and individualist feminist movements. Harriet Lerner
, renowned in the field of women's psychology, points out the "psychic genital mutilation" embedded in the play's title, which ignores the clitoris
and labia, and should more accurately be called "The Vulva
Monologues". Pro-sex feminist Betty Dodson
, author of several books about female sexuality, saw the play as having a negative and restrictive view of sexuality and an anti-male bias. She called the play "a blast of hatred at men and heterosexuality". Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy
agreed, stating that the play "equates men with 'the enemy' and heterosexual love with violence". She also identified problems with the work's lesbian bias, stating "A play that claims to unveil the truth about vaginas but, somehow, overlooks the salutary role men play in most women's sexuality has no credibility."
Elements of the play critics find contentious include:
Some of the actors in the Vagina Monologues have responded to the story of "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could" by saying that the incidence of the very young pubescent girl's relationship with the 24-year-old was not rape but a love scene.
, for contributing to "colonialist conceptions of non-Western women." Although she supports frank discussions about sex, Hall rescales many of the same critiques leveled by feminists of color at White privilege among Second-wave feminists
and "premature white feminist assumptions and celebrations of a global 'sisterhood.'"
(TFP), and the Network of enlightened Women
. The TFP denounced it as "a piece replete with sexual encounters, lust, graphic descriptions of masturbation
and lesbian
behavior", urging students and parents to protest. Following TFP and other protests, performances were cancelled at sixteen Catholic
college
s. Recently, Saint Louis University
made the decision not to endorse the 2007 production, claiming the yearly event was getting to be "redundant." The response of the university's student-led feminist organization was to continue the production at an off-campus location.
university newspaper, The Hoya
, wrote an article critical of the play. He suggested there was a contradiction between the promotion of rape awareness on V-Day
and the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could", in which an adult woman recalls being given alcohol and statutorily raped
at 13 by a 24-year-old woman as a positive, healing experience, ending the segment with the proclamation "It was a good rape." Swope also noted the doubled standards involved, asking "why is rape only wrong when a man commits it, but when it's by a woman committed against another woman, who just happens to be 13-years-old, it is celebrated and a university club sponsors it?" Outcry from the play's supporters resulted in Swope's being fired from the staff of the Hoya, before the piece was even run. Swope had previously criticized the play in an article he wrote entitled "Georgetown Women's Center: Indispensable Asset or Improper Expenditure?". His termination received editorial
coverage in The Wall Street Journal
, Salon.com
, National Review
, The Atlantic Monthly
, The Washington Times
and the Weekly Standard.
"Eve Ensler on "good" bodies and bad politics -Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2004/11/11_100.html
Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.- Personal life :...
which ran at the Off Broadway Westside Theatre
Westside Theatre
__notoc__The Westside Theatre is an off-Broadway venue located at 407 West 43rd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The building houses two auditoriums: the Upstairs theater, which seats 299, and the Downstairs theater, which...
after a limited run at AFRICA in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit
Willa Shalit
Willa Shalit is a Jewish-American artist, theatrical and television producer, photographer, author/editor, socially conscious entrepreneur and philanthropist. She graduated from St. Ann's School and Oberlin College...
, Mike Skipper and the West Side Theater. When she left the play it was recast with three celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
monologists
Monologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...
. The production has been staged internationally, and a television version featuring Ensler was produced by cable TV channel HBO. In 1998, Ensler and others, including Willa Shalit
Willa Shalit
Willa Shalit is a Jewish-American artist, theatrical and television producer, photographer, author/editor, socially conscious entrepreneur and philanthropist. She graduated from St. Ann's School and Oberlin College...
, a producer of the Westside Theatre production, launched V-Day, a global non-profit movement that has raised over $75 million for women's anti-violence
Sexual violence
Sexual violence occurs throughout the world, although in most countries there has been little research conducted on the problem. Due to the private nature of sexual violence, estimating the extent of the problem is difficult...
groups through benefits of The Vagina Monologues.
Plot summary
The Vagina Monologues is made up of a varying number of monologues read by a varying number of women (initially, Eve EnslerEve Ensler
Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.- Personal life :...
performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses, and more recent versions featuring a different actress for every role). Every monologue somehow relates to the vagina
Vagina
The vagina is a fibromuscular tubular tract leading from the uterus to the exterior of the body in female placental mammals and marsupials, or to the cloaca in female birds, monotremes, and some reptiles. Female insects and other invertebrates also have a vagina, which is the terminal part of the...
, be it through sex, love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, menstruation
Menstruation
Menstruation is the shedding of the uterine lining . It occurs on a regular basis in sexually reproductive-age females of certain mammal species. This article focuses on human menstruation.-Overview:...
, female genital mutilation, masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
, birth
Birth
Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring. The offspring is brought forth from the mother. The time of human birth is defined as the time at which the fetus comes out of the mother's womb into the world...
, orgasm
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
, the variety of names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality. Some monologues include:
- I Was Twelve, My Mother Slapped Me: a chorus describing many young women's and girls' first menstrual period.
- My Angry Vagina, in which a woman humorously rants about injustices wrought against the vagina, such as tampons, doucheDoucheA douche is a device used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons, or the stream of water itself.Douche usually refers to vaginal irrigation, the rinsing of the vagina, but it can also refer to the rinsing of any body cavity. A douche bag is a piece of...
s, and the tools used by OB/GYNsObstetrics and gynaecologyObstetrics and gynaecology are the two surgical–medical specialties dealing with the female reproductive organs in their pregnant and non-pregnant state, respectively, and as such are often combined to form a single medical specialty and postgraduate training programme...
. - My Vagina Was My Village, a monologue compiled from the testimonies of BosniaBosniansBosnians are people who reside in, or come from, Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the modern state definition a Bosnian can be anyone who holds citizenship of the state. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and...
n women subjected to rape camps. - The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, in which a woman recalls memories of traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood and a self-described "positive healing" sexual experience in her adolescent years with an older woman. In the original version, she is 13, but later versions would change her age to 16. It also originally included the line, "If it was rape, it was a good rape." This particular skit has sparked numerous controversies and criticisms due to its content (see below).
- Reclaiming Cunt, a piece narrated by a woman who illustrates that the word "cuntCuntCunt is a vulgarism, primarily referring to the female genitalia, specifically the vulva, and including the cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 Oxford English Dictionary, c 1230, refers to the London street known as Gropecunt Lane...
" itself is a lovely word despite its disconcerting connotations. - The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy, in which a sex worker for women discusses the intriguing details of her career and her love of giving women pleasure. In several performances it often comes at the end of the play, literally climaxing with a vocal demonstration of a "triple orgasm."
- Because He Liked to Look At It, in which a woman describes how she had thought her vagina was ugly and had been embarrassed to even think about it, but changed her mind because of a sexual experience with a man named Bob who liked to spend hours looking at it.
- I Was There In The Room, a monologue in which Eve Ensler describes the birth of her granddaughter.
Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue affecting women around the world. Every V-Day thousands of local benefit productions are staged to raise funds for local groups, shelters, crisis centers working to end violence against women. In 2003, for example, Ensler wrote a new monologue about the plight of women in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
under Taliban rule. This Monologue is known as "Under the Burqa."
History
Eve Ensler wrote the first draft of the monologues in 1996 (there have been several revisions since) following interviews she conducted with 200 women about their views on sex, relationships, and violence against women. The interviews began as casual conversations with her friends, who then brought up anecdotes they themselves had been told by other friends; this began a continuing chain of referrals. In an interview with women.com, Ensler said that her fascination with vaginas began because of "growing up in a violent society.""Women's empowerment is deeply connected to their sexuality." She also stated, "I'm obsessed with women being violated and raped, and with incestIncest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
. All of these things are deeply connected to our vaginas."
Ensler wrote the piece to "celebrate the vagina." Ensler states that in 1998, the purpose of the piece changed from a celebration of vaginas and femininity to a movement to stop violence against women.
The play first opened at HERE Arts Center
HERE Arts Center
HERE Arts Center is a New York City based off-off broadway presenting house, founded in 1993, with two stages specializing in hybrid performance, dance, theater, multi-media and puppetry. From 1993-2009, HERE supported over 12,000 artists and served approximately 950,000 audience members...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on 3 October 1996 with a limited run that ran through November. The play gained popularity through a word of mouth campaign that culminated with a performance at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
in 2001, which featured Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Lou Etheridge is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician.Etheridge is known for her mixture of confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, and raspy, smoky vocals...
and Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won...
performing segments of the play.
V-Day
Cornerstone
The cornerstone concept is derived from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.Over time a cornerstone became a ceremonial masonry stone, or...
of the V-Day movement, whose participants stage benefit performances of the show and/or host other related events in their communities. Such events take place worldwide each year between February 1 and April 30. The performances generally benefit rape crisis centers and similar resource centers for women. During the rest of the year the play is performed in thousands of communities and colleges worldwide.
On February 21, 2004, Eve Ensler in conjunction with Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
and Deep Stealth Productions
Deep Stealth Productions
According to its website, Deep Stealth Productions was founded by Calpernia Addams and Andrea James and produces entertainment and educational content for several media. Besides being a production company, Deep Stealth is also a popular site for support and products related to the transgender...
produced and directed the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues, with readings by eighteen notable trans women, and including a new monologue documenting the experiences of transwomen. It debuted in connection with "LA V-DAY Until the Violence Stops" with monologues documenting the violence against transgender people. Since that debut, many university and college productions have included these three "Transgender Monologues". Beautiful Daughters (2006) is a documentary about the cast of the first performance by trans women.
Feminist criticism
The Vagina Monologues has been criticized by a number of people in the pro-sex feministSex-positive feminism
Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism is a movement that began in the early 1980s...
, gender egalitarian, and individualist feminist movements. Harriet Lerner
Harriet Lerner
Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a contributor to feminist theory and therapy. From 1972 to 2001 she was a staff psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas and a faculty member and supervisor in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry...
, renowned in the field of women's psychology, points out the "psychic genital mutilation" embedded in the play's title, which ignores the clitoris
Clitoris
The clitoris is a sexual organ that is present only in female mammals. In humans, the visible button-like portion is located near the anterior junction of the labia minora, above the opening of the urethra and vagina. Unlike the penis, which is homologous to the clitoris, the clitoris does not...
and labia, and should more accurately be called "The Vulva
Vulva
The vulva consists of the external genital organs of the female mammal. This article deals with the vulva of the human being, although the structures are similar for other mammals....
Monologues". Pro-sex feminist Betty Dodson
Betty Dodson
Betty Dodson is an American sex educator, author, and artist. Dodson held the first one-woman show of erotic art at the Wickersham Gallery in New York City in 1968. She left the art world to teach sex to women...
, author of several books about female sexuality, saw the play as having a negative and restrictive view of sexuality and an anti-male bias. She called the play "a blast of hatred at men and heterosexuality". Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982.-Sex-positive:...
agreed, stating that the play "equates men with 'the enemy' and heterosexual love with violence". She also identified problems with the work's lesbian bias, stating "A play that claims to unveil the truth about vaginas but, somehow, overlooks the salutary role men play in most women's sexuality has no credibility."
Elements of the play critics find contentious include:
- The amount of attention given to brutal sexual encounters compared with consensual or harmonious sexual encounters;
- Negative portrayal of male-female sexual relationships;
- In "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could", an underage girl (thirteen in earlier performances, sixteen in the revised version) recounts being given alcohol and then having sex with an adult woman; the incident is recalled fondly by the grown girl, who in the original version of the play calls it "a good rape." Her abuser is also portrayed positively as someone "rescuing" her from needing men for sexual satisfaction .
- The fact that part of the play comes from Ensler's interviews with a six-year-old girl, which included sexually intimate questions such as what her vagina smells like.
Some of the actors in the Vagina Monologues have responded to the story of "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could" by saying that the incidence of the very young pubescent girl's relationship with the 24-year-old was not rape but a love scene.
Colonialism and heterosexism
Kim Q. Hall further criticizes the play, particularly the sections dealing with women in the Third WorldThird World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, for contributing to "colonialist conceptions of non-Western women." Although she supports frank discussions about sex, Hall rescales many of the same critiques leveled by feminists of color at White privilege among Second-wave feminists
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
and "premature white feminist assumptions and celebrations of a global 'sisterhood.'"
Social conservative criticism
The play has also been criticized by social conservatives, such as the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and PropertyAmerican Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property is a civic organization of traditional Roman Catholic inspiration...
(TFP), and the Network of enlightened Women
Network of enlightened Women
The Network of enlightened Women is an organization for culturally conservative women at American universities. Started as a book club at the University of Virginia in 2004, NeW seeks to cultivate "a community of conservative women and expands intellectual diversity on college campuses through its...
. The TFP denounced it as "a piece replete with sexual encounters, lust, graphic descriptions of masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
and lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
behavior", urging students and parents to protest. Following TFP and other protests, performances were cancelled at sixteen Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
s. Recently, Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...
made the decision not to endorse the 2007 production, claiming the yearly event was getting to be "redundant." The response of the university's student-led feminist organization was to continue the production at an off-campus location.
The case of Robert Swope
In 2000, Robert Swope, a conservative contributor to a GeorgetownGeorgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
university newspaper, The Hoya
The Hoya
The Hoya, the oldest and largest student newspaper of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, was founded in 1920. The Hoya prints an edition every Tuesday and Friday during the academic year and has a circulation of 6,500...
, wrote an article critical of the play. He suggested there was a contradiction between the promotion of rape awareness on V-Day
V-Day
V-Day, February 14th, is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls inspired by Eve Ensler's play, The Vagina Monologues. The movement was started in 1998 by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler. Ensler has been quoted as saying that it was women's reactions to the...
and the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could", in which an adult woman recalls being given alcohol and statutorily raped
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
at 13 by a 24-year-old woman as a positive, healing experience, ending the segment with the proclamation "It was a good rape." Swope also noted the doubled standards involved, asking "why is rape only wrong when a man commits it, but when it's by a woman committed against another woman, who just happens to be 13-years-old, it is celebrated and a university club sponsors it?" Outcry from the play's supporters resulted in Swope's being fired from the staff of the Hoya, before the piece was even run. Swope had previously criticized the play in an article he wrote entitled "Georgetown Women's Center: Indispensable Asset or Improper Expenditure?". His termination received editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
coverage in The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
, The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
and the Weekly Standard.
External links
- The Vagina Monologues at Random House
- V-Day official site
- China mainland premiere (March 2009)
- Official UK Page
- Video of Eve Ensler performing an excerpt from "The Vagina Monologues." Presented February 2004 at the TED Conference in Monterey, CA. Duration: 21:11
- "The Missing Vagina Monologue", Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome(MRKH): www.MRKH.org
- Pamela Grossman (April 19, 2000). Down the Vagina Trail. Salon.comSalon.comSalon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
- Eve Ensler - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.orgAmerican Theatre WingThe American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement...
, October 2006 - Eve Ensler Q&A
"Eve Ensler on "good" bodies and bad politics -Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2004/11/11_100.html
- Eve Ensler talks about her latest book Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World, October 10, 2006 (video)
- CNN-Time magazine series "America's Best" profiles Ensler. September 2001.
- Ensler's September 2007 article in Glamour magazine
- Eve Ensler on V-Day's 10th Anniversary on Democracy Now February 15, 2008
- Victory Over Violence - For Women and Men - Alternet April 25, 2008
- V To The 10th! - Fundraising Success - January, 01, 2008
- The Vagina Monologues Turns Ten, The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, April 15, 2008 - The Men's Story Project
Criticism
- Camille Paglia on V-Day
- Christina Hoff Sommers on V-Day Meets P-Day
- An article by Harriet LernerHarriet LernerHarriet Lerner, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a contributor to feminist theory and therapy. From 1972 to 2001 she was a staff psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas and a faculty member and supervisor in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry...
on the misuse of the word "vagina" in Ensler's work and the culture at large - Applauding Rape at Georgetown