America's Fear of the Vag

An Ohio high school is in uproar after the student newspaper, Le Sabre, under the bright pink headline of ‘Have a Happy Vagina Day!’ published a diagram of a vagina to accompany its Valentine’s Day special on Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.

God forbid these children know exactly what they’re getting their fingers into. Haven’t these kids seen the movie Teeth (“chomp”): vagina dentata, anyone? Seriously! There be monsters.



After the school attempted to confiscate all copies of the paper, in protest, the 15 years-old, editor-in-chief, Richard Edmond, along with other students arrived the next day brandishing T-shirts saying, “My vagina is obscene.” Again, Teeth, anyone, anyone?

That visual V-bomb occurred just a couple of days after Jane Fonda dropped a C-bomb on live national television (that’s “cunt” for you Protestants). America went nuts! Jane Fonda, however, was in fact citing, a specific chapter of The Vagina Monologues, entitled, ironically, ‘Reclaiming Cunt.’



The remark immediately prompted an on-air apology from Meredith Vieira, in which she plugged the next segment: “The secrets to making your love last.” I can only guess that dirty talk is not going to be part of that infotainment masterpiece.

A few classic gems I can think of are: “lick my [C-bomb],” or “I want you to [F-bomb] me in the [C-bomb].”

Sounds tactical.

Or we could go with, “My vagina is obscene.” That always gets ‘em.

The entire ruckus over the “obscenities” begs the question: is there a uniquely American fear of the vag? Does the word “cunt” cause American men to shiver? David Letterman, when recounting the above anecdote, couldn’t even bring himself to say “vagina.”

We might propose that popular culture sees the female sexual organ akin to a void; a place absent of all signs, which makes it chaotic, irrational unreal, unnatural and unconscious. By failing such a simple task as uttering its name, we put it into the realm of mythology.

And in Greek mythology, there are few better stories about the abject of woman, than ‘Pandora’s Box’. Basically, Pandora comes to Earth with a box (which is kind of labelled “don’t open”). Man – with his infantile sensibilities – is curious of Pandora’s box. Some dude opens the box and unleashes hell on Earth (which in some versions is women).

Thus men both fear and are obsessed by the vag. They fear the box controlling them, so they must attempt to control the box back (which is usually done by forcibly opening and penetrating it). Or as Tom Cruise puts it in Magnolia: "Respect the cock! Tame the cunt!"

However, in the world of nomenclature, this is done by refusing to utter its name. By not giving something a sign, or by forbidding utterance of that sign, we label the object the sign denotes as subordinate, or abject. Basically we think: “cunt” = vulgar word, thus “vagina” = bad thing.

But of course some conservative linguists might think that by removing “cunt” from the popular vernacular altogether, we remove all badness associated with vaginas. The problem is then that “cunt” is simply and only reserved for negative and abusive use towards women. And this is the idea behind “reclaiming” the word.

Think of the negativity associated with things we don’t utter: “those we don’t speak of,” “whose name we do not say,” etc. Unless we want vaginas associated with Lord Voldemort, I suggest we get used to the C-bomb.

Try it with some common phrases: “her cunt was lovely,” “by the way, great cunt!”

And boys. Be nice to the cunts.


* My reading of the myth of 'Pandora's Box' is based on British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's interpretation in 'Topographies of Curiosity'
** Vagina diagram from the Virginia Academy of Science