Vagina Party

I went to a vagina party Sunday night. A twist on “v-day celebrations,” it was a fundraiser for women’s issues in general, but more importantly, to help curb and destroy violence against women.

As I mentioned in a previous post, gang rape is up significantly. I saw on Twitter that — what? — a woman was kept for 40 days and raped by 41 men? Is that possible? It is, though I can’t say if it really happened. But more and more reports have been coming out. Sunday night I heard a staggering statistic — I was wearing only one of my hearing aids, so I don’t want to go spreading untruths if I heard the specifics wrong, but it was 1 in 7 women are…and 1 in 3 women are… — and these are only reported cases, of course. Who knows how many unreported cases there are.

Having just read The Tipping Point, the only thing I can think about is India has reached it. One Indian woman keeps tweeting with an #incessanthorror hashtag — and it is.

The night of the party my wife wasn’t feeling well, and I had purchased a “couples” ticket, so I tried to get my son to go with me. He declined. Apparently a vagina party doesn’t sound like much fun. And we didn’t know how appropriate it would be to have him there, but there were many kids attending. I would have liked him to have experienced Woman with a capital “W.”

Last week there was a soccer game, made up of boys only. After the game I was telling the losing team players that they had suffered from “best player syndrome;” the best player was down with a fever and so “of course they would lose.” It was all mental. A girl (who I don’t really know but have interacted a few times with — she seems extremely smart and will grow up to be a gorgeous woman) said a pretty intelligent something about why the team lost. One of the boys on the team said, “don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know anything.” She replied, “I know I’m not good at soccer but that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.” My heart was crushed. It was awful to hear. I sort of scolded the boy and encouraged the girl. It’s typical at their age, sadly. And in the face of the recent violence against women, especially heartbreaking. I’ve said it before: women should be respected.

And so I wish my son, who was on the losing team, had come to the fundraiser. To see what the fuss was all about. I wish the boy who made that comment had also shown up. I hope the girl knows the strength of her gender. I hope when she grows up her inner and outer beauty remain unblemished.

A vagina party should not be necessary. But until it isn’t, I will continue to go to them.