This year’s Vagina Monologues consisted of attention grabbing cleavage, a sex worker’s thigh slapping moans, and vulvas made of tissue paper that lined Hughes Trigg’s Theater.
On Friday, February 20, a woman in an “I Heart Vaginas” t-shirt shouted over a crowded room, “Peter, put up the vaginas” before the annual performance began at 8:00 p.m.
Val Erwin, Program Adviser of the Women’s and LGBT Center, stood at the door sporting her bold t-shirt while selling tickets to about eighty attendees.
The performance began with select students who took turns acting out a scripted monologue about someone’s experience with their vagina. All true, these stories came from interviews with women from all over the world – from New York City to Bosnia.
The word vagina was spoken 89 times during the entire performance.
Moving quickly from one script to the next, student Kara Synhorst walked up to the mic and boldly unzipped the front of her fitted leather dress. Her cleavage exposed the c-word written vertically in black marker. Her piece consisted of reclaiming the c-word.
Next, another student walked up to the mic, squatted down and seductively slapped her hands on her fish-netted thighs, standing up as her piece spoke about a women’s life as a sex worker who “love[s] making women come.”
She then acted out the different types of orgasms. One of which was the “college orgasm” that she expressed through moaning loudly while intermittently shouting, “oh I should be studying, oh oh I should be studying.”
Although kept light-hearted, the event highlighted sexual violence. In between humorous stories (like how a woman first discovered how to orgasm at 72-years-old after taking over an hour because of her arthritis) performers listed off disheartening statistics.
“Those who are transgender experience sexual violence 28 percent more than those who are not transgender,” said one performer.
Just outside the theater, the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center (DARCC) had a booth set up.
Monica Urbaniak, who works for the DARCC, said the center was invited by the Women’s Interest Network at SMU, the organization associated with the Women’s and LGBT Center who host the Vagina Monologues.
“We have many volunteers from SMU. They help with our crisis line and hospital advocacy at Presbyterian.” Said Urbaniak
Audrey Gaill, volunteer and exec member for the Women’s Interest Network, explained why this event is important to the SMU community.
“Raising awareness about violence against women, particularly on SMU’s campus, is extremely relevant because SMU is on that list,” said Gaill.
The list Gaill refers to is the Title IX document released in December 2014.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, “The Office for Civil Rights determined that SMU violated Title IX by failing to promptly and equitably respond to student complaints of gender-based harassment and sexual violence, including sexual assault, and to reports of retaliatory harassment.”
All proceeds from the two day event went to DARCC.
