Inspired by @stavvers, my letter to Nadine Dorries:

Dear Nadine Dorries,
I gather you’ve had quite a few letters by now from women telling you about their uteruses (uteri?), in an attempt to satisfy your fascination with other women’s lady parts, so I thought I’d let you know how mine’s getting on, just in case you were wondering.

Earlier this year I took part in a performance of The Vagina Monologues at my university, to celebrate International Women’s Day. I played the woman who has an angry vagina.
[If you’d like to watch the performance, there’s a (fairly bad quality) video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbyjkTRLhTo]
The woman in the monologue has an angry vagina because people are always trying to shove things up it, clean it up, make it smell ‘nice’. It doesn’t like being interfered with, it wants to be pampered and respected, not all cleaned up and sent away.

Well, my vagina’s angry as well.

My vagina is angry with people like you who want to control what happens to it. As far as my vagina is concerned, the only person who is allowed to control it is me, and even then it’s only if I ask it nicely, and if it’s in a good mood. My vagina and I have a difficult relationship at times. I like it, and I’m glad I’ve got one, but it is a temperamental mistress sometimes.
My periods have always been all over the place, even now that I have the contraceptive implant which I’d hoped would control them a bit, they’re even more unpredictable than before, and I’ve no doubt it’s my vagina’s fault.
It’s a pesky vagina is what it is. A law unto itself.

My vagina and I were lucky enough to have had a very good sex education at school, so when we both got a bit older into our teenage years and started having sex, we felt confident and informed enough to go on The Pill.
Which brings me to my vagina’s first grievance with people like you – my vagina is very grateful to my school for providing us both with such great sex education, and it’s very angry that you’re looking to limit the provision of such education in future.
This abstinence business, for example. What’s that all about Nadine? My vagina’s angry about that. Me and my vagina don’t want to be told not to have sex if we want to. That’s one thing my vagina and I work quite well together on, actually – deciding if we’re going to have sex. We made that decision very well for ourselves when we were 17 , and have continued to do so ever since.
I know for certain that my vagina would probably have gone ahead and had sex without me years ago if we’d not had the excellent education we’d had, and instead had been told to just NOT DO IT, which would have caused no end of trouble between me and my vagina – I’d have been conflicted about it all, and I’d have been very cross with my vagina indeed.
My vagina’s worried about teenage girls and their vaginas, and the whole big mess it’ll all be if your silly idea about abstinence-only sex education goes ahead. There’ll be vaginas wanting to have sex (because, let’s be honest, that’s what a lot of them do), and girls telling their vaginas they’re not supposed to have sex because they’re not married or whatever, and vaginas shouting back that they don’t care about being married, and girls in constant conflict with their vaginas and... Oh, God. Can you imagine it Nadine? Chaos. Even when the vaginas eventually get their way (let’s face it, they always will), the young women won’t know how to protect their vaginas during sex; they won’t have learnt about condoms or femidoms or dental dams or The Pill or the implant or the coil or diaphragms... or any of that amazing medical geniusness that protects vaginas from unwanted pregnancy and nasty infections and diseases. Just think about it Nadine; a whole generation of girls and young women hating their vaginas and their vaginas hating them back.

Speaking of unwanted pregnancies, my vagina’s even more angry with you over this whole abortion thing. Fortunately for us, we’ve never experienced an unwanted pregnancy. (We’ve never experienced a wanted one either, come to that, but maybe we will one day when we decide it’s the right time.) We put that down to our aforementioned excellent sex education. We’ve had a couple of pregnancy scares, if I’m honest, but that’s mostly just because we don’t communicate very well and I panic a lot.
My vagina is sure, however, that if we ever did experience an unwanted pregnancy of our own (my vagina thinks it owns my uterus as well, so it’s all included in the package here for the sake of argument), we would want free and speedy access to some lovely people who can help us take care of it, and move on with our life. We certainly wouldn’t want some religious zealot telling us that what we have inside us is a baby, rather than (as far as we’re concerned) a collection of cells, and that if we allow the ‘baby’ to be aborted, God will frown upon us both. For one, my vagina and I don’t believe in God, so that would just be a colossal waste of our time.
My vagina and I trust the people who currently provide abortion counselling, like the wonderful people at Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. We trust that if we ever ended up in a situation where we needed their help with an abortion, they would advise us in the most compassionate and accepting way possible, because we’re smart enough to realise that a pro-choicer can offer impartial advice (‘continue the pregnancy/don’t continue the pregnancy – whichever you want’), whereas a pro-lifer can’t (‘if you don’t continue the pregnancy God will be cross’). Frankly we don't understand how you and your vagina have come to this crazy idea that allowing anti-choice organisations to 'counsel' women who are seeking abortions is a good idea. The only conclusion we've reached is that you've chosen to ignore the better judgement of your own vagina, which no doubt thinks the same thing as mine, that no-one should choose what happens to it other than itself, and maybe sometimes you. You’re willing to allow religious zealots and male politicians decide what happens to your vagina? What did your vagina do to you to make you want to punish it so much? My vagina is worried about your vagina and the fact that you’re not listening to it. Listen to your vagina Nadine, it’s dangerous not to, believe me.

I’m sorry to write you such a long and rambling letter, but once my vagina starts talking it often doesn’t stop; and since I completely agree with it I thought I’d let you know how we’ve been feeling towards you and your crackpot ideas. My vagina is very angry with you, and I don’t blame it. I’m very angry with you too. Please, for fuck’s sake, stop pissing me and my vagina off. You have no idea what kind of hell we can unleash once we’ve united with other women and their vaginas.

Yours angrily,
Zoe

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