Anti-trans bills are popping up all over the place in various contexts. Some are meant to restrict trans girls and […]
Bodies in Doubt, A New and Expanded Edition: An Interview with Elizabeth Reis
I first met Elizabeth Reis at a conference about intersex several years ago, and we became fast friends. Lizzie served […]
A Historic Intersex Awareness Day
This year’s Intersex Awareness Day, October 26, marked a historic pivot. A few days before, Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that […]
Intersex Revolutionary War Hero Did Good Because Doctors Did No Harm
The startling knowledge that the Polish nobleman and military leader, Casimir Pulaski, a hero of the American Revolution, may have […]
What’s Truly Outrageous About Intersex?
On August 5, the World News Daily Report published an article that has been circulating on my Facebook newsfeed every […]
(Ar)Rest Rooms
The students in my senior thesis course at Macaulay Honors College, part of the City University of New York, were scheduled […]
Toxics in our Living Rooms
The comfortable chair that I just bought and sit in for hours each day is giving me a sore throat […]
Vagina Dialogues
By Elizabeth Reis
Students at Mt. Holyoke College are protesting the annual performance of Eve Ensler’s feminist classic, The Vagina Monologues. Their gripe with the play is that by focusing on vaginas, the play perpetuates “vagina essentialism,” suggesting that ALL women have vaginas and that ALL people with vaginas are women. Transgender and intersex people have taught us that this seemingly simple “truth” is actually not true. There are women who have penises and there are men who have vaginas. Not to mention women born without vaginas! Hence, these Mt. Holyoke critics imply, the play contributes to the erasure of difference by presenting a “narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman,” and shouldn’t be produced on college campuses.
