Clit Notes

Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler by Holly Hughes
1996
Weight: 10.4 oz
Method of Disposal: It is up for grabs if you want it, but I will be recycling it on Wed. if I cannot find any takers.
*Pictures are from one of my journals I wrote in from the same time period as my reading of this book*





I have been awful about updating this blog in the last couple weeks. I lost a dear friend—a beautiful shelter dog with an exceptional personality and have been unable to focus on much else. I am going to try to get it back on track here, and I appreciate anyone who is sticking with me.

Today, I am ridding myself of Clit Notes. I became obsessed with books about vaginas, clits, cunts, and all the variaous associated components when I was a teenager. The Vagina Monologues started it off and then I ran with it. I worked at a small bookstore, and I would search those words and order whichever books seemed to fit. I will never forget being called after I quit my job because my special order, Anal Pleasures had arrived. As you can probably already guess, we were an open-minded and close-knit group at that store and it was not overly strange that I ordered those books at work. I wanted to be a sexologist, and I got a discount on information there.

At the time, I thought the title Clit Notes was pretty fantastic and hilarious. I was very excited about it, and even more disappointed when I was finally able to read it. I hated it. I see that it has great reviews on Amazon, and Ms. Magazine has quite the quote on the back. Maybe I was too young and it went over my head, but I have no desire to return to it. I found other fantastic books like the Clitoral Truth , Woman: An Intimate Biography, and Tales From the Clit. Now, I feel differently about the whole thing. I still like a lot about all those books, but I do not like to focus on genitalia being what makes the woman. They all seem so gynocentric (which I hate now) and too exclusive. They would all do best in a home with someone who has an understanding of gender identity and the problems with gender and sex dichotomies. They would like to reside next to books about all sorts of bodies, and maybe even some books on pleasure and sexuality. Are you the right family for this homeless book? Please let me know before Wed.

"At First Women Were Reluctant to Talk"

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
2001
Weight: 9 oz.
Method of disposal: Attempting to give it away through a social networking site. If I cannot I will move on to plan B.




Today, I am parting with my copy of The Vagina Monologues, complete with the highlighting of the fifteen year old I was when I bought it. I saw it on a shelf in the drama section at Waldenbooks when I worked there, and I bought it because of the title. I read the book that same night and loved it. It started a sort of-affair. I went to see college productions of it on a regular basis throughout the years and one time I went with my friend Sarah to see it done by Eve Ensler herself. Later, I would volunteer at an event that hosted Ms. Ensler and Jane Fonda. A whole group of us took a picture I have never seen. I remember Eve Ensler’s hand on my shoulder. Even later, I would go to Charis with a very attractive queer preacher to see her talk about her publication, The Good Body. This is yet another time when I will be disbanding a book from a complete collection of all the books written by an author.
I use to be in awe of Eve Ensler. Can you tell? There has been a gradual letting go of that awe over the last six years and now I have a dull curiosity when I see her name in print. I will continue to read about her and her work. But I also think about that initial collection where a father buys his daughter a vagina—the only intersex narrative in the book—with dismay. She has spoken with students about it for years and compromises have been worked out, but it lingers in my copy and thousands of others. I think of Jakarta, Warsaw, Kenya, and other places where The Vagina Monologues has traveled and the mixture of emotions about it expressed in the feedback—the validity of the feelings of those who loved it and those who hated it. I love talking about sex, bodies, and sexuality. I also recoil from gynocentrism, and its effects on our beliefs about gender and sex as binary systems.
There is a lot good about Eve Ensler and about The Vagina Monologues, and I will never forget my initial love for it. It is time for me to move on now. Looking at my highlights, “My Angry Vagina” was my favorite piece in the collection when I first read it. In hindsight, it is hard to imagine growing up without it. I found this book at the perfect time. It did what, I think, it was intended to do. It helped me fall in love and/or maintain my love for my genitalia—though I do not think my vagina is the truly important component of my anatomy. It pales in comparison to my clitoris, my ears, my neck, and my back.