Monday, January 26, 2015: Monday, January 26, 2015: Speak For Yourself! Vagina Monologues Re-examined

Mount Holyoke cancels Vagina Monologues

Mount Holyoke College, an all-women's school in Massachusetts, has scrapped plans to host a performance of "The Vagina Monologues" because it is not inclusive enough. Mount Holyoke student Erin Murphy explained on behalf of the student-run theater board in an email to students that the play is problematic because it is not inclusive of trans women, Campus Reform reported. "At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman," Murphy explained, according to Campus Reform a right-wing magazine.

Eve Ensler's classic play, The Vagina Monologues, and her V-Day organization* that is an organized response against violence toward women, have recently come under fire for excluding the experience of trans people. Transnational feminists have long critiqued the notion that the vagina is enough to create a bond between women whose material and social conditions vary so widely. Yet women in at least 140 countries have chosen to use the play as a vehicle to explore issues important to their struggles for equity and safety.

Timothy Boatwright (center), a trans man, with his Wellesley classmates.CreditMartin Schoeller for The New York Times

On this week's show, we explore these and other issues about the play and the movement that has grown up around it, with three guests: scholar-turned-essayist Christine Cooper, author of "Worrying About Vaginas," Suzanna Walters, author of The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes and Good Intentions Are Sabotaging Gay Equality, and director of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University, and Sima Shakhsari, professor of Women and Gender Studies at Wellsley College.

Christine Cooper discusses in depth the problems with Vagina Monologues and how they are being resolved. Listen now or Get MP3. 18:38 min.





Suzanna Walters gives us a different perspective on Vagina Monologues. Listen now or Get MP3. 7:08 min.





Sima Shakhsari discusses the New York Times Magazine article, When Women Become Men at Wellesley, about feminists and trans students at Wellesley and the problem with the binary framing of gender and the defining of gender based on biology. Listen now or Get MP3. 12:18 min.






*Bay Area Rising and IDEX are organizing their 3rd annual event for V-Day to end violence against all cis gender and trans gender women and girls. There will be a rally and flashmob in Oakland on Feb 13 and a star-studded event on Sat  Feb 14 at the First Prebsyterian Church in Oakland. Buy your tickets soon as they always sell out. Go to www.bayarearising.org for Flashmob dance rehersals and other info.

Click here to listen to entire show.

Also on today's show:
Reproductive Justice
Dhaya Lakshminarayanan

February 11, 2013: Raising Women's Voices

Today we look at four women-led media projects

First up, we hear from three recipients of the 2012 Media Equity Collaborative awards, and from the founder of the collaborative, Ariel Dougherty.

• Susana Morris, member of Crunk Feminist Collective, which "aims to articulate a crunk feminist consciousness for women and men of color, who came of age in the Hip Hop Generation."
• Angela Tucker, producer of the hugely popular web TV series, Black Folks Don't.
• Kellia Ramares-Watson, investigative journalist, working on a project on how Big Pharma and government institutions are combining to push psychiatric drugs.

Listen to the interview (22:13):



or Get MP3.

Support Media Equity Collaborative.

Sauda Burch and Xochipala Maes Valdez are the coeditors of Road to Ife, a multimedia journal of spirituality and activism.  Ifa is an ancient spiritual tradition from West Africa, that traveled to the Americas with the slaves.  It evolved differently in every community, and has practitioners all over the world.  With this new venture, initiates, writers and artists Burch and Valdez strive to address the needs of Ifa practitioners and connect with practitioners of other earth-centered traditions.

Listen now (25:44):


or Get MP3.

Two weeks ago, over 400 people from all over California marched and rallied at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.  Family members and friends of incarcerated women along with social justice activists from every community came together to protest the overcrowding and mistreatment of women being squeezed into even more crowded conditions as Valley State Women's Prison is being converted to a men's prison.  Governor Jerry Brown says the crisis over overcrowding and inadequate health care in California's prison system is over, but those with first-hand knowledge of the conditions for women disagree.

Listen now (5:55):


or Get MP3.

Listen to the entire show, including information about Thursday's One Billion Rising events.

Break the Chains: Forty Years After Roe v. Wade

Global Val speaks with Mona Lisa Wallace, a civil rights and environmental justice attorney and president of San Francisco NOW, and Rose Aguilar, host of the daily call-in show Your Call on KALW 91.7. We discuss the state of women's rights in our country 40 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. We'll also be reporting on Eve Ensler's V-DAY (Feb. 14th) campaign this year called "One Billion Rising" which encourages people to Strike!Dance!Rise! and demand an end to violence against women around the world. The number is based on a United Nations study showing that 1 in 3 women on our planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime.

Listen now:


or Download the show.

Join us for the East Bay celebration of One Billion Rising. Night for the One Billion is a performance ritual featuring Bay Area artists and healers. 7:00 to 9:00pm at the First Presbyterian Church, 2619 Broadway Street Oakland. Thank you all for those who have signed up to volunteer. We no longer need volunteers for the event.

Bay Area Rising--performers, ritualists, and advocates for women and girls--are offering a community-based performance ritual as an accumulation of energy and joy after a day of actions with One Billion Rising. Join Holly Near, Jennifer Berezan, Destiny Arts, Fat Chance Belly Dance, Dance Brigade, Grrl Brigade, Gina Breedlove, Afia Walking Tree, Mona de Vestel, Shelley Doty, Arisika Razak, Richelle Donigan, Eve Decker, Youth Speaks, Luisah Teish, Hand to Hand, and Chhoti Maa for an evening of beauty, community, and holding the collective consciousness for a violence-free planet.

Tickets purchased via Brown Paper Tickets are sliding scale $20-50. 100% of proceeds go to IDEX women’s projects around the world http://www.idex.org/ and local organizations serving women and girls. First Presbyterian Church, 2619 Broadway Street Oakland. A social justice community.

For more information and/or Volunteer: www.bayarearising.org
To purchase tickets to the event, please visit: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/312857
To donate, please go to: http://www.razoo.com/story/Bay-Area-Rising?referral_code=share

The United Nations has declared that one billion women on the planet have suffered gender violence. Join 1 billion rising activities on February 14th. Be part of the change!

Get involved -- find a One Billion Rising event in your community