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lorenzosivilotti's review against another edition
5.0
As vibrant and vital today as in the 90’s.
10/10
10/10
charlote_1347's review against another edition
2.0
This caught my eye in Waterstones the other day - I've heard mention of the V-Monologues throughout my time at school and university and I've always wanted to give them a read. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The play itself felt half-baked and as much was left out as was included, which was disheartening. I'm also not too fond of the terminology - the language romanticised something that is biological and while it dealt sensitively with a myriad of issues that should not exist in this day and age (and should never have existed in the first place), it never took off the kiddie gloves, not fully. I'm not ashamed to admit I couldn't finish it.
katya_m's review against another edition
At a witch trial in 1593, the investigating lawyer (a married man) apparently discovered a clitoris for the first time; [he] identified it as a devil’s teat, sure proof of the witch’s guilt. It was “a little lump of flesh, in manner sticking out as if it had been a teat, to the length of half an inch,” which the gaoler, “perceiving at the first sight thereof, meant not to disclose, because it was adjoining to so secret a place which was not decent to be seen. Yet in the end, not willing to conceal so strange a matter,” he showed it to various bystanders. The bystanders had never seen anything like it. The witch was convicted.
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Quando peguei neste The vagina monologues, queria conhecer o projeto que acompanha a peça, e sobretudo queria perceber os pruridos que o nome da autora causa em muito boas casas. O que percebi foi que a visão de Eve Ensler - ou V - (afora a carga fortemente politizada das suas intervenções) não é mais nem menos extremada do que deveria ser. Ela é, sim, o contraponto de uma cultura misógina e, como tal, pelo poder que procura recuperar, é muitas vezes pobremente acolhida. Todavia, quando o mau acolhimento da obra não recai sobre o exagero poético da autora (com o qual também não concordo), mas sim sobre a realidade que ela expressa, há um outro nome para isso: censura. E o que há aqui para censurar? Muitas verdades desagradáveis que ainda se encontram longe da ordem do dia - há sempre questões ditas maiores que se interpõem no caminho da discussão inequívoca acerca da sujeição da mulher. O que me traz, nem de propósito, ao que ainda hoje ouvi dizer: "Não existe discriminação de género, as mulheres é que se põem na posição de coitadinhas. Isto para mim é um não-assunto". Portanto, chegamos a isto: todo e qualquer debate acerca de igualdade de género é (auto)vitimização. E é aqui que obras como esta ganham particular importância pois expõem, com todas as letras, o privilégio masculino, a dita discriminação, a violência infligida ainda hoje sobre as mulheres - mesmo que lhe chamem um "não-assunto":
When I returned to New York after my first trip, I was in a state of outrage. Outraged that 20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993, as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it. I couldn’t understand it. A friend asked me why I was surprised. She said that over 500,000 women were raped every year in this country, and in theory we were not at war.
[Se for preciso comparação, bastará lembrar que o crime de violência doméstica é o mais praticado em contexto nacional e que, segundo o INE (INQUÉRITO SOBRE SEGURANÇA NO ESPAÇO PÚBLICO E PRIVADO, 2022), um total de "500 mil mulheres foi vítima de agressões físicas ou sexuais por parte do parceiro".]
De todas as formas, e para voltar ao cerne, The Vagina Monologues, começou por ser apresentado como resultado de um conjunto de entrevistas que Ensler conduziu com mais de 200 mulheres de diferentes idades, raças e orientações sexuais, sobre a sua sexualidade. Da peça nasce o projeto / evento V-Day, e dessa combinação nasce então este livro. E aquilo que se percebe dele é que The Vagina Monologues, mais do que uma peça de teatro, mais do que uma evocação, mais do que um momento bolinha vermelha (que o nosso país vende convencido não sei de que patetice perversa) é sobretudo uma celebração - celebração da mulher, da sexualidade feminina, e da autoestima - e, ao mesmo tempo, uma bandeira da causa contra a violência exercida sobre as mulheres, um aviso contra a autofagia cultural e social para a qual esta nos empurra:
Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women—that the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and that this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.
Embora não lhe encontre grande humor (como normalmente se lhe aponta), não há como negar a forma como a sua complexidade é feita parecer singela, e a sua carga emotiva e chocante, oferecida de forma tão honesta, não pode evitar ter um grande impacto - sobretudo junto de quem se identifica, por uma ou outra razão com as palavras proferidas nestes monólogos.
Porque estes monólogos vão muito longe para capturar a realidade feminina e mostrar que a violência que é exercida sobre as mulheres começa em tenra idade e toma várias formas, seja preconceito ou vergonha em relação ao próprio corpo e às suas manifestações fisiológicas:
Nine and a half. I was sure I was bleeding to death, rolled up my underwear and threw them in a corner. Didn’t want to worry my parents.
My mother made me hot water and wine, and I fell asleep.
I was in my bedroom in my mother’s apartment. I had a comic book collection. My mother said, “You mustn’t lift your box of comic books.”
My girlfriends told me you hemorrhage every month.
My mother was in and out of mental hospitals. She couldn’t take me coming of age.
[...]
At camp they told me not to take a bath with my period. They wiped me down with antiseptic.
Scared people would smell it. Scared they’d say I smelled like fish.
Throwing up, couldn’t eat. I got hungry.
Sometimes it’s very red.
I like the drops that drop into the toilet. Like paint.
... passando pela imposição de métodos assépticos para uma purificação daquilo que é encarado como impuro:
All this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up—stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my vagina’s not going away. It’s pissed off and it’s staying right here. Like tampons—what the hell is that? A wad of
dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can’t they find a way to subtly lubricate the tampon? As soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. It says, Forget it. It closes up. You need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. That’s what foreplay’s all about. You got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust. You can’t do that with a dry wad of fucking cotton.
Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like
rose petals. Don’t try to decorate.
...e, claro, terminando na castração (para usar do termo masculino que tem mais impacto porque alguém assim decidiu) física e psicológica como ferramenta de eleição para perpetrar a opressão mais completa:
In the nineteenth century, girls who learned to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation were regarded as medical problems. Often they were “treated” or “corrected” by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or “miniature chastity belts,” sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But there are no references in the medical literature to the surgical removal of testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation in boys.
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948—on a five-year-old girl.
—The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
[....]
Genital mutilation has been inflicted on 80 [million] to 100 million girls and young women. In countries where it is practiced, mostly African, 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, [and] to have part or all of the labia . . . sewn together with catgut or thorns.
[...]
Short-term results include tetanus, septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls, and anal sphincter. Long-term: chronic uterine infection, massive scars that can hinder walking for life, fistula
formation, hugely increased agony and danger during childbirth, and early deaths.
The New York Times, April 12, 1996
Se tudo isto é um "não-assunto" estamos a viver em 1924 e não em 2024. Não está certo o distanciamento que as mulheres ainda sentem do próprio corpo:
In the first session the woman who runs the vagina workshop asked us to draw a picture of our own “unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina.” That’s what she called it. She wanted to know what our own unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina looked like to us. One woman who was pregnant drew a big red mouth screaming with coins spilling out. Another very skinny woman drew a big serving plate with a kind of Devonshire pattern on it. I drew a huge black dot with little squiggly lines around it. The black dot was equal to a black hole in space, and the squiggly lines were meant to be people or things or just your basic atoms that got lost there. I had always thought of my vagina as an anatomical vacuum randomly sucking up particles and objects from the surrounding environment.
[...]
I did not think of my vagina in practical or biological terms. I did not, for example, see it as a part of my body, something between my legs, attached to me.
...não está certo a demonização do corpo, das sensações, do prazer e da liberdade das mulheres:
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That’s a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice . . . twice . . . twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you’ve got a semiautomatic.
—from Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier
[...]
(If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)
Por tudo isso, mesmo que não concorde com todas as reivindicações (ou workshops) de Ensler, admiro a ousadia de levar a palco estes monólogos em 1996 e desde então até hoje, louvo a audácia de fazer imprimir a palavra VAGINA nas capas de livros, em posters e flyers, a coragem de pôr uma audiência a partilhar experiências dolorosas, e o objetivo maior de criar uma cumplicidade que venha um dia a apagar as injustiças que se continuam a levar a palco como ecos do presente e advertência para o futuro.
1 in 3 women on the Earth will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS.
https://www.vday.org/
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
Quando peguei neste The vagina monologues, queria conhecer o projeto que acompanha a peça, e sobretudo queria perceber os pruridos que o nome da autora causa em muito boas casas. O que percebi foi que a visão de Eve Ensler - ou V - (afora a carga fortemente politizada das suas intervenções) não é mais nem menos extremada do que deveria ser. Ela é, sim, o contraponto de uma cultura misógina e, como tal, pelo poder que procura recuperar, é muitas vezes pobremente acolhida. Todavia, quando o mau acolhimento da obra não recai sobre o exagero poético da autora (com o qual também não concordo), mas sim sobre a realidade que ela expressa, há um outro nome para isso: censura. E o que há aqui para censurar? Muitas verdades desagradáveis que ainda se encontram longe da ordem do dia - há sempre questões ditas maiores que se interpõem no caminho da discussão inequívoca acerca da sujeição da mulher. O que me traz, nem de propósito, ao que ainda hoje ouvi dizer: "Não existe discriminação de género, as mulheres é que se põem na posição de coitadinhas. Isto para mim é um não-assunto". Portanto, chegamos a isto: todo e qualquer debate acerca de igualdade de género é (auto)vitimização. E é aqui que obras como esta ganham particular importância pois expõem, com todas as letras, o privilégio masculino, a dita discriminação, a violência infligida ainda hoje sobre as mulheres - mesmo que lhe chamem um "não-assunto":
When I returned to New York after my first trip, I was in a state of outrage. Outraged that 20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993, as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it. I couldn’t understand it. A friend asked me why I was surprised. She said that over 500,000 women were raped every year in this country, and in theory we were not at war.
[Se for preciso comparação, bastará lembrar que o crime de violência doméstica é o mais praticado em contexto nacional e que, segundo o INE (INQUÉRITO SOBRE SEGURANÇA NO ESPAÇO PÚBLICO E PRIVADO, 2022), um total de "500 mil mulheres foi vítima de agressões físicas ou sexuais por parte do parceiro".]
De todas as formas, e para voltar ao cerne, The Vagina Monologues, começou por ser apresentado como resultado de um conjunto de entrevistas que Ensler conduziu com mais de 200 mulheres de diferentes idades, raças e orientações sexuais, sobre a sua sexualidade. Da peça nasce o projeto / evento V-Day, e dessa combinação nasce então este livro. E aquilo que se percebe dele é que The Vagina Monologues, mais do que uma peça de teatro, mais do que uma evocação, mais do que um momento bolinha vermelha (que o nosso país vende convencido não sei de que patetice perversa) é sobretudo uma celebração - celebração da mulher, da sexualidade feminina, e da autoestima - e, ao mesmo tempo, uma bandeira da causa contra a violência exercida sobre as mulheres, um aviso contra a autofagia cultural e social para a qual esta nos empurra:
Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women—that the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and that this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.
Embora não lhe encontre grande humor (como normalmente se lhe aponta), não há como negar a forma como a sua complexidade é feita parecer singela, e a sua carga emotiva e chocante, oferecida de forma tão honesta, não pode evitar ter um grande impacto - sobretudo junto de quem se identifica, por uma ou outra razão com as palavras proferidas nestes monólogos.
Porque estes monólogos vão muito longe para capturar a realidade feminina e mostrar que a violência que é exercida sobre as mulheres começa em tenra idade e toma várias formas, seja preconceito ou vergonha em relação ao próprio corpo e às suas manifestações fisiológicas:
Nine and a half. I was sure I was bleeding to death, rolled up my underwear and threw them in a corner. Didn’t want to worry my parents.
My mother made me hot water and wine, and I fell asleep.
I was in my bedroom in my mother’s apartment. I had a comic book collection. My mother said, “You mustn’t lift your box of comic books.”
My girlfriends told me you hemorrhage every month.
My mother was in and out of mental hospitals. She couldn’t take me coming of age.
[...]
At camp they told me not to take a bath with my period. They wiped me down with antiseptic.
Scared people would smell it. Scared they’d say I smelled like fish.
Throwing up, couldn’t eat. I got hungry.
Sometimes it’s very red.
I like the drops that drop into the toilet. Like paint.
... passando pela imposição de métodos assépticos para uma purificação daquilo que é encarado como impuro:
All this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up—stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my vagina’s not going away. It’s pissed off and it’s staying right here. Like tampons—what the hell is that? A wad of
dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can’t they find a way to subtly lubricate the tampon? As soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. It says, Forget it. It closes up. You need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. That’s what foreplay’s all about. You got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust. You can’t do that with a dry wad of fucking cotton.
Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like
rose petals. Don’t try to decorate.
...e, claro, terminando na castração (para usar do termo masculino que tem mais impacto porque alguém assim decidiu) física e psicológica como ferramenta de eleição para perpetrar a opressão mais completa:
In the nineteenth century, girls who learned to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation were regarded as medical problems. Often they were “treated” or “corrected” by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or “miniature chastity belts,” sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But there are no references in the medical literature to the surgical removal of testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation in boys.
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948—on a five-year-old girl.
—The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
[....]
Genital mutilation has been inflicted on 80 [million] to 100 million girls and young women. In countries where it is practiced, mostly African, 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, [and] to have part or all of the labia . . . sewn together with catgut or thorns.
[...]
Short-term results include tetanus, septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls, and anal sphincter. Long-term: chronic uterine infection, massive scars that can hinder walking for life, fistula
formation, hugely increased agony and danger during childbirth, and early deaths.
The New York Times, April 12, 1996
Se tudo isto é um "não-assunto" estamos a viver em 1924 e não em 2024. Não está certo o distanciamento que as mulheres ainda sentem do próprio corpo:
In the first session the woman who runs the vagina workshop asked us to draw a picture of our own “unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina.” That’s what she called it. She wanted to know what our own unique, beautiful, fabulous vagina looked like to us. One woman who was pregnant drew a big red mouth screaming with coins spilling out. Another very skinny woman drew a big serving plate with a kind of Devonshire pattern on it. I drew a huge black dot with little squiggly lines around it. The black dot was equal to a black hole in space, and the squiggly lines were meant to be people or things or just your basic atoms that got lost there. I had always thought of my vagina as an anatomical vacuum randomly sucking up particles and objects from the surrounding environment.
[...]
I did not think of my vagina in practical or biological terms. I did not, for example, see it as a part of my body, something between my legs, attached to me.
...não está certo a demonização do corpo, das sensações, do prazer e da liberdade das mulheres:
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That’s a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice . . . twice . . . twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you’ve got a semiautomatic.
—from Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier
[...]
(If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)
Por tudo isso, mesmo que não concorde com todas as reivindicações (ou workshops) de Ensler, admiro a ousadia de levar a palco estes monólogos em 1996 e desde então até hoje, louvo a audácia de fazer imprimir a palavra VAGINA nas capas de livros, em posters e flyers, a coragem de pôr uma audiência a partilhar experiências dolorosas, e o objetivo maior de criar uma cumplicidade que venha um dia a apagar as injustiças que se continuam a levar a palco como ecos do presente e advertência para o futuro.
1 in 3 women on the Earth will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS.
https://www.vday.org/
morganvmains's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, and Medical trauma
bluehound's review against another edition
2.0
Not worth reading. Much better books out there about the same subject.
merp42's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
5.0
Every human should read this
ferlosofo's review against another edition
1.0
Un libro en torno al cual tenia muchas expectativas, en parte por la multiplicidad de comentarios en torno a la obra. Pero más allá de algunos datos interesantes, y de lo respetable que puede ser las opiniones y testimonios allí vertidos, el texto me parece demasiado simple, inconexo y en muchos puntos aburridos. Eso no quiere decir que se minimice la perspectiva de las mujeres en torno a la sexualidad, solamente que este intento literario no es del todo profundo y reflexivo, salvo algunos fragmentos que resultan rescatables.
noemi1010's review against another edition
5.0
I got the chance to attend a couple of The Vagina Monologues shows during my undergraduate studies, and I was blown way by the show just as much as reading this book.
I bought the book only yesterday, but I couldn't stop reading it. The book shows us what 1 in 3 women go through in the world: rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, etc. and the words used are really powerful. It's meant to let women regain the power they have lost and to get to know the power they already own. It's a book, and a show, that I highly recommend as it will really change your lives.
I bought the book only yesterday, but I couldn't stop reading it. The book shows us what 1 in 3 women go through in the world: rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, etc. and the words used are really powerful. It's meant to let women regain the power they have lost and to get to know the power they already own. It's a book, and a show, that I highly recommend as it will really change your lives.
ariel_schmariel's review against another edition
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0