A discussion of womanhood at Catholic schools
On Feb. 26, St. Joe’s presented the second annual “underground” reading of “The Vagina Monologues.” The presentation was not a performance, rather a protest in the form of a play. The intention was to bring awareness to the sexism that still surrounds female and gender non-binary experiences and to empower women and people with vaginas to love and value their bodies and their experiences, despite the pervading patriarchal perspectives held surrounding the viewing, displaying, and regulating of the assigned-female body.
Over $200 was raised at this event, showing the St. Joe’s community’s dedication to supporting and empowering women and gender non-binary people, as well as the Jesuit ideal of cura personalis – the care of the whole body, including the vagina. 100 percent of the donated proceeds went towards Women Against Abuse (womenagainstabuse.org) and The Women’s Resource Center (womensresourcecenter.net).
“The Vagina Monologues” was written by Eve Ensler after she conducted a series of 200 interviews with women regarding their views on sex, relationships and violence against women. These interviews were transformed into “The Vagina Monologues,” which capture themes of sex, sex work, body image, love, orgasms, female genital mutilation, rape, incest and birth. Groups of people that put on a performance or reading stay true to the monologues, but always ensure that the facts about vaginas have been updated since the play was written in 1996.
During the month of February, the price for the rights of the show is waived, in order to encourage activists, especially college students, to put on readings and productions of the show and raise awareness and proceeds for organizations against sexual abuse and women’s empowerment centers.
The reading and performance of “The Vagina Monologues” has been a long battle with the Catholic Church. The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) criticized the performance of “The Vagina Monologues” at Catholic universities. They started a campaign in 2006 to stop the performances and public readings of the play on Catholic campuses. In 2006, only 22 Catholic colleges hosted the show, which was a significant decline from 27 performances in 2005, 29 in 2004, and 32 in 2003. In 2017, CNS starting actively recruiting students on Catholic campuses to host alternative programs when promoting love and sexual ethics.
In 2011, 11 of the 14 Catholic colleges reading or performing the play were Jesuit institutions. Overall, 20 of the 28 Jesuit universities in the U.S. have performed the play. Tim Clancy, S.J., responded to Gonzaga University’s sponsorship of the performance, saying, “They are not arguments-they are stories… stories of pain and suffering, stories of shame, violation and impotence…if Catholic universities are to bring the Gospel to the contemporary world, we cannot avoid such raw pain and the outrage it provokes.We must study it, wrestle with it, make sense of it, find where God is in it.”
If higher education is truly part of the Jesuit mission, then we need to hear these raw stories about the struggle of womanhood and gender non-binary people. Dialogue cannot be shut down purely because it is not “Catholic” enough.
For we as an institution to truly claim cura personalis as an ideal, we cannot be one-dimensional in how we approach sexuality and women’s issues. We ask that St. Joe’s keep an open mind to support students in continuing this tradition on campus, and to give support to students who have opinions that are not exactly what the Catholic Church believes.
To be men and women with and for others, we must be able to break down barriers and engage in dialogue with those who do not share our beliefs. “The Vagina Monologues” is a first step in creating a healthy dialogue on campus for various gender non-binary and women’s issues.
