Because, remember — it’s not enough to “raise awareness about women’s issues” and to make sure that “all proceeds went toward fighting violence against women” from your college production of The Vagina Monologues. To be a truly virtuous production of the feminist play, you have to make sure that every vagina is well-represented.
In flyers handed out to audience members at the show, University graduate Nicole Sangsuree Barrett wrote that while there was “diversity” in the show, it was minimal. Women of “a variety of skin colors, body sizes, abilities and gender expressions” were not adequately represented, she said.
“I would just like to call attention to the fact that this could have been a more diverse cast, but a safe and welcoming environment was not created for people that I consider to be underrepresented,'” Barrett said in the statement.
[…] Senior Melissa Ballard, one of the demonstrators, was originally part of the cast, but said the directors asked her to leave a week before the show started because she was “hostile.”
“The Vagina Monologues is a very good cause but not all women were represented in this production of the monologue,” Ballard said. After her dismissal, she said only one other woman of color remained in the show. “Plus size” and queer women were also not well-represented, she said.
Not that the directors had a lot of choice.
Mays said about 85 people auditioned for the show and there wasn’t a large pool of “visible” people of color to choose from. She said it is also not always possible to tell one’s ethnicity or sexual orientation just by looking at the person, adding that she does not usually ask people what their sexual orientation is at an audition.
Mays, who is part Native American herself, said she mainly wanted strong women with passion and dedication when she made the casting decisions. “I’m not just going to put someone in my show because of the way they look,” she said, adding that to do so is in itself a form of discrimination.
Yes, but that’s good discrimination, not bad discrimination. Silly person. Back to the education camps with you …