从《阴道独白》到《女性独白》

From The Vagina Monologues to The Female Monologues

《阴道独白》（中山大学师生演出）“出生之舞”录像剧照。

作者：阳玉

By Yang Yu

The English version follows below.

近年来，女性议题，成为了中国互联网和大众文化中的流量性话题标签。从“微博女权”到女性主义影视剧（如电影《好东西》和电视剧《国色芳华》），从女性综艺（如《乘风破浪的姐姐》和《听见她说》）到女性访谈节目（《第一人称复数》），从女性主义书单（上野千鹤子的每一本书都被翻译）到脱口秀节目中的女性演员和女性经验的叙述，都标志着女性议题在中国越来越强的存在。

但同时发生的，有女权五姐妹被抓，唐山打人事件，铁链女事件，黄雪琴被抓，女权组织的活动空间不断紧缩，除了体制内关注女性权益的机构还在继续存在，比如全国妇联（其活动空间也非常有限），女权的民间线下组织几乎很难建立和延续，关于女性实际的经济权益、政治参与和人身基本权利的保障的量化和研究，也缺乏完整、准确的学术性叙述。

于是出现了一种吊诡的现象，女性议题的流量越来越强的同时，女性权利的讨论和实践空间却在紧缩。与这一现象相对应的，是话剧《阴道独白》二十年来在中国大陆的经历和演出历史：从2003年中文首演以来，在世纪初的二十多年里，《阴道独白》经历了震动主流、得到大量媒体报道，并引发官媒讨论（央视教育台《青苹果红苹果》栏目在话剧展出后，专门制作过一期节目邀请话剧主创团队，以及歌手、演员、学者参与讨论），到在公共领域被抹除、被排斥，只能以亚文化的形式存在的过程。关于中文版《阴道独白》在中国大陆用中文首次改编、制作、演出，以及当时观众的反应和社会的反响的记忆，如今早已淡泊。为了重建人的记忆与努力的连续性，重建人与人的连续性和相关性，我们不妨重温《阴道独白》中文版的影像和《〈阴道独白〉幕后故事》。

话剧《阴道独白》（The Vagina Monologues）由美国剧作家伊芙·恩斯勒（Eve Ensler）于1996年创作并首演于纽约百老汇。剧作者在1991年前波黑战争爆发后，到前南斯拉夫的克罗地亚、波斯尼亚等地区及世界各地，采访了200多位来自不同文化、不同社会背景的妇女，基于她们的叙述，写成《阴道独白》。很快，《阴道独白》的演出成为女性权益保护的公益项目，作为“制止暴力侵害妇女行为国际日”（每年从11月25日至12月10日共16天的行动）的标准演出剧目，至今已被翻译成至少50种语言，在世界140多个国家的剧院、学校和社区上演。

2003年，中山大学性别教育论坛负责人、中文系教授艾晓明策划了《阴道独白》在中国大陆的第一场中文演出。出演的中山大学师生在原作基础上加入了对本土妇女经验的诠释，围绕中国性别歧视的典型现象对剧本进行了修改，如学生自创的现代舞蹈《弃婴》、独白《初潮》和《呻吟》等。2003年12月7日，艾晓明指导的《阴道独白》在广州美术馆上演。演出被制作成视频，并在之后的几年于中国多所高校展映。

胡杰和艾晓明共同制作的纪录片《〈阴道独白〉幕后故事》记录了《阴道独白》2003年首演舞台背后的故事，包括演出的策划过程，演出幕后的政治语境和社会背景，观众的反应，演出引发的公共讨论以及引起的社会波动。这部纪录片，涵盖了演出的方方面面，包括对制作团队、演员的采访（大部分是中山大学的老师和参与演出的学生），对制作人及演员的家人、伴侣的采访，对观众的采访（导演特意突出了男性观众的反应），以及后续引发的公共领域的讨论：包括在北京举办的妇女权益保护学术会议上的讨论，广东美术馆在公开展演后举行的座谈会，制作团队在广州番禺农民工文化服务处的公开展演及映后农民工的交流分享，央视教育频道《青苹果红苹果》栏目集合学者、演出倡导者、参与者对话剧本身以及女性权益保障的讨论，以及全国其他高校的展映时间表。

纪录片主创们在拍摄《阴道独白》演出的台前幕后的同时，记录下了一场社会事件发生的始末，记录下了当时中国大陆性别平等运动所处的语境，记录下了学生、老师、学者、媒体人、公共知识分子和各行各业的男性、女性在2003年的性别平权运动中，在各自所处的语境下，个人的选择和实践。观众可以看到，演出的参与者们怎样选择做出以及做成一件事情，创作者们怎样把中国的女性经验融入到一部英语世界主创的话剧中，怎样面对来自家人、伴侣、社会的反应和压力（片中记录了一个与普遍现实调转的场景：一位倡导女性权益保护的学者和活动者，被九零后的女儿批评说太过激进），以及当时她们的努力和人们的反应促成了哪些女性权益保障制度的进步。

《阴道独白》（中山大学师生演出）“呻吟”录像剧照。

在2003年成为全国性现象的《阴道独白》中文首演，如今却在互联网上销声匿迹。在B站、抖音、快手等中国国内视频平台找不到任何关于这部话剧的片段的流通，微博等话题平台上对它的讨论几乎为零。在B站和微博——女性主义话语最为活跃的视频与文字平台，搜索《阴道独白》，只能看到零星几条帖子。B站为数不多的几条视频片段多关于英语世界《阴道独白》制作的讨论，只有一条是中国美术学院象山剧社于2019年排演改编《阴道独白》的剪辑；微博上，关于《阴道独白》的讨论集中在2013年至2018年，有稀疏的几条个人（非微博大V）发布的帖子打卡观演记录。而2018年后，《阴道独白》在微博上几乎不存在，“阴道独白”作为一个话题被禁止讨论（该话题下显示零讨论，零阅读）。一位温州女性在微博贴出的演出票上，剧名《阴道独白》被改成了特意融入互联网盛行的强调女性表达、女性话语（譬如近年来流行的“她说”，“听见她说”，“她的故事”）的名称——《女性独白》。“阴道”——这部话剧的唯一主题和核心，被“女性”代替。最直接的、身体性的、只能属于女性身体的叙述，被互联网上的流量标签——女性表达，所取代。

阴道，是女性生殖器官，是生命的起源和出生的通路。因为它除了承担生殖功能外，还作为性爱器官，阴道也是女性身体最被暴力对待的部位，是被理所当然地认为可以入侵的部位，是女性对自己的身体丧失主导权的部位。男性阴茎的存在，被认作对某种主权的宣示，而女性的阴道，则代表了主权的缺失，因为它代表了被进入，而不是主动入侵。为什么阴道的独白，无法被女性的独白所取代，因为阴道直接跟女性的身体相关，而女性权利的争取最直接的方式，是对自己身体权利的争取，对自己阴道权利的争取。从被强奸、计划生育被结扎，到生育时被撕裂扯开、被鸭嘴钳侵入，阴道是女性受侵害最深的部位。女性的阴道，作为生命的起源，早期人类史上被崇拜的生殖器官，同时是被践踏、侵略、伤害最深的身体部位。阴道的权利即作为一个人的基本权利，免于恐惧的权利，免于害怕强奸的权利，免于身体被随意侵害的权利。

把《阴道独白》改为《女性独白》，似乎是挖苦一般，说明了当下中国女性主义话语的存在方式：可以说女性，不可以说阴道；可以讨论女性经验，但只能把它收编纳入互联网流量话题；可以诉说，可以不停地诉说，女性如何如何美丽，女性的经验如何如何特别、值得关注，但最好不要争取阴道的权利，也最好不要知道二十年前的女性如何争取阴道的权利。如果阴道是不可说的，阴道的经验是不可说的，那么女性的经验，真的是可说的吗？

权力对阴道的恐惧，对《阴道独白》的恐惧，不仅因为阴道是生殖器官，还因为性在全世界的大部分文化里都还依旧是敏感的或禁忌的，更是因为《阴道独白》本身的演出就是一场社会运动，是朱迪斯·巴特勒（Judith Butler）所说的立足生命的危脆性所展开的政治反抗，是“非暴力的力量”，脆弱性的力量。

依存是脆弱性的根基，亦是集体抵抗的根本。当我们拥抱生命的脆弱，阴道的脆弱，拒绝蔑视任何生命的可能性（阴道本身就是生命的可能性）被剥夺的痛苦，这种脆弱的“身体之重”（bodies that matter）便会成为政治能动力的实质来源。对《阴道独白》的集体性观看，事实上是对女性身体能动性的集体性观看，是对生命能动性的观看，是拥抱脆弱性的公共行动——阴道和剧场，都是政治的场域。而独白的阴道，本身造就和展演了充满生机的政治反抗手段。

虽然2003年《阴道独白》带来的社会反响在2025年的互联网上不见踪影，但2015年中国通过了反家暴法，2021年反性骚扰进入《民法典》——我们不去主动把反家暴、反性骚扰取得的有限进步和《阴道独白》的中文首演做联系，是因为我们无法这样做，因为现在的互联网上几乎没有中国人知道2003年《阴道独白》在中国大陆中文首演，以及演出引发了公共领域怎样的讨论和改变。

由于权力的渗透和打压，公共生活的萎缩，以及我们对互联网的上瘾，在现实层面与个体发生连接，建立群体与组织，已经越来越难；由于记忆的断层，我们也很难与经历过五年前、十年前、二十年前的历史的人相联系，与他们建立沟通，于是我们非常容易陷入虚无，在时间的横切面和纵切面都很难感受到行动的力量。重建记忆之必要，是因为记忆的重建，让我们把自己和前人接续起来，建立人在时间上的连续性，让我们意识到，在行动的路上，我们并不那么孤独，也没有那么无力，我们接续着力量。

本期推荐档案：

影片：《阴道独白》（中山大学师生演出）

影片：《〈阴道独白〉幕后故事》

文章：《阴道独白》在中国大陆的旅行

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Film still from “The Dance of Birth” in The Vagina Monologues (Performance at Sun Yat-sen University).

From The Vagina Monologues to The Female Monologues

By Yang Yu

In recent years, women’s issues have become a popular topic on the Chinese Internet and in popular culture. From “Weibo Feminism” to feminist films and TV dramas like Her Story and Flourished Peony, from women’s variety shows such as Sisters Who Make Waves and Hear Her to women’s talk shows like First Person Plural, and from feminist book lists featuring translations of Chizuko Ueno’s works to the rise of female stand-up comedians who highlight women’s experiences, women’s issues are enjoying a growing presence in Chinese society.

But this surge also coincided with the arrests of the “Feminist Five,” the Tangshan restaurant attack, the Xuzhou chained woman incident, and the arrest of Huang Xueqin. Additionally, the space for feminist organizing has significantly narrowed: beyond state-affiliated institutions like the All-China Women’s Federation, whose operational scope is limited, independent feminist organizations have become very difficult to establish and maintain. China also lacks academic research and quantitative analysis of women’s economic and political status and the protection of women’s fundamental rights.

Thus, a paradoxical situation emerges: as the discussion of women’s issues gains more clicks and views on the Chinese Internet, the space for women’s rights advocacy is diminishing. We can see a parallel in the twenty-plus-year history of The Vagina Monologues in China. Since its Chinese-language premiere in 2003, the play has experienced a shift from mainstream acceptance, marked by extensive media coverage and official discussion (including a special segment on CCTV’s “Green Apples, Red Apples” program featuring the play’s creative team and performers), to its eventual erasure from the public sphere and transformation into underground subculture. The play’s initial adaptation, production, and performance, along with the audience’s responses and society’s reactions, have largely faded from China’s public memory. If we want to restore this continuity of memory, endeavor, and connection, it is time for us to revisit the Chinese version of The Vagina Monologues and the documentary The Vagina Monologues – Stories Behind the Scenes.

Written by American playwright Eve Ensler and premiered on Broadway in 1996, The Vagina Monologues was based on interviews with over 200 women from diverse cultures and backgrounds, including many who were affected by the Bosnian War. Translated into at least 50 languages and performed in over 140 countries, the play became a popular performance routine worldwide for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

In 2003, Ai Xiaoming, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Sun Yat-sen University and head of the Gender Education Forum, organized the first Chinese-language performance of The Vagina Monologues in China. Students and faculty added their own interpretation of local experiences and incorporated examples of gender discrimination in China. A student choreographed the modern dance “Abandoned Babies,” and the performers wrote new monologues titled “The First Period” and “Moaning.” Directed by Ai Xiaoming, the performance was staged at the Guangzhou Museum of Art on December 7, 2003. The performance was recorded and subsequently shown at many Chinese universities.

The documentary Behind the Scenes of The Vagina Monologues, co-produced by Hu Jie and Ai Xiaoming, captures the story behind the 2003 premiere. It documents the planning process, the social and political context, audience responses, public discussions, and societal reactions. The documentary includes interviews with the production team, performers (mostly Sun Yat-sen University faculty and students), their families and partners, audience members (with a focus on men), and participants in public forums, such as the Academic Conference on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests in Beijing, a screening at the Guangdong Museum of Art, a showing at the Panyu Migrant Workers Cultural Service Office, and the CCTV Education Channel’s “Green Apples, Red Apples” program.

The creators of the documentary recorded both onstage and behind-the-scenes moments, documenting a significant event within the context of China’s emerging gender equality movement. It highlights the participants’ actions and choices, the integration of Chinese women’s experiences into the play, the challenges women faced from families and society (the film includes a scene where a women’s rights advocate is criticized by her young daughter for being too radical, a reversal of roles in typical narratives), and the incremental progress in women’s rights advocacy.

Film still from “Moaning” in The Vagina Monologues (Performance at Sun Yat-sen University).

Nowadays, however, the play has been effectively erased from the Chinese Internet. Clips are absent from major Chinese video platforms like Bilibili, Douyin, and Kuaishou, while discussions are minimal on social media platforms like Weibo. Searches on these platforms yield only scattered results, primarily concerning productions outside China or a 2019 rehearsal by the China Academy of Art’s Xiang Shan Drama Club. On Weibo, discussions on The Vagina Monologues appeared the most between 2013 and 2018 (Weibo only became popular in the 2010s), but with only a few posts. Since 2018, The Vagina Monologues has been effectively banned, with zero discussions and reads under its designated topic. A ticket posted on Weibo by a woman in Wenzhou revealed that the play’s title was altered to The Female Monologues. “Vagina,” the theme and the core of the play, was replaced by “female.” A direct, specific bodily narrative that only belongs to women was substituted with a generalized label with a generalized word that erases the play’s original intent.

The original title was not accidental. The vagina, a symbol of life’s origin, is also a site of profound vulnerability and violation. While the male penis is often associated with sovereignty, the vagina is frequently viewed as a site of intrusion, representing a loss of bodily autonomy. The reason The Vagina Monologues should not be replaced by The Female Monologues is because the vagina is directly connected to a woman’s body, and the most direct way to advocate for women’s rights is to fight for the rights to their own bodies and the rights to their own vaginas.

From forcible rape to ligation due to the One Child Policy, from being ripped open during childbirth to being invaded with the speculum during checkups, the vagina, the source of life, the reproductive organ revered in early human history, is also the most trampled, invaded, and violated part of the body. The right to the vagina is a fundamental human right, the right to be free from fear, the right to be free from the fear of rape, and the right to be free from the arbitrary violation of one’s body.

The shift from The Vagina Monologues to The Female Monologues also reflects a broader trend in which feminist narratives survive in China today: we are allowed to talk about women, but not their vaginas; we are allowed to discuss women’s experiences, but only within the confines of Internet trends; we are free to talk nonstop about how beautiful women are and how special and noteworthy their experiences are, but we cannot advocate for the vagina’s rights or know how women in China advocated for their vaginas’ rights twenty years ago. If both the vagina and the vagina’s experiences are unmentionable, are women’s experiences really mentionable?

The fear of the vagina and the fear of The Vagina Monologues are not only because the vagina is a reproductive organ and because sex remains taboo or sensitive in most cultures throughout the world, but also because the performance of The Vagina Monologues is itself a social movement and a political revolt based on the precariousness of life, what Judith Butler calls “the force of nonviolence” and the power of vulnerability.

When we embrace the precariousness of life, the precariousness of the vagina, and refuse to despise the pain of being deprived of any possibility of life (the vagina itself is a possibility of life), those “bodies that matter” become the very source of political dynamism. The collective viewing of The Vagina Monologues is in fact a collective viewing of the dynamism of the female body, a viewing of the dynamism of life, and a public embrace of vulnerability, as the vagina and the theater are both political arenas. And the vagina with its own monologues can create and exhibit vibrant means of political resistance.

Although the social impact of The Vagina Monologues from 2003 is largely absent from the Chinese Internet today, China has passed its first national anti-domestic violence legislation in 2015 and incorporated anti-sexual harassment provisions into the Civil Code in 2021. However, we usually do not associate China’s limited progress in fighting domestic violence and sexual harassment with the premiere of The Vagina Monologues because such a connection is obfuscated by historical erasure–very few Chinese people know about the premiere in 2003 and how it inspired public discussion and change.

The pressure of authoritarianism, the erosion of public space, and our addiction to the Internet all make it increasingly difficult for us to make connections and build communities in the physical world. Due to the fragmentation of our public memory, we often find it difficult to connect with people who lived through history, such as people like Ai Xiaoming and her work from two decades ago. Thus, we are prone to the trap of nihilism and the feeling of powerlessness.

That is why action begins with the reconstruction of our memory because memory allows us to connect with those who have experienced history before us, to position ourselves in a long timeline of human endeavor, and to realize that we are neither lonely nor powerless–we are in fact inheriting so much strength from those who made history.