Naomi Wolf: You've got to love Lisa Brown and her vagina

[marmar]

Vagina: say it loud, Lisa Brown
Conservatives can legislate for vaginal probes but if a woman says the word, it's a scandal? Damn right, we should call it out

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012


You've got to love Lisa Brown and her vagina.

During a debate on anti-abortion legislation in the Michigan statehouse, the Democratic state senator said that she was flattered that there was such an interest in, as she put it, "my vagina", but that "no means no." She was barred from later debate because, she claimed, she dared to use that word.

To say, as a legislator, "I'm flattered that you are so interested in my vagina" – in the context of a Michigan legislative debate – is the perfect provocative sentence. And the storm that followed made the Michigan state courthouse the hottest place in the Midwest. But what was so incredibly bracing was the way in which Brown's provocation – and the Republican response to it – laid bare, so to speak, what the real power struggle is. The issue is not about obscenity, of course: it is about political control.

Brown, with strategic audacity, insisted that she was kept from the statehouse debate because of censorship around the word "vagina". House Republicans denied that this was the reason. They claimed something even more crazy, and more interesting: that it was her comparison of anti-abortion legislation to rape that led her – properly, in their view – to be barred, because, as they put it, the language she used was itself an act of chaos, disrupting proceedings. GOP Representative Lisa Posthumus Lyons, of Alto, said in a statement last week:

"Her comments compared the support of legislation protecting women and life to rape, and I fully support majority floor leader Jim Stamas' decision to maintain professionalism and order on the House floor."

Brown understands her moment, and that the best defense is a great offense. Female liberals understand that when you enrage the opposition, you don't back down; you go further. She staged a reading of "The Vagina Monologues" on the Michigan courthouse steps: 2,500 people, men and women, came to watch Brown, along with an appearance by revered playwright and rape campaigner Eve Ensler. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/21/vagina-lisa-brown-michigan

[Stuart G]

1. kick and recommend..thanks for posting..nt

[CTyankee]

2. I love to see the next generation of women speak out against sexist legislators!

If this doesn't make a legion of new feminists I don't know what will...