I Don’t Fuck With Eve Ensler

Originally written for and performed as part of the pre-show for a performance of The Vagina Monologues. When I finished, I walked out.

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler. I just need you to know.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love vaginas – mine, vaginas in general, and each blessed one I’ve gotten to encounter up close. And I love women – myself and each amazing one I’m lucky to have encountered in my life.

 

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler ‘cause at these things I can never tell if we’re celebrating vaginas or celebrating women and they’re not the same thing.

 

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler for my sisters without vaginas and my brothers with them. For my siblings of all genders – men, women, both, neither – who wish we we could get away from this vaginas equal womanhood construction.

 

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler for every one of my trans sisters who wanted to find a place in a community of women, only to find out that the official “rules” for the vagina monologues say she can’t be there.

 

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler when she goes to the Congo, asks invasive questions about the size and shape of the holes torn in vaginas by repeated rape. I don’t fuck with her when she tells Congolese women who have lived through generations of war and the rape that comes with it that if they would just join together and dance they would feel better. I don’t fuck with her when she tells them she knows their pain exactly. I don’t fuck with her when she brings those stories home and makes videos about how great she is. I don’t fuck with her when she eats the other.

 

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler when she appropriates Native spiritual practices and then ignores the voices of Native women. I don’t fuck with her when she refuses a request to not hold a large rally on a day when and in a place where Native women have been coming together for years to commemorate their sisters who have been murdered and are missing.

 

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler because I don’t believe we should build ourselves up on pedestals made of other people’s pain. I don’t fuck with her because she doesn’t get to tell every woman’s story. I’d rather hear what we just did – women and people with vaginas talking about our experiences of life. I’d rather we all speak for ourselves and listen to one another for real.

 

Eve Ensler wrote the vagina monologues in 1996 and while I’m glad she opened that door, I think it’s time we all got through it and moved forward.

 

You do you, but

I don’t fuck with Eve Ensler.