There is a Male version of the Vagina Monologue.

“Big Dick Asian Men” saw the show at Northeastern University in Boston.

Great acting it is really about how people view Asian men from racism,politics and genitals.

*snap snap snap snap snap*
Eve,
THat was AWESOME! Even thought that monologue is intended for girls, I think the sentiment is universal for young boys too, and the confusion that young people experience with growing up in our society.

My GOD that was long. Can we cut the diatribes in the future? I don’t care that it’s a monologue – cut that thing down. I had to turn the dial for a short bit to stop the pain.

How to be a human being in 2010. Boys are suffering too. It breaks my heart the way boys are made into things as well. (I am the mother of a son, by the way) We are all emotional creatures. I wish we could break away from limiting roles on both sides. We all need to strive toward more humanity. That was a beautiful, powerful reading, by the way.

I just heard that MONOLOGUE!!!! Not only TRUE, but COMPREHENSIVELY TRUE!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

(By the way, the material within that monologue is JUST what the Tea Party-ers REFUSE to look at while they “show off” by sounding outraged. They LOVE to hear the sound of their own voices. This monologue, on the other hand, is truly AWARE of the voices all around us, and in us! Thank you! Thank you! This is one of the most amazing pieces of writing in the Whole History of the World! That is NOT hyperbole, that’s the way it is!

The overwrought, phony-poetry reading style of Ms. Ensler cannot disguise the shallowness of her critique. My friends and I–well, any sentient being over the age of 15–could make a list of things wrong with the world and wrong for women. Will there be any actual analysis (as opposed to sensationalistic emoting and sweeping generalizations) to accompany the litany of complaints? My previous experience of Ms. Ensler’s performances and writings would indicate otherwise.

Mike, above, says that was too long???!!! Try LIVING thru those situations in REAL TIME!

It may have been long, but there’s a lot of injustice, so the least we can do is turn the dial up and face it. It should be painful to hear, but it’s every human being’s responsibility to listen and act, rather than turn away. Thank you, Eve.

Wow what a powerful monologue. I have a 17 year old boy and I see how all of this effects him and his friends, many who are girls. Their generation has so much on their ‘plate’ and I think it is overwhelming them. The way technology interrupts real one on one communication and how ‘hooking up’ which includes everything short of intercourse, is not sex. All the information that is constantly bombarding them. They see how the ‘haves’ get away with murder. How can they process all this. Thank you for giving them voice Eve.

I have just listend to Eve and found myself locked to my computer listening. I am shaken and full of emotion from this monologue. I feel connected like never before. Thank you.

Ms. Ensler’s opening monologue today surpasses ‘Vagina Monolgue’ and becomes a ‘Human Monologue’. Brava! Thank you for addressing issues of economic and social inequality globally as a human issue which particularly falls on young women and those who are different, such as people who are GLBT.

The problem women face today is that they are told that they can kill their children in abortion, this causes all kinds of inner conflict and problems for them and it is a lie. We all need to be pro-life, if only for women’s sake.

I like this show. and I strongly believe in and support girl’s rights, not today’s American womens’s rights. we need to help these girls in this world… Eve is one of only a few people bringing this topic up. the other person i know who is actively working on this area is Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times reporter.

Tom, you just asked if it’s really true that girls learn that “it’s bad to be a girl”. That is what the tone-deafness in YESTERDAY”S female guest had at its base. Two of us commented on it. NOW, I realize, that yesterday’s guest’s stated sense of her own achievements had that quality, sometimes seen by perceptive women in other women, of having at their base the deeply held belief (often NOT articulated explicitly by the holder of the belief, even to herself) that “it’s bad to be a girl”; that one’s WORK should not look like it was “done by a girl”. I don’t want to single out that guest, but she WAS expressive on air of a set of notions that ARE up for discussion.

I am a 27 year old woman living in America, and three of my best friends (having known them for 9 years or longer) have been molested or raped, all three had eating disorders and have lifetime problems now because of these experiences, and 2 tried to kill themselves. I have met many more women who have experienced this horror on some level, and in 2004 participated in an outreach effort in Washington for V day called the Vagina dialogues. The group I participated in consisted of 9 women total – 8 of which had been sexually or physically assaulted in some way. This is just in a very small part of America. I have heard stories of women in Ethiopia having battery acid thrown on their face for rejecting a romantic advance of a man. I don’t think that Eve Ensler is overstating the issue. I think she’s right that we don’t WANT to look at the issue, because we are constantly told not to make mountains out of molehills. Well this is a mountain that has been made a molehill, and I am so greatfull that she is so active in making this issue known. Women need to band together, not compete..and at least in America…we are conditioned to view each other as competition for men. We are pitted against each other from the start, so then it is even harder to come together in a stance against violence we all incur on varying levels. Thank you so much Eve, I truly admire and respect you and would love to accomplish even a fraction for humanity that you have.

My husband just called me and told me to buy the book, he was touched deeply by the introduction that was read on the radio. Thank you Eve

As I listen to this discussion, all I can say is that spirituality it so hard to convey. So often, the questions are defensive and always regarding access to conventional positions. It’s so hard to convey a different way of thinking, a spiritual dimension, that embraces the male and female dimensions. The 3rd way of… thinking, rather than opposites, is very uncommon

Thank goodness for Eve Ensler and now for the book, Half the Sky, and for the work of World Pulse. These avenues for documenting factual information about women and girls worldwide will certainly pave the way to a new dialogue.

UNBELIEVABLE SHOW!

One reason for the fear of Emotion in a “Man’s World” is the fear of “Magic”. Where we live these days in a pinnacle of logical techno-society, the Yang to the Yin of Man is the emotional world where Women rule. That burbling beneath the surface is the Proto-Gods of the Ancients…the World on the other side of the surface, that mirrors in size and scope the world we see. Man must strive always to unite the worlds. Strive Always for the Whole.

Happy V-Day !

I’m being introduced to the world of the girl through the constant drama of my almost 15 year old girl. She has so little control and understanding of her emotions that it’s just raw chaos — and I’m at a loss to help her nurture it all.

Eve Ensler is awesome, and her opening poem was sensational!

But here’s the point that’s not being made. Everyone has emotions and should feel and respect them. The important thing is to feel and respect emotions, BUT we need to make conscious, rational choices whether or not to act on them. That’s how we can respect emotions, but not necessarily let them control everything we do.

This point has not come through at all.

I am blown away by Eve Ensler! Her reading of “I Am An Emotional Creature” was DEEPLY affecting, and I suddenly realized that in that monologue, she has accessed an ancient, primal feminine–actually Goddess energy–that has been buried, denied, ignored by the patriarchal society which dominates the globe.
Thank you, Eve, so much! Blessings and continued energy to you! May you fan the spark of the ancient feminine that flickers in the heart of all persons!

I am so glad to see the amount of dissent is minor and that the majority of listeners relate to the truth of Ensler’s condensation of her experiences with girls and women around the world. I was also encouraged by the male responses to the radio.

A caller said that his first wife’s emotions were more important than what was going on in reality and that it ruined his marriage. Eve Ensler did not even understand what he meant! The passage she read from her new book made me cringe. Logical thinking gets replaced by irrationality way too often. We need less of that, not more! I’m saying that as a happy woman, loving wife and caring mother.

Loved it! Loved it! SOOOOOOO true. I will buy it, read it and pass it on to my Renaissance daughter who is away at univerisity. She got kicked off boy’s travel baseball in the north country for “being a girl” . She won numerous awards but the parents couldn’t stand the fact that she was better at baseball than most the boys. Got ignored at her high school award ceremony for having ” ATTITUDE” Duh, no kidding, how do you think she got to the top of everything she does? EMOTION. ATTITUDE. Emotions SCARE people. I was told by a counselor when it came to an up coming lawsuit, I wasn’t to be “emotional” at the trial. Hello, the trial would be sexual misconduct, sexual abuse…sorry it is EMOTIONAL. I love being a woman, I am an artist, a sister, a mother, an activist and when I have to be, I can blow my emotions through your wall. Women have a loooooong way to go, so let’s get walking.

Great show, amazing message!
Tried to call in, but the line was consistently busy…
I am a physical therapist specializing in pelvic floor dysfunction, first saw Vagina Monologues as my career was just beginning, and am consistently amazed at the marginalization of women with pelvic floor dysfunction here in our “advanced and developed” society and am so energized to advocate for women here and for women abroad. Traveled to Goma to teach about pelvic floor rehab last year and still am involved with HEAL Africa. Eve, thank you for your voice for all women and specifically for your work for the women of DRC!

IN RESPONSE TO THE FIRST MONOLOGUE:
I have not been so deeply moved by the spoken word in years. In one way, it scares me deep inside due to covered up stuffed away past issues not yet fully delt with, or even fully remembered. In another way, it fills me with hope for change, not just for myself and the lives of other women, but also for the human species as a whole.
The first step in changing a problem is to acknowledge its’ existance. Then we must recognize our own role in it and move past any socially generated apathy or self-protective numbness regarding the issue.
All too often we, Homo sapiens, expend enormous amounts of angry energy focusing on social problems which do not require any personal change in our own life, be it change of attitude or of behavior. Consequently, we become quite uncomfortable when confronted with moral transgressions of which we are a participant, however inadvertently or naively. The first monologue Eve read certainly does confront us with many of those moral transgressions.

I would suggest to any person experiencing deeply negative reactions to the reading that they gather the personal courage to ask themselves what is going on in their own psyche to trigger such feelings.

Thank You Eve.

Recently, I spoke up against sexual harassment, that, altho it had happened decades ago, had de-railed me personally and professionally and which still had its talons in me in the form of low self-esteem and self doubt. I spoke up because I thought that, surely, there would be other women present who might benefit from my revelation, especially if they, too, had had a similar thing happen to them in that particular context. One woman assaulted me verbally for speaking up, saying, “you should have been able to handle that!” But, at a second, related event a month later, a woman did indeed reveal that she, too, had been very adversely affected by the harassment. She also revealed that the harasser had eventually lost his position DUE TO his behavior, which was apparently rampant. The person who chairs that particular setting now is fully aware of how trenchantly situations like I described can imbed themselves in the “victim” and how they are now also seen as illegal (Title IX). With more discussion & awareness of this “complex” of cause and effect, women may be able to head off SOME of the consequences before they imbed themselves. BUT, the caveat there is: AWARENESS. If young women, as they emerge into various stages of their lives, are not MADE AWARE by their elders and mentors of the traps they must beware of while they are on their way to taking advantage of the opportunities that will also be coming their way, the traps can re-rail them in ways that mimic the “olden days”, when we did not UNDERSTAND the importance of UNDERSTANDING! Eve’s work helps us understand! (And, I do believe Eve means it when she says, almost in Jungian terms, that there are also “girl” archetypes inside our males. And there are.) Thanks!

Eve Ensler’s thesis that the world would be better off if men where more like women is just plain silly. What she calls “emotionally cut off” is normal behavior for men just as women being “emotional beings”. The author misses the point about how the two sexes balance each other out. Clearly she is no social scientist or philosopher.

I was cheering during Eve’s monologue today as I listened to her great truths and revelations for men and women..

Could you transcribe that monologue on line so we can share it with family, friends, neighbors and enemies… ?

Thanks for a terrific show !!!

A stunning jeremiad–thank you for sharing Ms. Ensler’s efforts and thoughts!

Yikes. “MONO-logue” is the right word for this. I tuned in expecting to really feel inspired by her message, and while some of her ideas hit home, I felt that her approach was very one-sided, aggressive, and not encouraging of dialogue. I think this took away from her message.

I was driving into San Francisco as Eve read this and nearly had to pull off the freeway, I got so emotional. Students and faculty at our college are performing VM for Women’s History month (our 7th year), and I wanted to immediately call my fellow cast members and share it with them. I’m waiting for one to arrive now so I can at least share with her.

Ed H,

I won’t take a position either way on abortion, but…

I’d like to know your credentials to make such an in depth psychological analysis of women who make any particular reproductive choice.

Do you think having a child created by rape or incest would have any negative effects on a woman’s psyche? How about the mental pressures on a single parent teen mother?

I understand that you have an ideological drum to beat. Perhaps it would be best not to confuse this with psychanalysis.

Just tuned in…. great message for both genders and for intergenerational learning…..perhaps if we felt more for the humanity of one another, we could stop fighting war …. humanity is in perpetual crisis because they love individually and collectively less and war ever the more so….keep on revealing truth to humanity Eve…. mother of life.

It was nice traveling to outer space with all of you today.

If only we could just learn to appreciate each other and then realize how special we all are. For it is only then that we will achieve the utopian society that we all know is possible.

Happy V day!

Eve was great this afternoon and so are most of the comments. I am a former Vagina Monologue actress and it was a very powerful and empowering experience for me. Today’s monologues were definitely tough to listen to but worth it, especially when Eve points out how utterly uninformed most of us are about what goes on in the world, and how we play a role in it (I didn’t know the US was fueling violence against women in the DRC although I probably shouldn’t be surprised). I am very heartened at the many men who called or wrote in who really “got it.” I am frustated at others who don’t get it. John’s comment was exactly what Eve was talking about – boys and men are socialized to believe that the sexes are so different and boys have to be tough and emotionally distant. Not all social scientists and philosophers believe in the same theories, you know. There’s plenty of research that supports Eve’s view, which I strongly agree with. I was also a little surprised at the way Tom was interviewing Eve – I didn’t feel he was really taking her seriously. Anyway, I am thrilled that Eve was on the air and doing the amazing work she is doing for girls, women and humanity.

Ms. Easler’s message is vitally important and I will do what small things I can do to join this international effort to stop violence against women and girls. I can empathize with those persons who are equally concerned with boys and men yet think everyone will benefit once we confront the patriarchal roots of violence and the social and cultural doination and violene against women.
Thank you for this very important book and program.

The topic was interesting.
The only problem I had with the conversation was that Eve Ensler DOES appreciate the praise she received from her audience; she did not do so well when she had to defend certain critisms about her work.

For Ed who stated the problem women face is abortion. Did you listen to anything that Ms Ensler said? Are you kidding me? Becoming or being Pro Life will not change most of the ills that face women, men or the planet today.

I thought this was fabulous and alarming at the same time. Violence against women and men seems to be on the rise not just in America but everywhere.

As a victim of rape in 1973, I needed hear something like this back then to help me through and give me confidence in myself and not feel like I was to blame.

I, for one, am grateful for Ms Ensler’s work and hope more people hear it!

Since yesterday I’ve had two additional thoughts:

With a debt to Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective theories I would like to suggest that it is not necessarily a male-female dichotomy that is causing the problems Eve Ensler writes about so skillfully but rather one of “doer vs. done-to.” Looking at it that way one sees that respectful equality is what the world needs.

I would also like to point out that not every child is born 100% female or 100% male and that we need to respect the rights of individuals whose sexuality is not distinctly one or the other.

I enjoyed and was moved by Eve Ensler’s comments and work, but want to comment on Tom Ashbrook’s “attitude” as the program concluded. As with his interview with Queen Latifah a few months ago, it seemed to me that Tom became rude and disrespectful near the end of the interview. I did not notice either woman being provocative, although Queen Latifah did finally redress Tom’s tone. So common, Tom, treat your guests with more respect. “Got it”?

That was so excruciating and nauseating that I had to switch over to listening to music.

Please, if the fairer sex needs some ego-boosting and cheerleading about being irrational and all in tune with their emotional side, in the future, make it pay-per-view or something.

Or how about putting some Fairness Doctrine to work, and do something about how we are educationally short-changing and feminizing our boys, to their long term detriment.

I too was surprised by Tom Ashbrook’s tone. I had not heard him be antagonistic and dismissive of a guest before, and it made me wonder what part of Ensler’s contributions made him feel so threatened.
I was disappointed and put off by his responses.

I am a long time listener and was VERY disappointed in Tom’s hosting of this guest. He had a dismissive and negative attitude and apparently hasn’t even seen the Vagina Monologues. This reflects particularly badly on you, Tom, since part of her message is about women’s concerns not being taken seriously and here you are not giving this woman the respect she deserves, especially when she’s clearly doing so much to try affect positive change in the world.

I have to agree to with Kim!! And this is not the first time either. I have felt discomfort coming from the host during other similar themed segments. Also something of a negative attitude. Perhaps Tom should go to some sort of retreat where he can get in touch with his inner woman.

I love Tom and I loved Eve with her eye-opening message. As a 62-year-old with a degree in mathematics and an avid amateur cosmologist, I’d say I’m more on the ‘intellect’ side, but now more sympathetic with the emotional.

[...] 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment Eve Ensler on the show, “On Point” on NPR, brought to you by Sister Cynical, and thanks for the [...]

On the contrary, I thought Tom was a little too soft with Eve. While some of what she said resonated with me, she basically would not engage with questions/comments from callers that had any flavor of critique to them. There were a few times I wished that Tom would have pushed her more to engage. Her tone was often very off-putting.

I saw the Vagina Monologues performed once–me and about five other guys and 250 women. It is a chic’s performance, and we were really out of place, I felt. I don’t think it did me any harm; but I don’t believe it unlocked many of the mysteries that make communication between the sexes so interesting.

I have to write a note about the interview with Eve Ensler, though, because I find the notion that men and boys need to find “their inner girl” to be preposterous, and maybe harmful. What men and boys need to find is their inner man. Especially in the cases of boys growing up without fathers at home, but for all young men, what is needed and often too hard to find today are solid masculine models to help them come to grips with our common male identity and to learn how to tame the testosterone. That is our challenge. Men are, nonetheless, sentient beings, in our own ways, and, let’s not forget, the true romantics. Women, especially mother, are the true pragmatists. Eve’s notion is as off-kilter as Professor Henry Higgins’ lament “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” It’s humorous precisely because it’s absurd and no one would want it!

Wow – I’m listening to that opening monologue. What a pile of angry crap – sounds like everybody is horrible except her vagina.

[...] this column by Nicholas Kristof, progressing to the movie “Precious,” then listening to Eve Ensler talk about girls and the challenges they face, capping off my unusual day with another movie, “I [...]

I’m very grateful to Tom and Eve for making that show happen. I imagine many people around the world listened to it and thus the ideas have been spread a little bit more.
I was very moved by how passionate Eve spoke. She has a lot of direct experience with women, hearing thousands of their stories, across cultures, across the globe. I don’t think she needs a degree to prove the veracity of her direct experience, or to share her knowledge.
Like a couple other people who commented, I also sensed something did shift between Tom and Eve at some point in the interview. Not sure how Tom’s comment “I thought you’d be more empathetic than that Eve” or “I thought you had a lot of capacity on that score” would assist in addressing the caller or furthering the interview.

Love Eve Ensler! Always direct, inspirational, passionate, and committed to social justice. Great show!

I appreciate that the first step in solving any problem is identifying the problem. Hence the focus on the glass half empty, it would be nice to have more concrete discussion on the next steps. Acknowledging that it is good to be a girl (and a boy for that matter), acknowledging that all humans have value, okay. But is that enough?

THANK U (FROM SWITZERLAND)4 AIRING THIS SEMINAL AUTHOR+HUMAN BEING!

MAY EVERY DAY BE V-DAY!