Email
You've got to love Lisa Brown and her vagina.
During a debate on anti-abortion legislation in the Michigan statehouse, the Democratic state senator said that she was flattered that there was such an interest in, as she put it, "my vagina", but that "no means no." She was barred from later debate because, she claimed, she dared to use that word.
To say, as a legislator, "I'm flattered that you are so interested in my vagina" – in the context of a Michigan legislative debate – is the perfect provocative sentence. And the storm that followed made the Michigan state courthouse the hottest place in the Midwest. But what was so incredibly bracing was the way in which Brown's provocation – and the Republican response to it – laid bare, so to speak, what the real power struggle is. The issue is not about obscenity, of course: it is about political control.
Brown, with strategic audacity, insisted that she was kept from the statehouse debate because of censorship around the word "vagina". House Republicans denied that this was the reason. They claimed something even more crazy, and more interesting: that it was her comparison of anti-abortion legislation to rape that led her – properly, in their view – to be barred, because, as they put it, the language she used was itself an act of chaos, disrupting proceedings. GOP Representative Lisa Posthumus Lyons, of Alto, said in a statement last week:
"Her comments compared the support of legislation protecting women and life to rape, and I fully support majority floor leader Jim Stamas' decision to maintain professionalism and order on the House floor."
Brown understands her moment, and that the best defense is a great offense. Female liberals understand that when you enrage the opposition, you don't back down; you go further. She staged a reading of "The Vagina Monologues" on the Michigan courthouse steps: 2,500 people, men and women, came to watch Brown, along with an appearance by revered playwright and rape campaigner Eve Ensler. (See this account from Autumn Smith.)
Making the V-sign in Lansing. Photograph: Autumn Smith
Ensler rightly pointed out that the issue is not about the propriety of the word, but about anxieties about women's access to power. Ensler declared, to applause:
"The vaginas are out. We are here to stay."
This battle fascinates me. I had a similar feeling watching a recent news item concerning Carol Price, a former TSA worker, who had experienced, going through security, what she thought was an overly invasive search. She turned to a supervisor and grabbed at the TSA agent's genitals to demonstrate, and was promptly arrested for "assault". This exchange, like the one in Michigan, suddenly snaps one out of the weird collective hypnosis of how "the way things are done" can make you not see the crazy-obvious. The TSA can grab your crotch and it's essential for "national security", but when you grab theirs, it's assault?
Legislators discussing at length and in detail bills dealing with women's vaginas and uteruses, and closely defining a legal range of vaginal options (for example, regarding ultrasound probes) – with outcomes sometimes profoundly against women's will about what should be done to their vaginas – is "legislative decorum"; but the minute a woman utters the word "vagina" or compares to being raped a planned legislative outcome against women's will, all hell breaks loose?
Something worth foregrounding, because it is so often obscured by debate about what happens in the uterus, is that D-and-C's and even later abortions are performed vaginally – that most private of private places, site of the most personal of decisions. What occurs in the Michigan statehouse when legislating on these issues is, therefore, categorically about Brown's vagina. I think Brown used that personal, intimate, confrontational word partly to demonstrate mnemonically how very personal, intimate and, literally, inward or internal the decision to have an abortion really is, and what the action of an abortion really involves.
The "pro-lifers", I have argued before, are entirely within their rights to hold up signs that show images of the fact of a dead fetus. It is a real fact, a real image, not propaganda or spin. But in exactly the same way, Brown is within her rights to shove the word "vagina" and even its image into the public discourse: it is an equally real fact, the real site where the result of all this wilful abstraction, in which the Michigan Republicans have sought to engage, will be played out. From a pro-life perspective, and from many points of view, there is no escape from the outcome being that so-graphic one. But from a pro-choice perspective, and others', too, there is no escape from the site of the abortion being that so-intimate one.
Brown's fight is not new. The 1970s were the high point of feminists waving the vagina flag in the hallowed halls of patriarchy. Indeed, the vagina has been contested linguistic and physical real estate for all of recorded patriarchy. But Brown's invocation – in the context of this new front in the "war on women" of copycat legislation focused on vaginas, similar to Michigan's, rolling out across 22 states – takes the fight to a new level.
The confrontation in Michigan confirms what Ensler makes clear: this is not about a sex organ, or about obscenity. The vagina isn't outrageous when it is under someone else's control, but it immediately becomes outrageous when a woman decides to control its meanings, define the morality and hermeneutics of its experiences – as Brown was doing – and determine its deployment, for herself. This fight beautifully illustrates what is so magical, disruptive and potent about the word "vagina" and vaginal politics.
Brown's was an act of appropriation. When "fags" became "queer" (as in the slogan, "we are here; we are queer"), they became more powerful, claiming that epithet and refusing the stigma and shame society had previously attached to it. Brown did the same thing.
I am not surprised that Brown's flag-waving is unleashing a torrent of female solidarity. This seems to be the year of the vagina; from virginity exams by the Egyptian military of female protesters in Tahrir Square, to the brutal introduction of the punitive transvaginal sonogram, women are being targeted in this age-old way. But what is new is that women are claiming the word, loud and clear. They have stopped running from the slut-shaming that so closely follows it; they have had enough of this kind of control and assault.
Liz Topp, co-author of Vaginas: A Owner's Manual, once described how, when a group of high-school girls realized how they were being disempowered and silenced, both sexually and socially, they asked for space in the school's meeting agenda, and, before the whole student body, stood side by side and shouted, "VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!" They were, in their own way, saying no to the abuse and objectification of women, and taking back what was theirs.
As Lisa Brown and all the Michigan citizens who rallied around her have done.
Comments
21 June 2012 3:55PM
This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
21 June 2012 3:57PM
And they say satire is dead - banned from saying the word vagina by a bunch of pricks...
21 June 2012 4:00PM
Brilliant article. Good for her, and good for Naomi Wolf in explaining the issues so clearly.
21 June 2012 4:02PM
I love when you talk dirty. Say it again
21 June 2012 4:05PM
A vagina thread! Ideally I would have prefered this on a Friday afternoon. However, no time is a bad time.
21 June 2012 4:05PM
It was obviously for the euphemistic under current of her remark and not the use of the word Vagina.
All the same more power to her, as a man I dont see how any man can feel qualified to to make any decisions on abortion. We will never understand the complexities involved.
21 June 2012 4:06PM
The general sentiment coming out of this - one I strongly agree with - is that if a plain anatomical term is too outrageous for your poor delicate ears then you've got no business legislating on the subject. Vagina is not a swear word.
What she said was certainly pointed and a strong statement, but by no stretch offensive. I guess the truth just hurts.
21 June 2012 4:08PM
V A G I N A
The crazy bit is that women are our own worst enemies when it comes to protecting the VAGINA and empowering females to use it wisely and of free will. If women en masse everywhere duct tape the
Vaginal canal shut for business then maybe the message would get out loud and clear. We should be more than simply hot house fetus culturing factories.
and now for more news on the oppression Vagina:
21 June 2012 4:08PM
The 70's may have been the high point of waving the vagina flag but it did little good when the powers that be were introducing humans to the universe as a single genitalia species...
...how little things have changed...
21 June 2012 4:13PM
sorry...link didn't work..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
21 June 2012 4:14PM
Surely the problem was not the use of the word vagina, but the intended (false) implication that other members of the legislature wanted to rape her. It is rather silly way of continuing to polarise the issue, and I say that as someone who would like to see no government restrictions on abortion.
21 June 2012 4:15PM
The vagina flag! This just gets better...I may have to work unpaid overtime!
21 June 2012 4:16PM
All those against vaginas should remember where they came from.
21 June 2012 4:16PM
A phrase can be highly offensive without containing any offensive words. She wasn't sanctioned for saying vagina, she was sanctioned for implying that her political opponents wanted to rape her.
21 June 2012 4:16PM
She should take them to court - i'd throw a party if she won the case! :)
21 June 2012 4:17PM
We could switch "Republican" with "vagina" until they all get used to the word, think that would help?
Oh wait, it's an election year. That might end up being a little disturbing. "The Vaginas have taken Detroit..."
21 June 2012 4:18PM
This is why Oprah needs to run for Senate. She could influence everyone else to use the term vajayjay during such debates. It's benign and wouldn't offend the puritans as much.
21 June 2012 4:21PM
Republican women make no sense to me. Like minorities and non-rich people, why do they vote against their own interest? It has to be religion, the ultimate in irrational thinking.
21 June 2012 4:25PM
Time for Larkin -
‘Vagina’ Sonnet
Is “vagina” suitable for use
in a sonnet? I don’t suppose so.
A famous poet told me, “Vagina’s ugly.”
Meaning, of course, the sound of it. In poems.
Meanwhile, he inserts his penis frequently
into his verse, calling it, seriously, “My
Penis.” It is short, I know, and dignified.
I mean of course the sound of it. In poems.
This whole thing is unfortunate, but petty,
like my hangup concerning English Dept. memos
headed “Mr./Mrs./Miss”–only a fishbone
in the throat of the revolution–
a waste of brains–to be concerned about
this minor issue of my cunt’s good name.
21 June 2012 4:25PM
That's what I was told had happened. Am I being lied to?
21 June 2012 4:26PM
I don't see it that way. It felt like he was just upset at understanding the reality of his actions and having the stark truth presented to him so he couldn't avoid the real-world application of his work.
Fiddle with language on abortion bills, and you're fiddling with vaginas - including Lisa Brown's.
21 June 2012 4:27PM
No need to bring the womb into this
21 June 2012 4:27PM
Kurt Vonnegut nailed this (as he did pretty much everything) in a brilliant essay about obscenity. He wrote about Queen Victoria's supposed aversion to any words relating to bodily functions while overseeing mass famines in Ireland and India, and unfathomable poverty and injustice at home.
In other words, arbitrary assignations of obscenity to the human body serves a political purpose, to prevent discussion of matters that really are obscene. In this case, the removal of women's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
Good article, by the way.
21 June 2012 4:29PM
'They claimed something even more crazy, and more interesting: that it was her comparison of anti-abortion legislation to rape that led her – properly, in their view – to be barred, because, as they put it, the language she used was itself an act of chaos, disrupting proceedings'
Surley This is the REAL issue. The vagina headline was just to draw us in. I think its sad that you have to resort 'cathching us' with a head line that really isnt the main story.
BTW if we say and read vagina often enough the embarrassment factor will go. Then you'lll have to find another headline. Prob 20yrs time tho!!!
21 June 2012 4:31PM
If the facts you described are accurate, her actions resulted in the death of another human (a *human* that was a few days old , not a foetus - a living, breathing human that existed independently of her). You'd have to be pretty ideological blinded to describe that as vagina oppression.
21 June 2012 4:31PM
You are not really at work are you? You are with your 14 year old mates giggling in the school library. Now wipe your hands and go back to your homework.
To the subject: the horror is that these morons proposing object rape on women, presumably not their partners and friends, have actually been elected by majorities. The decent Americans seem in an ever more diminishing minority, replaced by pod people from the middle ages.
21 June 2012 4:35PM
Paraphrasing the words of the late, great and not forgotten Molly Ivins , when (anytime) you see two US Republican male office holders (state or Federal level) these days with their arms around each other, or otherwise touching each other, you need to remember that you automatically have the reality of a prick touching an asshole and then THEY (the two male US Republican office holders, err, perps) ought to be aware or reminded that there are still a lot of Republican State legislators around the country (there is one from the Texas Panhandle for sure) who still believe that the act of a prick touching an asshole should be against the criminal law of the state--punishable by incarceration.
Now that I think about it--it might be a good way to clean out the riff-raff to bring those laws back.
The incidence of male US Republican elected officials touching each other must be high these days. especially as they bend over and offer their exposed anuses to the likes of Grover N, Wayne La P. and the Josef Stalin-loving (and Stalin financial beneficiaries), those ever-lovable Koch tribalists.
21 June 2012 4:35PM
Because one cannot identify what you think others interests ought to be.Everyone has a complex system of values and ideas.
People are not rational.As I believe, Whitman, put it, Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself.
However I am very rational, in the sense that socialist policies are no good to me currently as I'm pretty well off and they are, by and large, against my current interests.
BTW I'm an atheist.
21 June 2012 4:35PM
Thanks--new to me--ooh, he was good wasn't he, old Larkin.
21 June 2012 4:36PM
When we did the exact same thing at my all boys school we were called immature and put on detention. Where's the justice?
21 June 2012 4:36PM
The word itself makes some men uncomfortable.
Vagina.
21 June 2012 4:36PM
I was banned for using the word cnuts. You can be as liberal as you want as long as you don't upset the big business advertisers.
21 June 2012 4:37PM
I don't much understand her comment. A foetus or embryo is aborted from the uterus, not the vagina. Sure, the process is carried out via the vagina, but that's just the way in, as it were. Saying that an abortion is about vaginas is like saying a tonsillectomy is about mouths, because the operation is carried out via the mouth.
21 June 2012 4:39PM
So Brown whipped up a media storm on what was essentially a lie: she was not barred for using the word 'vagina' at all. This article pretty much admits that.
21 June 2012 4:40PM
It was the husband's fault. Don't try to blur the lines.
21 June 2012 4:40PM
I prefer to think of myself as young at heart rather than immature.....but your cutting comment did make me cry.
21 June 2012 4:43PM
Shouldn't that be "strategic mendacity"?
21 June 2012 4:43PM
I can't work this out: why did she turn to the supervisor before grabbing the TSA agent's crotch?
Was it to feint, kind of like a boxer, to catch the TSA agent unawares? (If so, pretty smart, eh?)
I've looked at the link to see what really went on, and clicked on the video, but it says I'm not "authorized" (they can't even spell properly).
Oh well, what the hell. It's all a load of bollocks anyway.
21 June 2012 4:47PM
Medical words have a specific use for the medical profession. They should not be bandied about by the public at large without a good reason. There is rarely any need for the layman to refer to lady bits.
21 June 2012 4:48PM
Tell me Naomi, which part of the Republicans showing an utter contempt for both human life and liberty over the last few decades makes you think they have any respect for women?
Conservatives hate other human beings, that is why they are successful...
21 June 2012 4:49PM
The latest vogue in pro-life legislation is to force women to undergo a mandatory scan and make them look at an image of the foetus before they can have an abortion (obviously in hopes of guilt tripping and pressuring them out of their decision). Because of the early stages of pregnancy involved, to do this means a vaginal probe ultrasound. An invasive procedure which under this legislation would be performed without choice or consent, involving the woman being vaginally penetrated.
Is that vaginal enough for you?
Besides, her point would remain entirely unchanged if she'd said uterus instead of vagina. The key difference is that their reaction to the word vagina better demonstrates the hypocrisy involved.
21 June 2012 4:50PM
A--
Our son received his MA from the U of Hull in the mid-late 90's, and I was introduced to the works of Larkin when we visited him there.
FWIW, My fave:
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Although he was merely a Yorkshire librarian, I was amazed at the time that he had caught/described the typical US Baptist from Texas (note: SBC-variety), at least, to a "T".
It now sounds like he was even more prescient than I originally thought--he actually captured the spirit and methodology of entire US Republican Party these days.
21 June 2012 4:55PM
At unexceptional
Thats the clever thing about her remark though, the ambiguity of it means that depending on your opinion everyone will interpret it differently.
In fairness if the bill was to make circumcisions mandatory im sure i would probably have a different understanding of remarks pertaining to it.
21 June 2012 4:57PM
So it should. It's an ugly medical term, a sterile Latinate word, not a word of vernacular speech. Cunt is equally bad, because it is ugly and aggressive in modern vernacular use.
There should be a word in between these two extremes of ugliness that everybody would be happy to use, but there isn't , because of our fucked-up attitudes to speaking about sex.
21 June 2012 4:58PM
Three cheers for Lisa Brown. I hope there is a torrent of male solidarity too.
Doonesbury ran a series of brilliant cartoons on the Texas vaginal probe legislation in May, he too describing it as "rape." Many newspapers stateside refuse to carry the series.
21 June 2012 5:03PM
That sounds far less crazy. Accusing other members of the legislature of wanting to rape her
Similarly the phrase "get your rosaries off my ovaries"; but it's hard to thing of a religious term that rhymes with fallopian tube.
21 June 2012 5:04PM
The poem quoted by Ameliajaneagain is by Joan Larkin, not Philip Larkin.
21 June 2012 5:08PM
A fine opening to a fine article, but I think in practice Ms Brown would probably protest if one of us tried to.
21 June 2012 5:11PM
I strongly support women's right to talk about their private parts.
21 June 2012 5:12PM
Reminds me slightly of this delightful piece of Victoriana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_Diseases_Acts