The Vagina Dialogues

Tony Deyal, Contributor

When two of my peripatetic male colleagues, one in Jamaica and the other from some far-flung outpost of the World Bank, recently drew my attention to the same news item and their emails were immediately followed by a call from a Trini friend with his take on the same phenomenon, I had no choice but to take the matter very seriously.

The first email from my Jamaican friend was headed 'Another Easter Miracle'. The second, from my friend who richly deserves his place among the Lords of Poverty as an advocate for the deprived and dispossessed, said, "Quite the provocative headline, isn't it??!!!" As if his question mark and exclamations were not in themselves sufficient to excite my interest and bring my attention to attention, salute and all, the Trini caller took the headline to higher heights. "Tony," he said, "you see the article?" I knew as sure as the Almighty makes little green bananas to boil and eat with salt fish the article he was talking about. He then gilded the lily, "Incredible, eh? 'Lab-grown vaginas implanted by US doctors'. What ah thing eh?"

"Hold on, hold on," I begged. Telling him that a headline was an act of marketing and not of journalism, I asked, "You read the rest of the story?" He reluctantly admitted, "Some of it, but that don't matter." I was not surprised. The story, originating from North Carolina, started: "A medical breakthrough in the United States has seen four women having new vaginas grown in the laboratory and implanted by doctors ... ."

That set him off, and what added further fuel to the conflagration was, "In the procedures, a tissue sample and a biodegradable scaffold were used to grow vaginas the right size and shape for each woman, as well as provide a tissue match." I believe a lot of men, including some very educated ones, started with a misconception similar to the one that the cloistered monk found in the holy book when he rushed out of the dark library where he was translating the scripture from the Latin and shouted, "The word is 'celebrate', not 'celibate'."

Pleasure without excess costs

It is true for many men, not just my friend at the bank who admitted, "When I saw it, for a second I thought of the possibility of men having access just to a vagina and leaving out the rest of the female package! In other words, full pleasure without excess costs!!! An economist's dream!!"

I could imagine those men who buy inflatable dolls for sexual use smirking all the way to North Carolina, where they would be so doomed to disappointment that they would 'steups', or suck air and saliva through their teeth, to express annoyance instead of pleasure.

The fact is that the women for whom the implants had been customised were born with a condition known as vaginal aplasia in which the vagina did not form properly while they were in their mother's womb. Dr Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest, told the BBC News website: "Really for the first time, we've created a whole organ that was never there to start with. It was a challenge."

However, this did not challenge my Trini friend in the slightest. He was already seeing the possibilities, and given the way that Trinidad and Tobago is now polarised along political lines, he jumped on it like Brian Lara to a full toss from Dinesh Kaneria, the Pakistan spinner.

In fact, my friend put his own very partisan spin on it. "Remember that female politician who used the government credit card for fertility or gynaecological treatments, hair transplants and clothes?" he asked. I told him to stop immediately. He did not, and continued, "Consider what someone with that kind of buying power could have if this medical breakthrough had happened at that time! Talking about the hair business ... ."

This time I stopped him for good. "Look, let's not go there," I insisted. I know there were a lot of concerns at the time. The comptroller of accounts raised the matter in an official report about not one, but 29, government officials in the Manning administration, including 10 ministers, of whom the person you're talking about was one and her bill was supposedly only $174,000 ... ."

No big deal

He interrupted, "That should be illegal!" I told him that people were saying so at the time but that never happened, so he should leave it alone. I pointed out that as far as I knew, the use of government or company credit cards for personal use was not an issue, and even though people who did so and then refunded the money were still guilty of breaching the terms and conditions of the use of the card, it was not a big deal in the region.

He then changed topic. "Yes, but if you accuse a parliamentarian of doing this in the House or Senate, what is the problem? In the British tradition we follow, this kind of back-and-forth among members is normal. I remember reading that David Lloyd George said of a Jewish member of Parliament: "When they circumcised him, they threw away the wrong bit!" And former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith described Winston Churchill as "begotten of froth out of foam".

I must say that as far as I was concerned, the vagina dialogue ended there and then as Winston Churchill took the stage. When Lady Astor told Churchill, "If you were my husband, I would poison your tea," he replied, "Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it." And when MP Bessie Braddock said to the great man, "Mr Churchill, you are drunk," he replied, "My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be ugly."

He was never called on to apologise because part of the glorious tradition of Parliament is the give-and-take. It has been often said to those who take offence that if you cannot tolerate high temperatures, instead of being in the kitchen, you should not be there. In other words, head for North Carolina.

Tony Deyal was last seen repeating another Atlee quip about Churchill that applies to many Caribbean politicians: "I must remind the Right Honourable Gentleman that a monologue is not a decision."