Vagina T-Shirt Story

[coldandbroken.livejournal.com]

Recently signed the petition about the I heart my vagina buttons, entry here, reminded me of my own experience in highschool with Vagina-related clothing..

Senior year a production of The Vagina Monologues was going on at the local college in my hometown in conservative little North Dakota, and my theater friends and I went around putting up posters for the event, which got taken down because of the "subject matter." Our solution? I bought several white cotton T-Shirts and some Iron transfer paper and made shirts that read "Vagina Warrior: Until the Violence Stops" and had the date of the performances on the back.

And what did my school do the day ten friends and I (Men, women and transgenderd) all wore the shirts to school? Nothing to the girls. All of the "boys" got called into the office for wearing "inappropriate" things in school but that didn't faze anyone. All in all we got some positive responses, mostly negative looks from teachers, and a whole lot of support from our peers.

Our school and town is ultra-conservative, but as a group we didn't stand for it. I can definetely understand what those students in MN are going through, however, because just a few weeks later I was asked to remove a button from my school bag that read "Vaginas are cool" because it was inappropriate. I fought the matter all the way to the principal's office to where my mother was called and laughed loudly in the phone when he told her he was going to give me detention for the offensive button. I took my detention in stride, but never removed my button.

Comments

[hannahirene.livejournal.com]

reminds me of the current Cootie Shots (http://www.startribune.com/stories/389/5358047.html/) debacle in my little college town (Western Minnesota)

[hannahirene.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the link is http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1500523/20050421/index.jhtml?headlines=true in case anyone is interested

Bravo!

[ginnyseta.livejournal.com]

Bravo! The Vagina Monologues are such an excellent collection, with many important messages. I only hope that some day people, both young and old, will be able to understand those messages! Good to see other people who were sticking up for themselves! =)

[dang-dodo-ditty.livejournal.com]

wooooohoooooo! go you i say! i wish i'd stood up for stuff like that in high school, but i was way too apathetic at the time, about everything. maybe not everyone took what you did positively, but you made them aware that you are there, and that people are active and doing stuff about it all. and that is definitely something good!

much kudos.

reminds me to make up a hunk of vagina friendly button badges. :D