Eve Ensler
I had the privilege of seeing Eve Ensler kick off her latest book tour for In The Body of the World on Friday, April 26 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her absolute honesty about her own suffering through abuse and cancer and the experiences of the women of the Congo roared through the historic Lensic Theater in such a way that no one could leave there untouched, asleep, still pretending that there is not horrific violence against women and girls in the world. I was inspired to fight harder, more honestly, more radically for the rights of women through the work of The Girl’s Guide to Swagger.
Ensler was sexually abused and beaten as a child. As a result, she learned to emotionally leave her body so that she wouldn’t feel the pain. While she was writing The Vagina Monologues, she heard stories from women about their sexual experiences. “I wish I could say that the stories that I heard were about pleasure and satisfaction and desire and orgasm, but 99 percent of those stories were about women being abused, incested, raped, being forced to leave their vaginas disconnected, never knowing their vaginas,” said Ensler. “That was the beginning of whole consciousness radicalization for me…I had no idea of the epidemic proportions of violence on this planet. It is like a hidden story.”
Ensler also said that women are fractured and cut off from ourselves by the trauma that they have experienced; that we are asleep. But rather than staying in this “semi-sleep,” Ensler woke up and came out fighting. She broke the taboo regarding talking about vaginas with her play The Vagina Monologues.
After she had been performing the play for awhile by herself, Ensler became restless. She wanted to do something more.
“I realized I can’t keep doing this, if we don’t do something. I felt immoral the way that war photographers feel when they witness something terrible and don’t intervene on people’s behalf,” she said.
So in 1998, she got a group of women together in her living room and asked them how the play could be used to end violence against women and girls.
“We came up with the idea of V-Day, Valentines Day – all good words begin with V, I swear they do,” said Ensler. She envisioned one performance with famous actresses. Marisa Tomei was the first one to say yes.
With one actress signed up, Ensler convinced others including Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, and Susan Sarandon to be part of the play in New York City. That was the beginning of V-Day. Eve said none of these actresses had ever said the word vagina anywhere, especially not on stage. Glenn Close was memorable doing the monologue called “Reclaiming Cunt,” in which she peered over her glasses and said “I call it cunt.” Ensler said that by the end of the piece, 2,500 people were standing up screaming “cunt!”
“All of us knew that night that something had been born. The roof blew off,” Ensler said. “From that moment on, the movement has been on fire. Everyone had a vision of vagina magic and the seeds started seeding all over the world.”
This year those seeds blossomed with the One Billion Rising campaign. It was the largest global action in history to end violence against women and girls. The campaign leveraged the strength of V-Day’s 15-year activist network to mobilize over a billion people worldwide, inspiring women and men in 207 countries to come together and express their outrage, and to rise against violence. All over the world people participated in the event called “Strike. Dance. Rise.” As part of the V-Day events, over $100 million dollars have been raised to stop violence against women.
Dancers performing in Santa Fe on April 26
Over the last 15 years, Eve has traveled to war zones that she describes as “some of the most obscene and disturbing places in the world.” When she went to the Democratic Republic of Congo and heard the unbearable stories of the women there who were systematically raped and humiliated as a weapon of war, she said she was shattered. And when she learned she had cancer, she was shattered again. She could have stayed shattered, but she came out fighting and writing. “I wrote for my life; writing became my salvation,” she said. She believes that through storytelling all of our fractured pieces can become one and in the process we can return to our bodies.
Not only did Ensler write about her pain in her new book, In The Body of the World, she also took action. She organized the City of Joy in the Congo. There, Ensler asked the women what they wanted and they said a place were they could feel safe, heal, and recover. Ensler coordinated the raising of money for the City of Joy, but the women of the Congo run it. Read more about the City of Joy here.
After Eve spoke in Santa Fe, she showed a short film capturing the women, men, and children who rose around the world to protest violence against women. Then a group of young women took the stage to perform the dance from V-Day – Strike. Dance. Rise. Their beauty, grace and joining together was the perfect symbol of the way that women can support each other, rather then fearing or competing with each other. I hope you have the chance to hear Enlser speak during her book tour as she travels to 19 cities throughout the US and Canada in the coming months. I also hope you will join me in supporting her work raising awareness and money to stop violence against women and to transform the planet to a place of peace, safety, and equality.
Find out more about the book tour and how to participate, please go to Eve’s website for more information.