This post comes with an asterisk*.

The Women’s Law Society here is about to put on a production of the Vagina Monologues.  They have secured a small space from the theater department and the performances will all be done by law students.  To their credit, the purpose of this performance is to raise money to create a paid summer internship position with the Family Law and Domestic Violence clinic.  But here is my problem with this whole entire thing:

1. They are raising money from their peers and not from the legal community - the people who they are pushing to buy tickets are their fellow students.  We’re broke.  Instead, they should be tapping the wealthy local legal community - but this sort of event is unlikely to interest them because…
2. Law students are not actors - why would anyone want to sit through a monologue performance by someone who really should be spending their time reading their Torts textbook?  Why didn’t they just get volunteers from the undergraduate theater department looking for experience?
3. It is not in the performers’ interest - it may be a hobby, but in this crazy competitive legal market, noting that you performed in a law school production of the Vagina Monologues, rather than say volunteered for pro bono work, has zero, and I mean ZERO resume value.
4. It is an ineffective way of helping women - even first year law students have skills that are desirable to people who need legal help.  They usually have strong writing skills that are useful for a variety of pro bono projects supporting women.  For example, aiding a victim of domestic violence who is struggling to articulate what happened to her in order to get an emergency restraining order for her and her children.  In other words, their time could be put to considerably better use, both for developing their own legal experience, and helping women through the law.

I find this extremely frustrating.  I have already made a commitment to donate from my summer salary to the public interest law fund which will provide funds to a student working in the public interest this summer.  I do not want to buy a ticket for this and further, I just don’t want to go.

Last but not least, in a recent email to the Women’s Law Society, the organizer of the event signed the email “Yours with ‘vagina’ pride.”  

1. Why is vagina in quotation marks?
2. What are you, nineteen?  I mean, seriously?

Grrrr… I am letting this go, I am letting this go, I am letting this go.

*I’m about to judge other women.  I’m comfortable with the fact that I’m both judgmental and feminist, mostly because I judge everyone all the time regardless of gender.  If you care more about people being critical of women than you do about equal pay for women, reproductive rights, and domestic violence, to name a few, then it’s my opinion that you should rethink your feminism.