By Victor Greto
Technically, it’s just a four-letter slang term for vagina.
Harsh, sure. Blunt, yep.
But it is just a word, isn’t it?
So why to many does the sound of the word — the smothering of one horseshoe-shaped vowel by three stiff, bullying consonants — feel more often like a fist to the chest than a harmless syllable?
On Thursday’s NBC morning show, “Today,” Jane Fonda told co-host Meredith Vieria she had been asked to perform the part in Eve Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues” an award-winning play based on a best-selling book, that repeatedly uses the slang term for vagina.
While doing so, Fonda, 70, used the word on the air, and then explained that she turned down the offer because “I’ve got enough problems.”
The reaction to the live broadcast caused outrage among some viewers, causing NBC News to apologize.
“It is harsh to your ear,” said Cyndie Romer, 35, who last night recited the monologue Fonda turned down, and will perform it again today as part of a Delaware Theater Production company production of the play, during a 3 p.m. afternoon matinee.
At first, Romer was nervous about saying the word so much. But she got over it.
“People use it in a derogatory way, especially men, but I do feel like after doing this several times, ‘I’ve reclaimed it.’ I do feel that. It’s just a word. If I don’t let it bother me, it won’t.”
The “Vagina Monologues” is a series of short pieces author Eve Ensler wrote in 1996 after conducting a couple of hundred interviews with women about their views on sex, relationships, and violence against women. Each monologue refers to, or is centered on, the vagina. Ensler first performed the play solo.
In two years, the play had inspired V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls, which runs from Feb. 1 to March 8 (International Women’s Day). The Wilmington production features 19 local women performing different monologues and bits of narration.
Ensler’s play uses the slang term repeatedly in an effort for women to “reclaim it.”
The power of the word derives not only from its sound, said Carol Post, executive director of the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
The word — and the “Vagina Monologues” as a book and a play — points to the larger issue of gender and violence against women.
“It’s not just that women are victims of violence, but that they’re victims of violence because they’re women,” Post said.
The word somehow holds within its punch-like syllable the ultimate symbol of oppression and violence.
In that sense, it has a relationship with the “N” word, Post said.
“It’s because those two words are all about how people are made less than human, takes their humanity away, puts them in a box that says they’re not equal, and therefore don’t have the rights of a fully human person.”
But fixating on the undeniable power of the word also detracts from more pressing concerns.
“Why is there a buzz about that when there’s no buzz about the word ‘rape’ or ‘plutonium’ or ‘clusterbomb’?” Ensler queried a reporter the evening of Fonda’s comment.
“I’m always surprised that people focus on these issues, when one of three women in the world are being raped and beaten and violated.”
Which is one of the reasons why Drew Fennell, head of the Delaware chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, decided to participate in the two performances of the “Vagina Monologues” in Wilmington.
“This is a word that gets used against women, not about them,” she said.
“If there’s something shocking in this, it’s the level of violence against women and girls, and this word, and the way it’s used most of the time, is symptomatic of that violence.”
Using the word in a play, or writing it in a book, or creating harmless contexts in which to say the word is an attempt to demystify and take away its power to hurt, said local novelist Marisa de Los Santos, who also recited a monologue last night.
Observing the reaction to Fonda shows that, however, “We have a long way to go with that word,” she said. “It’s only the beginning of defusing it.”
Part of the problem may be the private nature of the word, Post said.
“A lot of the things we struggle with around gender still occur in private, and we have great difficulty addressing them in public,” she said.
Some words are so weighted by history, that they may never be fully overcome, said Ashley Sullivan-Kirksey, 24, a narrator in the “Monologues.”
“I don’t think it will ever fully get to the point that it becomes part of everyday conversation,” she said. “I just hope that mature groups of individuals will understand it and use it within context.”
There is certainly a hope that the harshness of the word will become softened by time.
Evvy Goldberg, 82, another performer, said she would never use the word outside of the play.
“If we weren’t talking about the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ I’d never say it,” she said. “It’s an ugly word, but in context, it’s fine.”
Call it the stirrings of a reclamation project.