Weight: 166
There's been plenty already written in reaction to the Vagina Monologues suspensions
at John Jay High School in Cross River, New York. You probably already know about it, but just in case, the principal at the high school in
question, Richard Leprine, had told the girls their performance of
excerpts from the play "The Vagina Monologues" could not include the word "vagina" because the
term was "inappopriate." The line the three opted to read, in defiance
of the order, was
My short skirt is a liberation flag in the women's army. I declare these streets, any streets, my vagina's country.
The
girls were initally suspended for one day by their principal for having disobeyed his order. The suspension was overturned, despite the girls not
having appealed it, by the president of the school board when it was
pointed out that a male student had been allowed to say the word "fuck"
in his performance without his being sanctioned.
One of the questions I had when I first started thinking about this
issue is how could the author and work even have been cited as the
performance source if the word "vagina" wasn't allowed to be uttered?
Would the students have to have had to say "this selection is taken
from a play with a title this school's principal deems too obscene even
to be uttered"? I suspect that wouldn't have gone over very well
either.
A point some have made about the restriction on the term "vagina" was that
This isn’t censorship: it’s more akin to TV programmers avoiding more sensitive material until after the 9pm ‘watershed’
I could understand the "watershed" comment if the word used had been one of the FCC "bad words". In fact, when I first started reading about this case, I had expected that the word was "cunt" which is also in the play and would have made the principal's objections more understandable. But the word "vagina" is one that can be said on TV at any hour. It's the correct medical term for that part of the body. And it's actually part of the title of the play. There isn't another word that could be put in its place to somehow be less obscene because the word itself isn't any sort of an obscenity.
The comment that he made initally that the reason the word wasn't to be allowed was that there were members of the audience who were very young. This objection turned out to be false -- apparently the youngest audience members anyone can confirm were there were 13. The original statements out of the principal were that the girls had defied their teachers, a statement which was denounced as false by the teachers themselves, who were apparently supportive throughout. My feeling is that respect isn't some sort of default -- it has to be earned. I haven't seen much regarding the principals actions in this case that would be worthy of respect. Aside from everything else, he was apparently verbally outsmarted by three sixteen year olds, assuming because they didn't say they disagreed with him that he had their agreement not to use the term. As the child of a retired high school vice principal and someone who themselves works with teens and twenty somethings, I don't find this impressive for a school administrator. By contrast the girls made a good choice and were willing to take the fallout from it. What more could one want from 16 year olds?
Also, the girls in question didn't request that their suspensions be overturned -- their original comments after the fact were that they expected to be suspended but decided leaving the play's language intact was worth taking whatever punishment the school might give. The overturning of their suspension was a decision made by the school board president. He decided that the decision to suspend them was incorrect because the orginal order to remove the material was not a correct one, especially given that, as stated above, a male student's use of the word "fuck" hadn't been questioned.
School, especially public (or "state" for my UK friends) schools are in an interesting position. School attendence is required -- school is not a freely-made association that a club or even a place of employment might be. Yet students remain part of a free society with free speech rights. It is therefore important that schools not abridge the free speech of students unless doing so is absolutely necessary. This clearly wasn't the case here -- another alternative could have been presented rather than attemption to restrict student speech. If they issue was concern over audience sensibilities, the school could have included a mention in the program that selections from "The Vagina Monologues" were being performed. One would guess an audience member, reading that, would realize that the word "vagina" might be used and could opt to leave if they didn't want to be exposed to the "v-word" word. Instead, the restriction would seem to speak more to the principal's discomfort with normal medical terms for parts of the female body rather than anything to do with the content of the play itself.
What bothers me most about this is not even the issue of censorship, but the fact that by is actions (which I have to think were done without a lot of thought) this principal went a long way toward inappropriately shaming and sexualizing the female students. I don't have children, but I know from friends with teenage daughters that one of the hardest tasks they undertake is keeping their teens from developing shame about their bodies.
Sorry for being so silent. I sort of just collapsed in a heap when we got back from Portland. And then my sister and mom are in town for Eloise's surgery (more to come) and so I spent Sunday with the two of them.
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