Megan Reback, Elan Stahl, and Hannah Levinson, three honor students at John Jay High School, were suspended after reading a monologue from the play, "Vagina Monologues," at a school performance on March 2, 2007. In response to outrage by the suspension, School Principal Richard Leprine said that the girls were suspended not for using the word, but because of their disobediance towards school authority. Staff members at the New York City high school had told the three juniors before the performance that using the word "vagina" was inapporpriate to use in front of children who may be in the audience, but the girls said it anyway.
Whatever Principal Leprine's intentions really were, many feel that his censorship of free speech was uncalled for and even outrageous. Eve Ensler, playwright of the controversial monologues, has come out in support of the three girls' performance decision. She argues that words like war, rape, and annihilation were probably used in other performances from classic playwrights such as Shakespeare, and that censoring the mere mention of a body part is ludicrous. The excerpt the three students read from included a line such as: "My short skirt is a liberation flag in the women's army. I declare these streets, any streets, my vagina's country." For this, the courageous trio served all-day in-school suspension on March 7, 2007.
It is quite ridiculous that a word naming a woman's body part, that which springs new life into the world, can be considered so blasphemous and "inappropriate" to children. Are people so immensely intimidated by the word vagina, that they are sooner to include in their vocabulary words of violence or curses? What about the word vagina, or even a vagina itself, is considered to be so radical? And why are school authorities so threatened by the description of a liberated vagina? Because women own vaginas, are authorities then threatened by women as a species?
Why are people sooner to talk about war, murder, and sex, but cannot bare to utter the word "Vagina"?
I would have done the same thing, and taken the suspension with a smile.
(Ask my old superintendant/principal hahaha)
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"So stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!"
I love how many times you used vagina in your post. Using the word "vagina" is so not a big deal. My mom is a nurse so growing up, my sister and I were always taught to use the right words to describe both male and female body parts.
Common sense is as rare as genius. ~Emerson
yeah, it's totally important to teach kids from a young age to name body parts, even private ones, by the right name. Im taking a self defense class and a woman in my class works with children who have been abused or molested, and she was telling us that when a child says "they touched my ha-ha" or something like that, it really has no credibility and adults dont know if they mean an elbow, or a vagina. also, calling body parts by their real names desexualizes them and doesnt make them dirty, but just normal body parts.
Exactly.
Common sense is as rare as genius. ~Emerson