I attend lots of meetings. In them, we share stories. This is one of them:

One of the most disturbing stories I have heard recently was from a woman who was physically hurt by two large males simply because she wanted one of them to say “a dirty word.” She showed us her bruises, which were well over a week old and still discolored and told us how she was strapped to a bed in a dorm room, and had to fight to get free. All she wanted was for one of the guys, one of her friends, to say a simple word.

Vagina. There, I’ve said it. Was it hard? No. The word kind of trips over itself in the beginning, but after you get used to saying it, it can roll off your tongue like a fine wine.

This one, simple, three syllabic word is what one of us in my meeting got bruised and strapped down for, against her will. It’s amazing to me how one word can conjure up so many thoughts and emotions in people. It amazes me how different people can feel so strongly for, and yet so strongly against, one little word.

Why are vaginas such a big issue in my meeting? Because this group of young, strong and beautiful women is going to perform “The Vagina Monologues,” right here, on this campus. One of us thus far has even been able to get the dean of one of the schools to come to a show. Amazing.

Go back and review the beginning of this article. How did you feel the first time you read it? What kind of situation or scene formed in your mind? While I may have written that part to be deliberately vague and to make you envision it in a certain light, what I have reported is also true. A woman fought for a word, a concept, a piece of her anatomy that her friend had labeled “a dirty word.” Ladies and gents, we were conceived and born in that “dirty word.” How many of us, male or female, really ever stop and think about this? Do we ever stop and think, “I was born in a dirty place?”

Eve Ensler didn’t think so. She is the screenwriter who conducted over 200 interviews with women from all backgrounds and walks of life. The words in The Vagina Monologues are their words, the words of these women who sat down with a stranger and told her candidly about their vaginas. In so doing they talk about violence; sexual, emotional and physical; about the first time they had their periods; about discovering their sexual identities and a host of other topics, all centered around that part of the female body which gave us birth: the vagina. There is even a piece about the women of Afghanistan, and what, until just recently, they were forced to endure under the harsh reign of the Taliban.

We are not a bunch of raging feminists. We are not all lesbians. We are not anti-male. But we are concerned, enlightened and empowered women who feel strongly about something that no one in this country cares to talk about: where we all came from, the vagina.

I could write on about this forever, because this topic is close to my heart and encompasses many things that I feel strongly about. I hop, to write more about “The Vagina Monologues” as the weeks progress and we grow closer to opening night: March 7.

If I can’t change your mind about this topic, to make you think of it in a different light, “The Vagina Monologues” can. I hope you will join us.