Amidst a U.S. election campaign that has seen the issue of women’s rights at the forefront, the playwright and activist Eve Ensler is launching a global strike to end violence against women. “One Billion Rising” calls on women “and the men who love them” to join together on Feb. 14, 2013, and “dance until the violence stops.” Ensler is the award-winning playwright and creator of “The Vagina Monologues,” and her latest play, “Emotional Creature,” opens in New York City in November.
It is a great honor for me to take part in these sittings and mostly to have the privilege to hold the floor. Allow me beforehand to express my acknowledgement and feelings of gratitude to the organizers who have thought to associate us to the current works. This is also a proof of confidence you show to our humble person.
Dear Participants, being actors and Human Rights activists, you fight against injustice in all its facets as well as degrading practices which result from it ; such as rape, sexual violence, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, rape as war weapon and strategy and so forth.
For many decades women have been taking the lead in this fight ; giving the impression of a struggle of the female against the male; although it constitutes a legitimate claim against vile practices established by groups of people only to appease their egoistic sexual lust and patriarchal attitudes. Gender based violence is simply a horror, therefore, to eradicate this evil, which is discrimination and shameful exclusion, must call out to both women and men.
It is true that not all men are rape perpetrators, not all men support gender based violence. But why do they keep quiet and behave as if they were accomplices for barbarous acts and indescribable horrors women undergo? That is the entire question on which We, men are invited to answer for the success of the action that men must carry out against sexual violence done to women.
Our biggest challenge, therefore, is to denounce, to speak out and even change man’s behavior which continues to treat women as if they were not our equals.
Don’t we say: “silence is tantamount to consent?”
Why must men continue to require girls’ ablation of the clitoris?
It seems the incentive is to have wives without orgasm; so as to avoid exposing them to infidelity.
What a monstrosity!
Why should men decide to refuse orgasm to women under the only pretext of possessing them as objects for their own pleasure? What egoism!
There is no other way of explaining the refusal of orgasm to one’s partner than looking for self – pleasure, neglecting all medical and psychosocial consequences that could result from it and which can cause frigidity and a sum of unprecedented consequences for the health of one’s partner.
Why must abortion of a female embryo be institutionalized when nature has already established the order of things by putting equality in the sex ratio? Why should boys’ education be given priority in Africa sacrificing girls?
Why do we focus so much in reversing that natural equality between men and women?
Our fight must focus more in the re-establishment of that natural equality between men and women.
These sittings give me an opportunity to amplify the movement which must call us into question as men with regard to our masculinity. We have to think again about our masculinity so as to make it be more responsible. As far as masculinity is concerned, in my opinion, a responsible masculinity is the one that takes into consideration all women’s assets and fairly gives them the value they deserve with equality and without any fear.
Rapes and gender based violence will end when men understand the ugliness of sexual assault; the day they will understand that rape and sexual assault degrade their masculinity.
Through their education, young boys will understand that to obtain what they want using violence, when they can obtain it by being charming, is a shame to all men who want to protect their masculinity.
Men must be engaged in this movement so as to fight and abandon all those alienating and retrograde traditions for women and regardless of tribe, countries or continents.
We must beforehand understand that people are conditioned by others, and that we hold in us the part of a woman which calls us to more listening, love, tolerance, and protection for a full bloom life.
When we destroy female embryos, when we kill women; we are destroying ourselves since it is impossible to talk about life without women on this planet. It goes without saying that excluding the woman from her realm of life, man creates disequilibrium in all areas of his life, but integrating her, as it was in the origin, constitutes a favorable frame for each one to taste the extreme pleasure hidden in the other.
There won’t be any equilibrium in our planet if women are excluded. We must give them a space to express their opinions and feelings, to realize that they can do as much as men can or even more.
By excluding 50% of our output capacity in the competition, we weaken ourselves.
My commitment in the fight for women is grounded from wretched reports: Young medical Doctor as I was, I watched with indignation the number of women who died trying to give birth, it means life, during delivery. This revolted me since I knew that these deaths could be avoided if decision makers had the will and gave means.
Having in mind my own limits for this scourge, I took the decision to fight on the side of these women whose rights were totally ignored and who died in performing their duty in absolute indifference.
It is in my journey as a Women’s Rights’ militant that I discovered all kinds of atrocities that women were subjected to and for which they have to keep quiet, for cultural and social, reasons, unfortunately…
I discovered the depth of a woman’s pain who has been raped while men consider this vile act as a slight one and furthermore sometimes incriminate the woman considering her to be the responsible for what happened, her defiler and rapist forgets everything after his act.
The trust that my patients put in me has allowed me to understand that for a woman, rape is an immeasurable drama which can turn her life upside down in irreversible destruction. If the rapist forgets his heinous crime, from which he did not find the expected satisfaction, the Rape survivor lives with her wound all her life.
That’s why, I am convinced that men have to be well informed of the seriousness of their acts and of the related psychological as well as physical prejudice in order to have a radical change in their behavior.
We, the men who are here, have each given a lot of effort and the fruit is visible. Yet, it is not enough because the road is still long and this must be done in collaboration with our female peers to boost this men’s movement ‘V-Men’ against sexual violence and make it become a global movement in which millions of men denounce sexual violence and gender based discrimination.
To be V-Men is to:
• Refuse all kinds of gender-based discrimination.
• To denounce sexual violence in all forms.
• To fight in favor of equal opportunities for women and men.
Together we can lead our planet towards more justice and equity.
Together we can overcome sexual and gender based violence.
Global Green USA, a cherished V-Day partner, has facilitated a relationship with the Sunpower Foundation to provide solar PV panels, inverters, and batteries to the City of Joy, providing reliable, clean electricity. In August, Global Green USA President & CEO Matt Petersen traveled to Bukavu with a dedicated team of volunteers including Chadi Depelchin, Michael Stangl, and Heiko Steiber, to deliver and install the new City of Joy solar system, and to train and educate local individuals on the system’s operation and maintenance.
Please join us in thanking and honoring Matt, Global Green USA, and the amazing volunteers for their dedication to the women of City of Joy, and their continued commitment to ending violence against women and the earth. Please read this great piece by Matt about his experience in DRC:
Driving to the City of Joy — located in Bukavu in the conflict-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo — is intense.
Dusty dirt roads, throngs of people, motorcycles buzzing about, and utterly unpredictable traffic.
The route to the City of Joy is called Essence Road. Eve Ensler, whose V-Day organization spearheaded and created City of Joy, said she’s never experienced anything like Essence Road. She’s found no street more intense in her many travels, including to India and Pakistan.
Join us in celebrating ten years of A Call To Men, a leading national men’s organization addressing domestic and sexual violence prevention and the promotion of healthy manhood. A Call To Men’s tenth anniversary event, Envision Our World: A 10th Anniversary Celebration will take place on Thursday, October 4, 2012 at the Eventi Hotel in NYC.
The event will feature Eve Ensler, Chris Canty, and composer, singer and producer Morley.
Stories from attendees of the V-Africa Summit continue to come in! As the 48 activists and social entrepreneurs return to their countries and their work, we continue to get inspiring poems and essays about their experience at the three-day event.
Here are pieces inspired by the Summit from Karabo Tshikube and Ratanang Mogotsi from South Africa, and Rutendo Chigudu from Her Zimbabwe.
More Voices from the Summit:
Listen by Karabo Tshikube, V-Girls South Africa You heard my Voice and you silenced it
I searched for freedom
and you defined it
I demanded equality and your ignorant mind declined it
Now I live my life in captivity
My Vagina has become a horrific reality
Schools teach us that being free is a fantasy
I walk in your footsteps fading away from my destiny
This shall not proceed
NOW YOU LISTEN TO ME
Gone are the days where you spit in my face//the finish line is near I will conquer this Race//I will speak my mind on a worldwide stage//i will not marry just because you think I’m the ripe age//will shout Vagina and not be disgraced//im a woman a design of perfection//don’t need your fists to pose as correction//when you look at me you will discover power in my reflection//i shall weep tears of joy and not of sorrow//when I say NO today it still means NO tomorrow//you have clipped my wings with your words now look at me fly like a sparrow//oh no we not fighting this time we are a mass you know” ONE BILLION RISING
To My Vagina Warriors by Ratanang Mogotsi, V-Girls South Africa “If you can speak freely about something, you can protect it” – Dr. Denis Mukwege of the DRC
This will live with me forever because we said “VAGINA” close to a billion times at the summit. In our rooms, in the toilets, during lunch, super, breakfast and even when we greeted each other. “Vagina Warrior’s” Isatou Touray would say this every time she spoke and the rest of the would follow. In the beginning many feared to say the word, even in their languages, but as the summit progressed we learnt to say Vagina in almost all the african languages all in the name of protecting women and girls in Africa.
#UntilTheViolenceStops by Rutendo Chigudu, Her Zimbabwe One of the hardest things I have ever done is to sit at my laptop and try and set my feelings and thoughts in ink…. this may be odd to comprehend given that I speak my mind and write it as well. Well, it is true… I want to write about my time in Kenya, the stories that seem like extracts from a Japanese horror movie, the love and support I felt shared, the amazing women who are fighting on the ground… day in day out…the resistance they face and the decisions they have made that have changed not only their lives but that of countless of other women. I relate with their frustrations, fears, hopes, dreams…. the harsh realities…. I have never cried so much in my life… I have never felt so much rage, so much pain, so much helplessness and so much anguish yet… have never felt so much love, hope, joy, I have never been so encouraged, so motivated, so inspired… I was able to admit my fears, speak out my mind and my feelings about the situations that torment me, some that I have had to give up on, some that I admitted, for the first time, to have depleted my energy, others that have i dread but I know that I have to face…. i have never felt my own vulnerability in such a manner, in a very safe environment.
This Friday and Saturday, in New York City and Chicago respectively, V-Day will be holding a One Billion Rising video shoot. We’re calling on you, our activists, to join us to share with the world why YOU are rising on 2.14.13. You will be given up to 10 minutes in our ‘Why I’m Rising’ video pop-up booth. All videos will be edited and placed online at the campaign’s new website, www.onebillionrising.org.
Space is limited. For more information and to sign up please email info@vday.org with the subject line Why I’m Rising Video Shoot and the name of the city you are in (New York or Chicago only at present).
I posted this letter on The Huffington Post less than 24 hours ago and I have been flooded with thousands of emails, tweets, texts, stories of terrible rapes and profound emotion. There is a loud trembling unspoken story of women about to break to the surface of the world. It must break through if we are to survive as a species. It must break through.
I want to thank each and every person (woman and man) who shared their story of violation with me. Your courage, your support, your anger, your love, your voice is so powerful it can and must make the world right. Now is the time.
I urge you to join One Billion Rising on February 14, 2013 when every woman on this planet who has been raped or beaten or violated or cut or burned or exploited or muted or hurt and all the men and women who love them will walk out of their jobs, their offices, factories, homes, schools and say this is the day that violence against women and girls ends, this is the day we DANCE and do not stop dancing.
I ask you to sign-up and to get one hundred people to do the same.
NOW IS THE TIME TO SHAKE THE NEW WORLD INTO BEING WITH OUR BODIES.
My deepest love, admiration and gratitude,
Eve Ensler
Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine…
Dear Todd Akin,
I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to sleep here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the City of Joy to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of women who have been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals fought on their bodies.
I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their lifetime.
Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.
As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you said you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from legitimate rape, and that you were speaking “off the cuff.”
Clarification. You didn’t make some glib throwaway remark. You made a very specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no awareness of what it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one made with the intention of legislating the experience of women who have been raped. Perhaps more terrifying it was a window into the psyche of the GOP.
I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to sleep here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the City of Joy to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of women who have been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals fought on their bodies.
I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their lifetime.
Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.
As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you said you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from legitimate rape, and that you were speaking “off the cuff.”
Clarification. You didn’t make some glib throwaway remark. You made a very specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no awareness of what it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one made with the intention of legislating the experience of women who have been raped. Perhaps more terrifying it was a window into the psyche of the GOP.
You used the expression “legitimate” rape as if to imply there were such a thing as “illegitimate” rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.
When you, Paul Ryan and 225 of your fellow co-sponsors play with words around rape suggesting only “forcible” rape be treated seriously as if all rapes weren’t forcible, it brings back a flood of memories of the way the rapists played with us in the act of being raped — intimidating us, threatening us,muting us. Your playing with words like “forcible” and “legitimate” is playing with our souls which have been shattered by unwanted penises shoving into us, ripping our flesh, our vaginas, our consciousness, our confidence, our pride, our futures.
Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate rape couldn’t get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm is different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process occurs and rape sperm self-destructs due to its evilcontent? Or, were you implying that women and their bodies are somehow responsible for rejecting legitimate rape sperm, once again putting the onus on us? It would seem you were saying that getting pregnant after a rape would indicate it was not a “legitimate” rape.
Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a small suffocating space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some aggressive, indifferent, insane stranger friend or relative ripping off your clothes and entering your body — the most personal, sacredprivate part of your body — and violently, hatefully forcing themself into you so that you are ripped apart. Then imagine that stranger’s sperm shooting into you and filling you and you can’t get it out. It is growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea what that life will even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing the mental or health background of the rapist.
Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it is born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face every day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that face.
I don’t know if you can imagine any of this (leadership actually requires this kind of compassion), but if you are willing to go to the depth of this darkness, you will quickly understand there is NO ONE WHO CAN MAKE THAT CHOICE to have or not have the baby, but the person carrying that baby herself.
I have spent much time with mothers who have given birth to children who are the product of rape. I have watched how tortured they are wrestling with their hate and anger, trying not to project that onto their child.
I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina, my womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions to make. These are not your words to define.
Why don’t you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it? Spend your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy women rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their destruction.
And by the way you’ve just given millions of women a very good reason to make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason to rise.
V-Day stands in solidarity with Pussy Riot and their supporters around the globe. This is ANOTHER REASON TO RISE and we encourage all of our activists to take to the streets on Friday!
Dublin, Odessa, Melbourne, New York City, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Vienna, London, Paris, Moscow. These are just a few of the over 40 locations where THIS FRIDAY, August 17th, activists are joining forces to show their support and demand the freedom of Pussy Riot!
Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist performance art group that, through peaceful performances “gives voice to basic rights under threat in Russia today, while expressing the values and principles of gender equality, democracy and freedom of expression contained in the Russian constitution and other international instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the CEDAW Convention.”
Pussy Riot, which is made up of three young women Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Ekaterina Samucevich, were arrested and remain detained following a 1-minute performance on February 21st at a priests-only section of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. According to Free Pussy Riot, “The intention of the performance was to draw attention to the special relationship with President Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.” The investigator’s report however claims “religious hatred” and they have been charged with hooliganism, which calls for 7 years imprisonment.
Noted artist, philosopher, and dancer Gabrielle Roth will be RISING on 2.14.13. Join her for ONE BILLION RISING and ask yourself, “Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?”
The question I ask myself and everyone else is, “Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?” Can we be free of all that binds and bends us into a shape of consciousness that has nothing to do with who we are from moment to moment, from breath to breath?
The question I ask myself and everyone else is, “Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?” Can we be free of all that binds and bends us into a shape of consciousness that has nothing to do with who we are from moment to moment, from breath to breath?
Dance is the fastest, most direct route to the truth–not some big truth that belongs to everybody, but the get down and personal kind, the what’s-happening-in-me-right-now kind of truth. We dance to reclaim our brilliant ability to disappear in something bigger, something safe, a space without a critic or a judge or an analyst.
We dance to fall in love with the spirit in all things, to wipe out memory or transform it into moves that nobody else can make because they didn’t live it. We dance to hook up to the true genius lurking behind all the bullshit–to seek refuge in our originality and our power to reinvent ourselves; to shed the past, forget the future and fall into the moment feet first. Remember being fifteen, possessed by the beat, by the thrill of music pumping loud enough to drown out everything you’d ever known?
The beat is a lover that never disappoints and, like all lovers, it demands 100% surrender. It has the power to seduce moves we couldn’t dream. It grabs us by the belly, turns us inside out and leaves us abruptly begging for more. We love beats that move faster than we can think, beats that drive us ever deeper inside, that rock our worlds, break down walls and make us sweat our prayers. Prayer is moving. Prayer is offering our bones back to the dance. Prayer is letting go of everything that impedes our inner silence.
You heard my Voice and you silenced it
“If you can speak freely about something, you can protect it” – Dr. Denis Mukwege of the DRC
One of the hardest things I have ever done is to sit at my laptop and try and set my feelings and thoughts in ink…. this may be odd to comprehend given that I speak my mind and write it as well. Well, it is true… I want to write about my time in Kenya, the stories that seem like extracts from a Japanese horror movie, the love and support I felt shared, the amazing women who are fighting on the ground… day in day out…the resistance they face and the decisions they have made that have changed not only their lives but that of countless of other women. I relate with their frustrations, fears, hopes, dreams…. the harsh realities…. I have never cried so much in my life… I have never felt so much rage, so much pain, so much helplessness and so much anguish yet… have never felt so much love, hope, joy, I have never been so encouraged, so motivated, so inspired… I was able to admit my fears, speak out my mind and my feelings about the situations that torment me, some that I have had to give up on, some that I admitted, for the first time, to have depleted my energy, others that have i dread but I know that I have to face…. i have never felt my own vulnerability in such a manner, in a very safe environment.
Noted artist, philosopher, and dancer Gabrielle Roth will be RISING on 2.14.13. Join her for ONE BILLION RISING and ask yourself, “Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?”