Women are a societally oppressed group. It is simply a fact.

Ever since we were little girls we were taught to repress our sexuality. We are made to think of our bodies as dirty and forbidden. The word vagina is considered “pornographic” or “too explicit,” when it’s really just a medical term for a body part, like an eyeball or a knee. I was in “The Vagina Monologues” this year, and whenever I tried to put up ads for our show, I’d find them torn down the next day; censored by shopkeepers and library employees.

So, Steven Soldwedel, writer of a letter (“Men don’t honor penises with week,” SN 2/27), and all other men on this campus who are enraged about MSU’s celebration of womanhood, listen up. Being open about ourselves and our experiences has little to do with egotism or superiority. It has much more to do with celebration and the destruction of social taboos. The truth is - surprise - women go through unique experiences that until now, we’ve never shared.

We have our first periods. We can give birth. We are sexually assaulted, raped, molested and abused. We must talk about and express our feelings toward these things as a form of therapy and empowerment. This isn’t a gender war we’re waging. There is no zero-sum balance that entails relegating men in order to empower women. That’s a sheer misconception.

Also, did you even bother to see “The Vagina Monologues” before writing such a harsh criticism of it publicly? I’d recommend doing so, because our show wasn’t about men…at all.

So, with no apologies, I think Vagina Week will continue for years to come, and keep helping women feel comfortable with themselves, able to come forward about rape and able to break through oppressive sexual social norms. In the end, it’s all quite simple, really. Feminism is just the “radical” notion that women are people too.

Tanya Palit
international relations
sophomore