Underlying Facts

"The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise." This fact  found in Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie tells more then just the fact behind the vagina. Eve Ensler put power and meaning behind the fact when she said "who need a handgun when you have a semiautomatic." For women all over the world, this has to be very empowering and moving. Women posses twice the power of men even though men have been seen in society and portrayed in society as the "dominant" ones, women still posses the most power. As crazy as it seems to hear, most women don't realize that the world revolves around them. As much as men try to claim that they are dominant or better then women the truth is that everything men do revolves around the women. This comes back to the anatomy of humans: male or female. With the female clitoris containing twice the amount of nerves as the mans penis, it would be a direct correlation between the importance of women and men in society. Women carry children, and are the only way to reproduce. A man needs a women for most things in life or some guidance from a woman. When its all said and done, anything a man does can be traced back to a women.  The want for a job that pays well, the need for a nice car or clothing, at the end it all comes down to the want and need for a woman.

Vagina Monologues: A Women's Comfort

As much as i felt out of place reading these monologues, after a certain point i couldn't put them down. Page after page my interest grew stronger and stronger. Stories of women and their struggles, how they felt about themselves, what it took to become a confident person in their own sexuality kept me reading on. Before reading this book, i had no clue what women thought about themselves or how they dealt with many things. Speaking honestly, i thought that women were very emotional because that was just the way things were. But just like men, women have a lot of built up emotions inside that they don't get to release especially when it comes to their sexual well being. As a man, i know that satisfaction sexually can come from many places. We have confidence in our body parts and are able to openly talk and express our thoughts, but for women true satisfaction only comes from the comfortability with themselves and their sexual organs. Women are not able to speak as freely about themselves as men and also aren't comfortable with themselves. As Eave said in her monologues, many women have never even seen their own body to the fullest. In the monologue, The Flood, Eve talks to an older women who is seventy-two. She explains her story about how she felt so uncomfortable with the fact that she had an orgasm and the way the male reacted to it that she never used her vagina. He was turned off by the fact that she did this in his car and all the attributes that come with an orgasm. The smell, the look and the feeling of the orgasm kept her away. She claimed that she thought of her vagina as a "cellar" or "basement". It was something that belonged but wasn't used much. From a mans perspective, we would never think of our penis in this way. Society has made it acceptable for men to be proud of their penises and women to be secretive of their vaginas. In the forewords, Eve speaks about the symbol for hearts and how it was once used in some cultures as a symbol for female genitalia. Now, the symbol has changed from a sexual symbol to a romantic one giving the heart a lesser meaning. In the end, this shows how much women have been degraded throughout time.

Vagina Monologues: Prethoughts

Eve Ensler uses the reproductive organ, the Vagina, to explain more then just a part of the body in her drama The Vagina Monologues. This part of the female body is used in her drama to express in great detail the struggles of a women and what they must go through. For this drama, Eve takes the word "vagina" once thought of as only a sex object and gave it more meaning to the women who posses one and also her male readers. In the drama, the "vagina" is personified. In the title of one monologue, the vagina is personified by the title, I was Twelve my Mother Slapped Me. The Me, in this monologue, is the vagina which has been hit with its first menstrual cycle. The monologue have caused much controversy between different beliefs and views on females. In another monologue Eve talks about one woman's sexual experiences and the traumatic consequences of the experience. From reading the titles and subtitles of the monologues it is easy to see that Eve used the vagina as a way to show women and represent women as a whole. The lifestyle of a women, how they live and also how they think. In connection to the books we have read so far in class, Eve is giving more of an insight into a "women's world". By personifying vagina and giving it some human characteristics by asking questions of what a vagina would wear, it is easier for the reader to relate to the vagina. By raising these questions she makes the reader place themselves in the shoes of the vagina in the monologues and feel the pain of it along with women. These monologues act as a dairy for women and the struggles they face in life.

Krik Krak: Night Women

There are many things people do in order to secure the need of their family. In the story, Night Women, this is shown. In the story the mother, is a prostitute who does her business right next to her sleeping son in his bed. In order to keep her sons views safe, she has set excuses or plans for if he were to ever wake up, and also as to why she gets herself made up every night before bedtime. She tells him that she gets "made up" because she is waiting for the angels to come at night. The mother also says that if he wakes up and see then actions going on she would tell him that is was just his father visiting for the night. At this young age, the boy may not know any better but as he gets older he will put two and two together and make sense of what has been going on throughout his whole childhood. This is something that the mother is concerned about but being a prostitute to make money is something she must do. Are the mothers actions take a little to far in order to secure a decent life for her child? Are her actions acceptable in order to be able to put food on the table or is it just down right wrong? In the mothers eyes, she feels that these lies will save her son, at least while he is young, from knowing the real situation and what really had to go down in order for him to be able to live a stable life. From the boys perspective, if he was ever to wake up while his mother was in the be with another man, she would tell him it was his father. From a young age he would believe that this man who he woke up to one night having sex with his mother was his father. This would kill the boy inside as he grew up and became more sexually active realizing what his mother was and the fact that this man he seen was in deed not his father. Even though these little lies the mother used were to save him in the beginning, once the boy grew older, it would kill him as reality hit. For the mother, she took this sacrifice, but imagine if you were a parent. Imagine if you had no other means to support your family besides prostitution or robbery. What would you do? Save him now for the moment or let him know the truth and the struggle you go through?

Experience Creates Wisdom

Many people feel that to have wisdom or to posses some sense of knowledge about the world around you, intelligence is involved. As shown in the poem, My Grandmother and the Stars, that is not true. Wisdom, as defined in the webster dictionary is accumulated philosophic or scientific learning. Wisdom is knowledge gathered through experiences. As described in the poem, Naomi's grandmother was a wise nurturing person with a lot of wisdom/ knowledge of the world around her. Even though she was illiterate, she was still able to be wise. It wasn't through the books she picked up and read or the stories she sat down and wrote but through the life experiences she gained. This relates directly to people today and society today. As children grow up and become men and women life's experiences change. As we grow older most of us learn how to cope or deal with certain situations. This is the knowledge that creates wisdom, but some don't get a chance to experience this. Your lifestyle, what you go through, see or hear are all parts of wisdom. Many can pick up a book, read the information and regurgitate it but at the end of the day when faced with a real life problem, they are not able to handle it. When a person is stuck only knowing their own environment and never experiencing anything out of there norm it is hard for them to gain real life knowledge about what is around them. This happens to college students everyday. When some sheltered students are taken out of there norm and placed into a college setting where everything has changed and so different from what they know it is hard to cope. They begin to get  involved with the wrong things are wrong ideas. When another student who has been introduced to these differences and has met adversity plenty of times throughout their lifetime enters a college setting where everything is now new it is a lot easier for them to deal with the adversity.

Humanity In American Society: What have our voices really done for us?

    Naomi Shihab Nye's, 19 Varieties of Gazelle, makes some interesting connections between the gazelle and humans or mankind as a whole.  She begins the poem with a very detailed picture of the gazelle in there natural habitat. Then she begins to ask a question to the reader."Does one gazelle prefer another of her kind"? This question sprung to me as something directly relating to mankind and if we as people do the same thing. Does one human perfer another of its kind? Is that the same reason why we usually see differences in people instead of similarities first? Just like the gazelle, maybe the preferences we have are stemmed from our natural instincts. Naomi uses the gazelle as a parallel between the natural and mankind.                            

Where is the path?

Please Tell Me? 

Does a gazelle have a path? 

Is the whole air the path of the gazelle? 

Human beings have voices-

What have they done for us?

    Within these two stanzas the natural vs. mankind is prevalent. As humans, we tend to find ourselves following a path of what is right or what is expected of us. Any situation in life can change our appeal, make us sway one way or another. These situations can even make us change our own path. As for the gazelle, they just float along. In their world there is no wrong or right. In the minds of these animals things are just done. There path is decided by nature, not thoughts or community pressure steering them where or where not to go. The decisions of these animals are purely instinct. As humans we use our voices and thoughts to either steer ourselves or help steer others. Opinions, media, and society help to shape who we are and where we are going. For the people in my own generation this is even more true. We begin to get away from the natural and more to what is "hot" or "trendy" at the time. This can be seen even in the highest of education at universities or colleges where students are attending school not because they have the urge or inspiration to learn but because there friends are doing it or because society tells them its the right thing to do. We do have voices and opinions, but in actuality what have those opinions really done for us?

What Happens To A Dream Deferred by: Langston Hughs

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?