My Vagina, My Vagina, Me

also published in the Feministing.com community blog. see it at
http://community.feministing.com/2011/04/04/my-vagina-my-vagina-me/

This weekend, I performed in The Vagina Monologues. I would love to go on and on about how amazing the entire experience was and how great our cast was, and how it was a great bonding experience that will bring our feminist community on campus together. Or even how we raised a whole lot of money for a really necessary office on campus. But, this post is not about that.

No, this post is for a woman whose name I never learned. A woman who probably does not realize that it is her, and not the performance, that inspired me. I met her after the Friday night performance, and I may never be the same.

This woman was an older woman, maybe in her fifties or sixties. She was short and quiet, and had a limp. She did not seem very sure of herself, but she needed to tell me something. She waited quietly as I socialized with other members of the audience, my conservative parents included, she waited as the crowd died down, she waited as we cleaned up for the night. She waited, and she mustered, and she glowed.

Finally, she came up to me. She told me that she has a mirror at home, and that she would, finally, after all these years, look at her vagina for the first time, and she expected that she would be in awe. She was inspired by our performance. She was inspired by what we did. She was inspired to do something that is not socially acceptable, or even spoken of. She said she was inspired by us.

Wow. I can't begin to explain how amazing this makes me feel. And also, how sad. How sad is it that we live in a culture where a woman can go her entire life without looking at her vagina, or having an orgasm? How did we become so disconnected from our own body part? It's as normal to have as an arm, or a toe, yet far more integral.

Tampons even have applicators so that we don't have to touch it.

Something went drastically wrong here. See, a man would never go that long without looking at his penis, or pleasuring himself. It is expected and even celebrated when a man is proud of his penis, whereas even saying vagina makes a woman uneasy.

It was not always like this. At one time, the vagina, or cunt as i like to call it, was revered as the center of creative power. Women were revered because of the amazing things our bodies can do. We bleed with the moon, we create life, and we have earth shattering orgasms, sometimes many in a night. When did this stop being awe inspiring? When did vaginas become dirty?

I don't know those answers. Maybe I will someday. What I do know is that this lack of respect for women, and their vaginas needs to end. Just think what could happen is we all started loving ourselves. Women and men, and everyone on between. When our bodies stopped being the enemy and we weren't trying to either adhere to, tear down, or enforce these crazy ideals and boxes and roles. If we could all just... be. How great would that feel?

How many stress related disorders would no longer exist?

Just a thought to leave you with for now.

Queering Annorexia Nervosa and Domestic Violence: My Coming Out Story

*trigger warning for Domestic Violence*

So, I've known that I was "different" since I was ten. And by different, I mean that I knew I was queer, but I didn't have a word for it. I knew I had a crush on Belle in Beauty and The Beast, I was always into the smart girls. Still am. I also knew, when I was ten, that I was supposed to have a crush on The Beast, after true love changed him back into a handsome man, of course. At some point, I figured that there was something wrong.

This idea comes from the very christian home I grew up in. For the longest time, my parents would preach that either you're straight or you're going to hell. Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. All that stuff, so when I figured out that the closest word I had for my crush on Belle was GAY, I freaked out. There was really something wrong with me, and that something would send me to hell.

So, I did everything in my power to change it. In middle school, I would flirt with the boys my friends found attractive. I even dated a few of them, just to prove that I wasn't that horrible thing my parents told me about. To prove that I wasn't gay. I was one of the popular girls of our middle school, I worked hard for that. Nobody asked the popular girls too many questions.

Then came High School. Naive, 14 year old, me got herself a boyfriend who was a senior. He was drum major and a drug dealer, and it was perfect. He was the guy that all the girls wanted, so of course I was happy. Nobody would even think to question my sexuality as long as I played along.

At some point, playing along stopped being worth it. He was jealous, he thought I spent too much time with my friends, he told me I was fat and ugly, he told me I was stupid, he told me I was worthless, he told me he was the only person who would ever love me. He broke me down to less than human. And by then, I was stuck. I was addicted to the drugs he was selling me. And I believed him.

Who would love me? I'm worthless, and I'm a lesbian. Even God can't love me.

It seems unbelievable now, but so many victims go through such similar thought processes when they're in situations like this. The abuse was so normal by the time he started hitting me, it was almost as if I expected it. I believed that I deserved it. And I couldn't do anything to stop it. I couldn't do anything at all.

That was the worst part for me. I needed to find something to control. I had been obsessively dieting and trying to lose weight since the third grade. I became even more obsessive about it, as a way to gain some semblance of control. It consumed my life, at least when I wasn't trying to make him happy.

He left after he graduated, went into the army. But that didn't stop me from feeling out of control. My drug use got worse, I tuned out, and I lost it. I went into a state of being incredibly promiscuous, still trying to prove to everyone and myself that I was straight but also trying to find some self worth in the arms of a one night stand. Nothing mattered, and nothing changed anything. Still no control.

As I continued to starve myself, I became emaciated to the point where I could not hide it. People who cared about me started to really start to question if something was wrong. My parents finally intervened and took me to the hospital. I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa and sent to an inpatient facility specific to eating disorders. I was in treatment for 3 months.

In treatment, I learned so much about loving myself and putting myself first. It wasn't all about my eating disorder, a lot of it had to do with the things that he had convinced me of, and the things I had convinced myself. I started to come to terms with being queer, and decided to stop putting up with my own bullshit.

When I got out of treatment, I transferred schools. Everyone thought that would be a good idea, and it was. I found myself in a group of supportive friends who didn't give a shit about my sexual orientation. So I came out to my friends at school. And everybody already knew.

It wasn't until my senior year that I fell out of the closet to my parents... but that is a whole other story.