This post is a little on the far side of what I often talk about, but it made me really curious since the way in which language is used to establish and discuss political identity (especially in India) is one of things that my thesis touches on and that I don't know near enough about. (I'm trying to learn, but my brain is only occasionally up too handling all the information I want to learn.) It also touches on the many conflicts in feminism that have been blown wide open by both the current US presidential election and the use of "women's rights" as a battle cry in things like justifying war where the US relationship to Arab and/or Muslim women is patronizing, ludicrous, imperialistic, and wrong. (Did I mention I have some strong feelings on the issue? I was annoyed beyond all reasonable belief by Slate's recent contest for cartoons on Iran. Take a look at this post from Muslimah Media Watch about how they get just about everything about Iranian women wrong. Though I am signing this petition about women's rights in Iran and I encourage others to as well.)

Anyway, the post is all about the way in which The Vagina Monologues has been translated for South-East Asia using the word yoni (Sanskrit), which is fairly specific to Northern India and not at all inclusive of South-East Asia. The author is concerned both with the way this reflects the stupidity of the American feminists running the production in trying to define South-East Asian women without ever asking them how they talk about their vagina's (see Chay Magazine, which seems like it is going to be pretty awesome) and the way this ends up marginalizing the very people the production is supposedly empowering. It is a very good post. My question is, do even Northern Indian women use this word? I've never heard anyone use it and I get the feeling it has more currency in the US because of Kama Sutra translations than it does even in Northern India. From what I know it would be equivalent to using whatever Hebrew words refer to the vagina in the Song of Songs as the catch-all for American women (granted that text is much more metaphorical and depending on how you wanted to exoticize American women you could probably use some ancient word in Latin, many marriage ceremonies in the US were still conducted in Latin until Vatican II). So, I suppose my point is: what she says, only is the effort even more in bad faith than the poster thinks?