Walking in the woods with Maria and the dogs, I saw this tree and and the log that fell between the trunks and I said to her, “this tree reminds me of a vagina. It’s a Vagina Tree.” She laughed, she is a pagan and a witch and a fairy and she is not at all uncomfortable talking about vaginas, and she said, “but you probably won’t write about that on your blog.” I laughed this time and said, no, that might offend some people.
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, if course, I knew that I did have to write about it, I had to write a monologue.
But not to be offensive. There is nothing offensive about a vagina, it is not a dirty word. Rather, I needed to be honest.
If you are a man in our world, vagina is a very difficult thing to talk about. Men never, ever, talk about vaginas, I learned this early on, and when they do, it is in the crudest and most offensive possible way. Men, I have learned, are terrified of vaginas, just as many women think they are.
Young men never hear their fathers or brothers or uncles speak of vaginas, not unless it is in an offensive way. In all of my life, I never heard a man say a good or pleasing word about a vagina.
Many men find vaginas disgusting and somehow threatening, I don’t quite understand why.
They laugh, snicker, denigrate and descend into the most offensive kind of sexism and vulgarity, like presidential candidates. When men speak of vagina, it is almost always as a dirty word. They blush, mumble, mutter. I imagine that there is something very powerful about a vagina, or men would not be so fearful of it. Vaginas, central to life and love, are banned from the culture, never mentioned in media or most schools, considered inappropriate for conversation.
When I encountered my first vagina many years ago, it was a bizarre and alien experience, I had no idea what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised. Vagina, I thought, is my friend. I see that many churches and political organizations seem to dread the vagina, it is banned from ceremony and life.
Like most writers, the idea of the “dirty word” makes me nervous. Words are not really dirty, only the minds of the people who utter them sometimes. I have always loved vaginas. To me, they are a door to another world, and it is rich, warm, beautiful and rewarding beyond imagination. Like finding a living entity of many mystical layers.
Vaginas have always been good to me, and I respect them and look at them with awe and wonder. I see them as a kind of living rose, a flower with power and glory that unfolds and moves and lives, that feels and loves, perhaps the most inviting place in the world.
The heart is capable of sacrifice, said Eve Ensler in the Vagina Monologue. “So is the vagina.” The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it’s shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. “So can the vagina.” It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. “So can the vagina.”
Beautiful words for me, but there, if course, another dimension to the vagina, at least for this man, who can never give birth. A vagina can welcome me and embrace me and connect with as no other living thing can do. It is sensuous and incredibly alive place, I think of it as a mystical world with nerves, pathways, twists and turns, layers and layers of feeling. It can be explored, but never fully known.
It can be entered, but never conquered. It is place of great power – we all come from vagina – but also of great love, and what else can make that claim? When men run from the idea of the vagina, it seems to me that there is something about power in their unease. Vaginas have power than men can only imagine and never fully comprehend. So we hide the vagina from public view and make mentioning it a heresy.
I hope this changes, I am happy to do my part by offering my own vagina monologue. Like death and mortality, things become less fearful and mysterious when they are brought into the open, mentioned, considered and discussed. I am pleased to have encountered my vagina tree, I will make it a point to write about it once in awhile, I doubt anyone will be offended. If so, they will learn that this is not the place for vagina haters.