"The Vagina Monologues" have stirred up a lot of passion in many students at Notre Dame. This led students to a debate with each other and panelists, and as a result, I witnessed one of the most compelling and insightful conversations I have ever seen.
This exploration of sexuality strengthened my own ideas on the subject, which I would classify as conservative. Not changed, strengthened. Bishop D'Arcy has noted that college students are impressionable, and such a play could be dangerous to our Catholic understanding of sexuality.
There are many aspects of the world we live in that could be dangerous for a young Catholic to see. For example, The Keenan Revue protrays college boys who are open about their sex lives, scenes of masturbation, and scenes demeaning to women. Yet tickets to the Keenan Revue sell out within half an hour of availability.
Clearly, Notre Dame students are regularly exposed to "sexual revolution propoganda." "The Vagina Monologues" offered students an opportunity to discuss complex issues of female sexuality, and each panelist gave an alternative to the sexual revolution.
Is there a better place to be exposed to the sexual revolution than Notre Dame? I doubt that, had the play been held elsewhere, anyone would have cared to conduct such a respectable conversation as the debate on Friday night.
You cannot hide reality from us. It will hit us eventually. I thank Fr. Jenkins and the organizers of "The Vagina Monologues" for offering a dose of the reality of sexuality in the world today, and providing me with a remarkable and beautiful response that I probably would not have recieved anywhere else but Notre Dame.
Flannery Kearney
sophomore
Pangborn Hall
Mar. 29
