Princeton University Students Decry Famous Feminist Play Because It Assumes Women Must Have Vaginas

See if you can follow this: a 1996 play called “The Vagina Monologues” that was built around fifteen monologues from women in the 90’s wa...

See if you can follow this: a 1996 play called “The Vagina Monologues” that was built around fifteen monologues from women in the 90’s was viewed as problematic by the two female students who directed a recent production at Princeton University because the play assumes that women must have vaginas.

Perhaps that’s not hard to follow if you’re sufficiently woke, as directors Sarah Varghese and Evie Elson are. They even retitled the play “The Vagina” Monologues; the event description stated, “People of all genders have vaginas and these monologues represent a small segment of that population.”

According to The Daily Princetonian, the directors offered their own written and performed prologue which took issue with the assumption that vaginas were essential for female identity; they felt the original production was excluding members of the trans community. Varghese stated, “Our definition of what it means to be a woman, and to have a vagina is not the same thing. It never was.”

Oh.

Varghese and Elson called the play a “relic,” adding, “These monologues are not representative of the experiences of all women, or all individuals with vaginas. Instead, they are representative of the 200+ women that Eve Ensler interviewed twenty years ago.”

The College Fix noted:

The production also incorporated dubious statistics about the prevalence of sexual misconduct at Princeton – that 1 in 5 undergraduates experienced “sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, or stalking” in a 2017 survey. It additionally shared a 2015 national transgender survey that found “nearly half of respondents were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime and one in ten were sexually assaulted in the past year,” with higher numbers for nonwhite transgender people.

In December, The College Fix noted another rather confusing event at Princeton University regarding what constitutes femininity: Two Princeton groups celebrated menstruation at an event that stated menstrual periods are not limited to women. The College Fix wrote, “At the recent ‘Menstruation Celebration,’ hosted by Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice and Princeton Students for Gender Equality, the organizations were “urging people to stop referring to menstruation as a women’s issue, since transgender and non-binary people get periods as well.”

Also in December, The College Fix reported that the Princeton Students for Gender Equality and Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice (PSRJ) celebrated their effort to “destigmatize conversations about periods” at the third annual “Menstruation Celebration” by designing their cupcakes and chocolate covered pretzels to look like women’s genitalia and tampons.

The Daily Princetonian quoted PSRJ president Mabel Felix asserting:

It’s not just about raising awareness about several problems around menstruation like the lack of access to menstrual products, but also just trying to reduce some of the stigma around periods … The two previous menstruation celebrations, we had videos of some of the officers going around asking people — mostly men, who don’t get periods — asking them what menstruation was and it’s really shocking how little people know about periods … The fact that you acknowledge that periods are natural and there is nothing to feel ashamed about doesn’t translate necessarily into feeling more comfortable talking about them just because the stigma is such a socially pervasive thing,