ARTICLES
March 2004 ARTICLES
Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Hot Dog!
On V-Day, LMU Students Give More than Valentines
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
A calendar announcement on an internet site announced that, in February 2004, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles would participate in the V-Day College Campaign. What is "V-Day"? One might suppose it a contraction for Valentine's Day, but he would be only partly right. "V-Day" is an attempt to be cleverer than that. The "V" only suggests the name Valentine to the unwary. What it really stands for is "vagina."
Along with institutions of higher learning countrywide (including 32 Catholic colleges), Loyola Marymount dedicated the days approaching Valentine's Day to the vagina. To celebrate this inverse of the phallic symbol, Loyola Marymount sponsored three performances of the play, Vagina Monologues, from February 12 to 14. The February 11 Loyolan, the university's student newspaper, paraphrased Loyola Marymount's vice president of communications and public affairs, Janis Johnson, saying that the university "views the play as one that will give faculty, students and staff an opportunity to engage in thoughtful dialogue."
This dialogue, it seems, is urgent. It is born of a deep sense of angst. These are the play's opening words: "I bet you're worried. I was worried. That's why I began this piece. I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them." Jennifer Smith, a student who is directing the play, shares, it seems, this concern. "Part of the title [of the play] is letting women not feel ashamed about the word 'vagina' and about being women," Smith told the Loyolan. "There are so many derogatory things about women nowadays and this is one of our few chances to speak up and say who we really are and talk about our stories."
What are these stories? According to an interview with her in the January 23, 2004 Metro Times of Detroit, playwright Eve Ensler in Vagina Monolgues weaves together "stories from a diverse group of women, each one bluntly exploring a specific aspect of the vagina. Trading off between light-hearted, shocking and pit-of-the-stomach disturbing, the play covers hair, scents, masturbation, sex, orgasms, secretions, periods, birth, mutilation, rape, what we call vaginas, what they would wear if they got dressed, what they would say if they talked, etc." The play, said the Metro Times, acknowledges "that vaginas do exist, it's a reconnection of sorts, making us aware that vulvas are a part of women and sacred, connected to the mind and not a shameful thing."
The Metro Times said that Ensler wrote Vagina Monolgues because she discovered that women are "hungry" to talk about their vaginas. "They had no context or place where they could do that," said Ensler. "By talking about them, they made themselves more real, more present and more legitimate."
Loyola Marymount seems more than slightly concerned with making matters genital, if not more real, at least more present and legitimate. This has been especially true of matters homosexual. Though it appears that the university's president, Jesuit father Robert Lawton, in the interest of his institution's Catholic character, has put the brakes on some of the promotion of "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered" issues, the promotion still continues.
For instance, the Winter 2003/04 issue of Vistas, the university's alumni publication, contains two pro-diversity pieces. In one, "Going the Other Way," an excerpt from a book with the same title, Loyola Marymount alumnus, Billy Bean, shares his experience of returning to his alma mater. Bean, a former major-league baseball player, wonders "what it would be like to be a college athlete in 2002." Watching the practice of Loyola Marymount athletes, Bean wrote: "I wondered if any of these kids struggled the way I had. Would the straight guys accept and stand up for a gay teammate? Despite all the social changes over the past decade, there was still the possibility they'd be uncomfortable with a 'fag' like me, and that my sexual orientation would negate everything I'd accomplished for the school during my four years there."
The second Vistas piece, called "Salimist Manifesto," contains a description of a Salimist, which, it turns out, is a "Korean eco-feminist or anyone who wants to share the vision of a Korean eco-feminist." A Salimist, it appears, "touches everything like a magician, a revolutionary or a God/ess." She "includes everybody: men, women, young, old, poor, rich, outcast, incast, educated, uneducated, able-bodied, differently abled, homo, hetro, bi, multi, and transsexuals in her party, in her worship services, and in her demonstrations against injustice." But, the Salimist is only tolerant of people, "if they have good intentions and hearts." She is "a tough inclusivist like mother Kali. If she sees wicked intentions and evil hearts, she cuts off every evil head with her sword of Justice when she has to. Then she includes those beheaded evil heads in her necklace."
Perhaps it is to avoid this dread fate that Father Lawton does not come out too strongly against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered crowd at the university. At least he appears to tread carefully in addressing the possibility of giving benefits to "domestic partners." According to the minutes of the November 20, 2003 faculty senate meeting, "Fr. Lawton has been looking into the bills in the Legislature related to mandating benefits to domestic partners to see what the implications would be for the university. Fr. Lawton is concerned about the well-being of staff and faculty, but being a Catholic University, it may not be appropriate for LMU to offer these services. The university would follow the law regarding providing benefits to legally domicile [sic] adults. He recommended that the senate speak with Dr. Jabbra, so that everyone could work together." The minutes also note that a proposal for domestic partner benefits would be "ready for the January faculty senate meeting."
In any case, Father Lawton has not come out publicly against Vagina Monologues. Lawton's silence was addressed in an ironic note Loyola Marymount philosophy professor James Hanink sent to him. Referring to one scene in the play where "a woman describes her seduction, when she was 16, by a lesbian (with an alcohol assist)," Hanink says the seduced "says the experience was her 'salvation.'" Hanink says that "there are limits -- of civility and good taste" and that "some even charge that the officials responsible for this bold dramatic offering 'have taken leave of their senses, or of their Catholicity, or both.'"
To fend off critics, Hanink offers to Father Lawton this suggestion, that the "best defense. is a good offense." Hanink continues: "How's this? Rumor has it that there's a creative advance, theater-wise. It's another bold dramatic offering. Totally. Its title is the best pitch. Willie Wonka' s Weenie Worries. Marketing-wise the time is right. I'd suggest working through the more progressive faculty on this one. Keep me posted!"