The Vagina Monologues

shame

• All the shame and embarrassment you've previously felt saying the word has been a form of silencing your desire, eroding your ambition.

  TVM-017

• Girls who learned to develop orgasmic capacity were 'corrected' by amputation of the clitoris. No references exist to surgical removal of the penis to stop masturbation in boys.

  TVM-022

embodiment

• My vagina was something over there, away in the distance. I rarely lived inside it, or even visited. I had been raped as a little girl.

  TVM-006

• I started crying. Maybe it was knowing I had to give up the fantasy that someone was coming to lead my life, to choose direction for me.

  TVM-002

• I've reclaimed it, 'cunt.' I really like it. Listen to it. Curvy, inviting — nest, now, nexus — sharp certain tangy t — texture, tight, tantalizing.

  TVM-004

trauma-and-survival

• Not since I dream there's a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses.

  TVM-005