Now that I have finished The Vagina Monologues I have discovered that Eve Ensler accomplished what she set herself out to do. She wanted to create awareness and discussions, and this is quite prevalent even in my own home. Simply through my roommates knowing I had to read this book, the conversations about it developed. Last night for example, one of my roommates stole the book literally out of my hands and processed to read one of the chapters aloud and then engulfed a huge conversation about it to easily 15 people. I sat back and chuckled to myself because that’s exactly what Ensler wanted to do, she wanted me the reader to discuss and share the stories with others to open their eyes. For her mission and V-Days mission of awareness succeeded even in my home.
I took a special kind of awareness away after reading this book. I took an ever prevalent idea that grave travesties still happen throughout the world. Before this book I knew of genital mutation and I realized that in some war countries it still happened. But to what extent I was completely unaware. My heart aches when I hear that 80 to 100 million girls have been subjected to such a horrible sexist travesty. That “In Africa, about 2 million youngsters a year can expect the knife, or the razor or a glass shard, to cut their clitoris or remove it altogether.” (Page 67) That even such a horror still happened in this country until 1948 when it was last performed on a five year old girl. That is what I take away from this book. I take away an ever understanding of the ways that females aren’t equal to males, and we sadly won’t be for a very long time. A male would never get his penis cut off for masturbation but yet until 1948 they would cut a small girls clitoris for simply touching it.
In my mind a good book is when you take something away from it. I take away greater knowledge of the tragedies such as genital mutation that still exist in our world. And I have already started to spread the word.
No comments:
Post a Comment