Eve Ensler Talks Cancellation of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES at Massachusetts College

Earlier today, we rerported that a women's college in Massachusetts had announced the cancellation of its annual theatrical production, THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES. A student theatre organization at Mount Holyoke College made the executive decision to cancel their Valentine's Day show in order to not offend transgender students. The cancellation of the 20-year tradition came about following a student survey regarding the production.

Written by Eve Ensler, THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES depicts short stories dealing with female issues such as sex, love, and violence. The students' intention is to pen their own monologues to include transgender characters.

Blogger Howard Sherman spoke this morning play's writer, Eve Ensler who shared her reaction to the news, and the still evolving situation. She shared "This is my perspective on it: The Vagina Monologues is a play. It's one play. It was never meant to speak for all women and it was never a play about what it means to be a woman. It was a play about what it means to have a vagina. It was very specific. I don't I ever said that the definition of a woman - that a woman is defined by having a vagina. I think we have to be able to live in a world where talking about our vaginas is legitimate, due to that three and half billion women have them."

She went on to say that "I think we have to be careful as we're evolving and exploding more and more voices that we don't silence other voices. That's the thing we always have to be very concerned and having our attention paid to. It isn't one thing or the other. We've come to the point where we want to now integrate and want other voices. That is fantastic. Go and write a play that does that that. Celebrate that. I encourage that. I've been celebrating artists my whole life who are giving voice to new strains and pushing the edge and challenging the givens and the status quo."

Click here for Howard's full bog with more from Ensler and Sherman on the subject.

Located in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College is a nondenominational, residential, research liberal arts college for women. Mount Holyoke is renowned for educating women leaders, from medical pioneers to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights. Mount Holyoke College is one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review Guide's 2011 edition of its annual guidebook, The Best 373 Colleges. Mount Holyoke ranked first in the category of "best classroom experience," and was highly rated in other categories, including "most politically active students" (#3), "most beautiful campus" (#7), and "school runs like butter (#9). Our 2,183 students hail from 47 states and 78 countries. Twenty percent of MHC students are international citizens, and 34 percent of domestic students identify as African American, Asian American, Latina, Native American, or multiracial. Sixty-two percent of incoming first-year students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.

Source: Fox News

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