Trans Vagina Monologue: My Body, My Gender
The Vagina Monologues never intended to be a play about what it means to be a woman. It is and always has been a play about what it means to have a vagina.
In 2004, Eve Ensler wrote a trans monologue for a cast of 5 trans women. I imagine they had a wide range of genital shapes and sizes, but what do I know. I imagine the monologue for trans men got lost in the mail. [1]
That official trans-femme monologue is titled "They Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy… Or So They Tried" — which you can find online if you’re interested. It’s full of pain and violence, beatings, medical interventions, and eventually surgery. It’s based on true stories, but the 5-voice structure is very impersonal, and somehow still results in a singular narrative. [2]
But that story is not my story, so we agreed that I should write a new one. Here it is, my rouge monologue — performed as part of the brilliant production by It Grows Wild theater company. It was a real pleasure to work with such a great group of women.
Despite undergoing bottom surgery recently, I didn’t want to perpetuate a narrative that surgery makes us women. Instead, this monologue is almost entirely based on my pre-surgery experience of having an "inverted" vagina.
In my mind the subtitle should be: Why Is No One Talking About The Mouthfeel? Parts of it (especially the opening) will be familiar if you’ve read my work. Most of it is new material.
Read the script »| [1] | I don’t assume trans men want a monologue, but they do also, sometimes, have vaginas… |
| [2] | Ironically, after bemoaning the dangers of a single story, Chimamanda Adichie still rejects trans womanhood because it doesn’t fit her narrative… |