David Lei | The Vagina Dialogues

'Vagina." There, I said it. I'll be honest - deep down, I'm an immature 5-year-old boy who gets more than a little squeamish about certain topics and . words.

Which is why it might surprise you that, last week, I got out of my fairly narrow comfort zone and went to see The Vagina Monologues. In fact, it was the second time I had seen the show at Penn.

The Vagina Monologues, a critically acclaimed play by activist and writer Eve Ensler, has an exclusively female cast and is tailored to a female audience. Along with the Emmy-award winning movie Until the Violence Stops, it is part and parcel of Ensler's V-Day movement to end violence against women.

Though the play isn't exactly meant for men, there's a lot we can learn from it. I was heartened and encouraged to see that males seemed to be roughly half of those in attendance at the Friday night performance - though a significant number of them appeared to be fraternity pledges not exactly there on their own accord. After all, men are usually the ones behind violence against women. And domestic violence is a community issue.

Rachel Garber, producer of the Vagina Monologues at Penn, told me that "sending the message out to men is really important for The Vagina Monologues."

From the male perspective, I found the play to be remarkably effective in communicating its message. The play's talented and courageous cast moved me and made me laugh in ways I hadn't thought was possible through spoken word. But for all of its emotional force, men ultimately view the play from the outside, looking in - and that diminishes the power of the experience, limiting the potential it has for the V-day movement.

The play is based on scores of interviews about sexuality and relationships Ensler has conducted with women around the world. It presents a diverse montage of voices that varies from an eighty-year-old Jewish New Yorker to the "comfort women" forced into prostitution by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

The Vagina Monologues, last Tuesday's personal-finance talk by Jean Chatzky and tomorrow's keynote address by Maya Angelou notwithstanding, Women's Week isn't exactly a draw for Penn men. But that's not by design.

Abigail Dosoretz, College senior and co-chairwoman of the Penn Consortium of Undergraduate Women, said planners have "tried to make Women's Week open to everyone, not just to women."

Still, many of the week's events focus on female empowerment and, understandably, men have been missing in action. For example, interested though I may be, you probably won't find me at today's Sex Toy Social, which will be held at noon in the Women's Center.

Beyond Women's Week, groups such as One-in-Four and the nascent Take Back the Night initiative give Penn men the opportunity to get involved. But although these groups already have done or will do a lot to curb sexual harassment and violence, we could do far more.

As I was perusing the celebrity pages and gossip blogs last week, I was shocked to learn of Chris Brown's apparent attack on his girlfriend and fellow hip-hop star Rihanna. We can all agree that his behavior was savage and reprehensible.

In the context of The Vagina Monologues and Women's Week, the incident got me thinking.

Empowering women doesn't do enough to prevent abuse from happening in the first place. To end violence against women, we also need a way to connect with the Chris Browns of the world. Educating men is as much a solution to the problem. One-in-Four and Take Back the Night will help in that regard.

In addition, another Ensler-edited compilation of monologues is A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer. Because it includes male voices, I think it would be a positive addition, and hope that it eventually finds its way into the Women's Week lineup.

The Vagina Monologues is groundbreaking precisely because it takes a once-taboo topic and brings it into the public discourse, particularly among women. It would be quite a milestone for the spirit of the movement if we could get men talking about it, too.

David Lei is a Wharton junior from Brooklyn, NY. He is the former Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. The Lei-bertarian appears on Mondays. His email address is lei@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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