Vagina is the most terrifying word, the most threatening word, in any language of any country I have ever been to. Even when the vagina is worshiped in theory, as the yoni is in India, it is denigrated in practice. It is more reviled and feared than words like plutonium, genocide and starvation. In many countries the word for female genitalia is so derogatory or disgusting, it cannot be spoken in public. In a few places, there is no word in the language for vagina at all.
As the vagina is the primary port of transmission from men to women of the AIDS virus, how women and men perceive vaginas, talk about or don't talk about vaginas, how women know their vaginas, feel agency over their vaginas, determines everything about their future. Many women, even in so-called progressive countries, are still not comfortable asking a man out, acting directly on their own desire, be it for a man or a woman. Many women who are sexually active and educated about the virus are still, because of insecurity and embarrassment, having unsafe sex. Many women in the year 2010 do not know how their clitoris functions or how to give themselves pleasure, nor do they feel safe telling a partner or a husband what they need or that it hurts when they are entered without preparation or that it would all work much better if it happened slower.
For so many women in the world, because there is no open sex education, because women are discouraged from masturbation, because sex has been defined -- like science or maths or business or politics -- as something essentially male and belonging to men, sex is perceived as something foreign and inaccessible. Because women are regularly forced and taken against their will in parts of the world, sex has become associated with pain. It has become something you survive. Each year millions of women forcibly have their clitoris cut and removed. For many women, your vagina belongs to the clan, to the tribe, to the state, to the church, to the mosque, to the temple, to your husband. But it most certainly does not belong to you. So if it isn't yours, how do you protect it or cherish it?
You cannot prevent women from getting AIDS without ending violence towards them, without shifting the dynamics of power. You cannot stop a disease that is being transmitted through sex unless you admit that sex exists, unless women have a right to sex and desire -- the same way men have a right -- unless women are equal active participants and not passive recipients of men's desires and thus the diseases men pass on through their narcissistic ejaculations. Until women know they have a right to refuse to be touched or entered and a right to invite it, a right to demand protection and a right to expect it, there will be no ending AIDS. And until these rights are backed up by courts and enforced by states, women will never have those rights.
A man can get away with raping a virgin and saying he believes it will cure AIDS, as long as there is a sanctioned and enforced environment of sexual ignorance. Creating a true and substantial dialogue about sex and sexuality means breaking taboos and asking questions. It means standing up to authorities like the church, which refuse to promote contraception and sex education. It means boldly speaking out against fundamentalist forces that promote abstinence, claiming it prevents AIDS and STDs and early pregnancy when the data tells another story.
Frankly, nothing short of a worldwide sexual revolution will stop the spread of AIDS. We need to dissemble the shame, reclaim pleasure, celebrate desire, human connection, skin and touch. We need to release the shackles of oppression, one-way enjoyment and narrow-minded education. We need open and fearless discussion allowing sex to be what it is -- natural and beautiful.
The revolution will not happen without men. We need to create an environment where sexuality is more about connection than conquering, more about pleasure than performance. Men need to ask questions and admit their vulnerabilities. They need to go slow and go deeper. Women need to expect this, demand it and allow a place for it.
The time is now. There are 33 million people living in the world with the HIV virus, about half of them women. I venture to say a good portion of them got the disease because there is no environment which supports them saying outright and directly, "Love my vagina."
This piece originally appeared in The Guardian on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2010.
Follow Eve Ensler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eveensler
Joanne Herman: Should We Introduce Children to the Concept of Transgender People?
Rev. James Martin, S.J.: Desire and the Spiritual Life: An Advent Reflection
It reminds me of when some white people get agitated at the mention of slavery and have to remind people that African tribes cooperated with slavetraders. Yeah, so? That doesn't make it right, does it?
secondly, its not men that are the problem. i am a man yet i would never rape a woman because i know it is wrong. so its not about gender but about morality.
third, you say women don't know how to pleasure themselves even in 2010. however i dont think the year is relevant nor is anyone to blame but the woman. there is no education program for guys to learn how to get off, we figure it out ourselves.
i am only speaking to societies in which women have free will. the idea that a woman with free will cannot educate herself or be responsible for her own sexuality is ridiculous. the only exception to this being rape, which goes against free will so it's not really an exception. men are not to blame for a womans ignorance. it is every individuals responsibility to seek understanding of their own mind and body.
Also, it is rather disturbing you are blaming women for being abused in their respective cultures. What a [insert censorable expletive] you must be.
Depends on what Church you go to. My church teaches about sex, and so does my school which is a Christian school. At school, they taught about safe sex and abstinence equally, while my church reminds everyone that God created man and woman, which also means He created sex. He meant it to be something to be reserved for after the union of a man and a woman, not something to do every Saturday night with a different guy. Yes, abstinence is the only 100% STD/AIDS-proof way. What data are you talking about? Please, I would like to see it. Tell me that not having sex cannot prevent you from getting any form of STD, and I will respect your words.
The hidden agenda of a person's mind is the distortion of the reality of any person. I cannot expect anything that is not mine, earned or acquired. Until we (nations everywhere) can start relegating (commanding) and expecting people with the responibility that is entrusted them; we will continue with these discussions.
We gauge people according to size and habitus. We glorify men with large members and anything less becomes less. We view women with large mammaries as more women than the average women, and in some countries since women have become 'less than' as compared to their voluptuous counterparts they might be treated as such.
We have created imbalances because of our prejudices, likes and dislikes. We have relegated people in foreign lands to be unequal based on their color of their skin, the culture in which they reside, the religion which they worship, the education level they have attained, the propserity of their person, etc.
When that becomes an overriding factor in the viewpoint of a person whether man, man, govermnment or society; than comparisons become obliterated by our command and demand for more of me and less of you. cont. below-----
I would dearly love to see that happen. In 40 years my country saw its population grow to 100 million due to a few mistakes of its own but also because "God's hand" said that birth control is wrong and sex education is the devil. Now we have close to 200 million uneducated, especially uneducated about sex and sexuality, people who very likely are going to pass on this sad legacy.
We have cultural imperatives, religion, and simple sexual dominance behaviors based on male entitlement, good luck against that uphill climb.
Even here in the US, women and girls are still barely more than second-class citizens. As a matter of fact, we have an entire political party of Republicans that, to this day, will not grant equality to women under any circumstance.
Miles "I'm Sure The World Is Having A Fine Time With America's Hypocrisy Over This" Long
Where's your evidence? There is none, because that statement is not true. Republicans don't "grant equality;" they, in fact, promote it.
Most linguists today consider it a myth that Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow. In reality, the Eskimo-Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does. This urban legend gave rise to similar ones and the neologism snowclone [see Eskimo Pie].
Robert Pattinson is not a fan of their private parts. The actor recently told Details magazine, “I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina.”
Everyone’s a critic.
I guess that depends on whether it's got a hard g or a soft g.
Flippantry aside, I have talked to women in subSaharan Africa where female circumsion is the norm and was astounded by their forthrightness and openess when talking about it. I look on it as mutilation, they certainly did not. Women are targetted throughout conflict zones by rapists. The end to this can only be with the end of so many mindless wars. The way to prevent AIDS and STDs is through education,condoms not condemnation and that can only happen with religion getting out of the bedroom and brothel.
The last time I heard someone say that dominating women was okay is some Islamic society because that was their culture and the women liked it too, I mentioned a (made-up) white society in the south of Poland where girls were assigned husbands at the age of 15, where I claimed it must work fine because there's no divorce and the women must be happy because no woman ever leaves the region. And anyway, it's their culture. Suddenly people were furious, and with good cause. But all I'd done was describe cultural practices similar to what we know of around the world, and made the people involved white.
I rather thought those words referred to the external genitals, the labia, not the vagina, the internal part.