Vagina Dialogues

I really didn't think we'd be addressing this issue again, and certainly not so soon. Thank God, though, for the good men of Michigan (and, no, I didn't leave a gender out - the twig and berry set are mostly to blame today) who've gone above and beyond to protect our fragile flowers.

State Senator Lisa Brown (D-West Bloomfield) was barred from speaking on the floor of the Senate for a day after using the word 'vagina' in open debate. The word confuses and scares men of a certain type, especially when uttered by a woman, and most particularly when used as weapons in a political argument. I applaud my brothers in Lansing for their courageous stand, snatching (as it were) decency and decorum back from the brink.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick offered a helpful legislative solution to assuage the Michiganders' delicate sensibilities, sketching out a new resolution requiring women to wait 72 hours after consulting a physician before saying 'vagina'. Lithwick (who has a vagina, after all, and as such is probably very conniving and dangerous), goes on to suggest the following provisions:

Also, provision d(9)(a) of the bill would amend the current law to ensure that if any listener who hears the word vagina spoken aloud—although it may be the medically correct term for a woman’s reproductive organs—feels any religious objections to such speech, that speech may be curtailed in the interest of preserving the listener’s religious freedom as detailed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Any other marginally relevant provisions of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution are herein rescinded as needed.

Finally, Michigan state health statutes shall be amended by provision 12(b)(6) which provides that prior to speaking the word vagina out loud, any female resident of Michigan shall undergo a mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound procedure, during which she must watch such ultrasound while listening to a government-scripted speech about the grave dangers of speaking anatomically correct words, aloud, in an enlightened democracy.

And so we thank you, Senate Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamas. Your stand for decency and moral rectitude will be remembered and emulated. By a whole new generation of pre-pubescent boys who think girls have cooties and anatomic terms are icky. Fight the good fight, sir, lest we be forced at vagina-point to say the word out loud ourselves.