V-Day Blog Archive

WCPO – TV: V-Day Founder Visits Tri-state to Urge Women to Vote

Reported by: 9News
Web produced by: Neil Relyea

“V-Day,” a global movement and grassroots campaign to end violence against women, came to the Tri-state Wednesday to talk about ending violence — and to inspire women to exercise their right to vote this November.

Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day and playwright of the “Vagina Monologues” spoke at the Rape Criss and Abuse Center Wednesday morning.

“This probably will be the most important election of our lifetimes,” said Ensler. “Certainly of my lifetime.”

“There are 50 million un-registered voters, 22 million single women who are not registered to vote — and your vote could make the difference between a safe world and a not safe world,” said Ensler.

The Rape Crisis Center, the YWCA and V-Day do not support any one political party.

The V-Day campaign will also be taken to other states, including Florida and Colorado.

Advocates Say More Improvements Needed for Iraqi, Afghan Women

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=8F22D8C1-3506-4C76-82B5E73267344922

By Kerry Sheridan

Leading women’s activists from Afghanistan and Iraq say U.S. intervention has had only limited success in liberating women in their nations. Too often, they say, women continue to be targets of abuse, kidnapping and oppression, even after military operations have ousted tyrannical leaders. Several women’s advocates visited New York this week, to share their concerns and ask for help during a conference on women and power.

President Bush often mentions freedom for women as a symbol of success in the war on terror, particularly in Afghanistan. “That country has a new constitution, guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women. Businesses are opening, health care centers are being established, and the boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school,” he says.

Women’s activists from Afghanistan acknowledge that some progress has been made since the removal of the Taleban regime. Young girls are going to classes in the capital, Kabul, and in some areas, women are allowed to work outside the home. But Zoya, a member of a group called the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan who does not use her last name for security reasons, says the recent improvements are limited, and that the situation for women is worsening in the rest of the country. “They cannot go without a male relative outside their houses, and they have no access to education and there are health problems for them. So we think that the bombs in Afghanistan – the bombing by the U.S. administration – has not changed the situation because they replaced one fundamentalist [group] with another one,” she says.

Zoya says the U.S.-supported Northern Alliance is responsible for 50 thousand civilian deaths between 1992 and 1996, and has committed many crimes against women. Now, she says, most Afghan women are still forced to cover themselves by wearing the burka, and an alarming number of women continue to be kidnapped and abused by warlords in power.

Zoya shared her story with U.S. women at a leadership conference in New York. She and other women activists from Afghanistan and Iraq are urging American women to fight for sustainable freedom for women abroad. “We are not liberated and we still wanted the solidarity of all the people around the world with us, and especially the women around the world. That is why this conference was very important for us. To bring again the situation of women in Afghanistan to the media and the attention of the world,” she says.

Zoya is not the only one who says the spread of Islamic fundamentalism is preventing equal rights for women in the region.

Yanar Mohammed is the editor of Iraq’s Al-Mousawat newspaper, which means “Equality.” She has helped create shelters in Baghdad and Kirkuk for battered women seeking protection against so-called “honor killings,” cases in which male family members kill a female relative if they suspect her of adultery or consorting with men.

Ms. Mohammed says groups who oppose women’s rights had greater power in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was ousted. “With this war on Iraq, unfortunately, the freedom that we witnessed was the freedom given to Islamists, to have their way around Iraq. These groups that we are speaking about are political groups. We call them “political Islam,” [groups] that use Islam in order to impose themselves on the political arena. They control many areas of Baghdad and the south of Iraq and once the area is under their control, they impose their vision. They go over the minarets of the mosques and they preach that all the women should be under veil and in Islamic dress. I heard it myself, that even Christian women have to wear the veil because otherwise they would be spreading evil in the society,” she says.

The U.S. administration has remained publicly upbeat about the prospect for democracy in Iraq, even as reports surface that intelligence officials are skeptical about the potential for stability. Some observers fear that the ethnic divisions within the country could sharpen due to rifts between those who promote Islam as a source of legislation and those who believe in secular law. Activists say women have a lot at stake in post-war Iraq and Afghanistan.

Afghan member of parliament Malalai Joya knows that being outspoken in the fight for women’s rights comes at a price. Ever since she gave a speech in parliament at the end of last year criticizing Afghan warlords for their abuses against women, she has had to hide her whereabouts and always travels with bodyguards. Her purpose in coming to New York, she says, is to ask American women for solidarity. “They can help us and they can do something for their painful sisters in Afghanistan and please do not forget about us,” she says.

Ms. Joya says fair treatment of women can only be achieved if the international community sustains the battle for women’s equality, long after the major military incursions are over.

Women’s Conference Unites Activists, Stars

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — A weekend conference on women and power brought Afghan and Iraqi activists together with actresses Jane Fonda and Sally Field and “Vagina Monologues” playwright Eve Ensler.

The weekend-long Women and Power Conference was sponsored by the Omega Institute, a holistic health center, and Ensler’s V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and children.

Malalai Joya was a delegate to Afghanistan’s constitutional council last year who received death threats after she called warlords at the council criminals. She said Sunday that holds out little hope that Afghanistan’s Oct. 9 elections will be fair.

“I hope that the people of the world and the American people will help us lead the way to a democratic society with no warlords and no cruelty against women,” Joya said through an interpreter at a press briefing in a midtown Manhattan hotel.

Fonda said it’s important for women “to redefine and then own our power” because “we know that when enough of us do that it’s going to create a critical mass and a tipping point. And everything depends on it.”

Yanar Mohammed, who heads an Iraqi feminist group, said Iraqi women were better off before the U.S.-led invasion of their country.

“Of course there was this bloody dictatorship and nobody was free in the first place, but women were able to leave their houses,” she said. “They were not assaulted in the streets, you were not pushed back in your house because you were wearing modern dress.”

Ensler, whose group distributes “Vagina Warrior” buttons and T-shirts, proposed a new slogan inspired by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Referring to Schwarzenegger’s derisive use of the term “girlie man,” Ensler said, “I am all for girlie men. I think we should get buttons that say, `I’m a girlie man and proud.’ … Because what is a girlie man? A person who listens, a person who negotiates, a person who doesn’t escalate violence.”

RAWA

www.rawa.org

Malalai Joya

http://www.geocities.com/malalaijoya/

Yanar Mohammed

www.equalityiniraq.com

Lessons for Lambs to Fight off Wolves

By Grace Kithaka

The young girls are seated on the parade ground, keenly repeating what the four visitors – who had interrupted their afternoon session – are teaching.

The lesson at New Kihumbuini Primary School in Kangemi, is a girls only affair, since the subject is how to avoid being a rape victim and how to react in case you are attacked. The instructors, a group of volunteers from Dolphin Anti-Rape and Aids Control Outreach, begin with the “dos” and “don’ts”.

“Msichana aliyechanuka, hampatii mwanaume hamjui mkono ya…” reads Peninah Benga from a pamphlet, stopping mid-word to allow girls to complete it for her, which they do and in unison, “yakeee!” (a street-smart girl does not shake hands with a stranger). Meanwhile, Winnie Onyango, her colleague keeps watch over the children to ensure maximum attention.

Then follows a demonstration, with a man from Dolphin representing a would-be attacker and one of the girls playing the role of the victim. Stephen Kilonzo approaches the young girl and as he talks to her, offers his hand in greeting. The girl, who seems to have forgotten what they have just been taught, offers her hand, and he quickly pulls her towards him. The audience squeals with laughter. Startled by the incident, a little girl seated near the two actors, draws a quick breath then slowly relaxes and joins the rest in laughter.

Realising her mistake, the girl in the demonstration smiles sheepishly. Not to worry she’s told, because they will repeat the demonstration.

This time she refuses to take the stranger’s hand. “Akinipa mkono, nini itanizuia kumfuta na kwenda naye? “(If she gives me her hand, what will stop me from grabbing her and taking off with her?) Kilonzo directs the question at the audience.

And so the lesson continues, with each theory being followed by a demonstration. The Dolphin group has designed the lessons to cover different age groups, but due to the pressure of time today, they could not divide the girls into groups.

Usually, talks for lower classes involve tips about declining lifts and sweets from strangers, who should and should not watch them dressing or undressing, why nobody should touch their bodies, and why they should go straight home from school.

“Because of their age, such tips are more relevant to the lower classes,” explains the group’s leader, Duncan Bomba.

When the preventive tips on the pamphlet are over, Benga and Onyango take a back seat. It is now time for reactive demonstrations. This time, Bomba plays the victim and Kilonzo the assailant.

Through their demonstrations, the girls and their attentive female teachers learn that they can use their teeth or fingers to attack an assailant.

“Use your index and middle fingers to poke your assailant’s eyes like this,” the two men demonstrate and then call one of the girls and ask her to do the same to Kilonzo when he grabs her from the front and pretends to drag her away.

“If someone grabs and lifts you, bite his ears and as soon as he sets you down, run,” they are told. “If he has you on a bench or bed, fold your knees close to your chest and as he steps close to get on top of you, jerk your knees straight to push him away with the impact, or poke him in the eye.”

There is also a demonstration for those who go home alone to show how easily a would-be rapist could grab them. “If the girl was accompanied by two or three colleagues, they would help save her, or at least alert passers-by.”

Other techniques to fend off an assailant included spitting or throwing soil into an assailant’s eyes, or kicking his groin or his knee cap.

Through it all the girls giggle, but they are aware of the seriousness of the matter at hand. Their teachers, sitting nearby, watch and listen keenly, sometimes trying out some of demonstrations on each another.

“Practical knowledge is one of the best life skills,” Bomba says. “We want the girls to know what can happen. The demonstrations ensure that everything sinks in and remains there for a long time.”

Peninah Benga and Winnie Onyango ensure that the pupils pay attention to the show.

“Not all assailants use force; some will act very nice and the girls need to know that behind these friendly gestures lie devious intentions,” says Bomba.

The Dolphin quartet use day-to-day situations, for example, a man sending a girl to the shop. “If the man has ulterior motives,” the girls are told,”he will try to lure you into the house, which you musn’t do.

“It is all right to leave the items at the door, inform him and go.”

Dolphin Anti-Rape and Aids Control Outreach, a volunter group, started in 1998 with 25 members, who have since reduced to 10. “Since we are a volunteers, some in the group felt that they couldn’t go on without pay,” explains Winnie.

Nevertheless, they have reached over 200,000 students and teachers in several towns, including Nakuru, Eldoret, Nairobi, Kiambu and Kakamega. In May, this year alone, they visited 98 schools.

“We saw that rape cases were on the increase and nothing was being done about it. The law is not enough because it is applied after the damage has been done,” Bomba says. “We focus on young girls and boys, who are the high risk victims. We visit schools, colleges, women’s groups and churches and rely on private funding to travel to these institutions and accomplish our goal.”

The programme is free. The organisers of V-Day in Kenya have been funding the group since 2002, which has enabled them to visit all these institutions, including training female staff at Safaricom’s Headquarters.

And their efforts are bearing fruit: among the letters of appreciation from the beneficiaries of their talks is one from Helen, a student at Nyahururu Primary School, who describes her response when attacked by a would-be rapist: I poked his eyes and hit his kneecap very hard. He lost control of me and I ran…”

“The aim is not to teach girls to fight men, but to disable or immobolise an assailant. The skills are a last resort,” Bomba says. More proof of the effectiveness of the campaign came from the Kibera slum two months ago, when a little Chelsea Feli, a pupil in class two, bit her assailant, and thus avoided being raped. The Dolphin group had visited Kibera in 2002.

Marked Women: A Rash of Unpunished Honor Killings Highlights the Harrowing Dangers Females Face in the New Iraq

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040726-665048,00.html

Vivienne Walk/Baghdad

Shaima is running for her life. Her delicate face peeks out of a black head scarf as she nervously scans the sidewalk outside a Baghdad cafe. A 24-year-old prostitute, Shaima (not her real name) lives in fear of a man who is determined to kill her. The tormentor is her younger brother, who has been delegated by his parents to murder his sister and reclaim the family’s honor.

He has already come close. Last month the brother spotted Shaima walking in the sprawling outdoor market in east Baghdad. He lunged at his sister with a knife, but she fled toward a policeman standing nearby. Shaima’s brother explained to the officer that he was carrying out the family’s desire to “cleanse” the shame over Shaima’s profession. “Any other policeman would have turned me over to him,” says Shaima. “For some reason, he shielded me.” Her eyes darting around the cafe, Shaima says she does not expect to be so lucky the next time. “My brother’s still out there – hunting me.”

When U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein 15 months ago, the Bush Administration proclaimed that women’s rights would be a centerpiece of its project to make Iraq a democratic model for the rest of the Arab world. But for many Iraqi women, the tyranny of Saddam’s regime has been replaced by chronic violence and growing religious conservatism that have stifled their hopes for wider freedoms – and, for many, put their lives in even greater peril. For women like Shaima, the most terrifying development has been the rash of honor killings committed by Iraqi men against sisters, wives, daughters or mothers whom they suspect of straying from traditional rules of chastity and fidelity. Although such killings are hard to quantify and occurred during Saddam’s regime as well, Iraqi professionals believe that women are now being murdered by their kin at an unprecedented rate. On the basis of case reports provided by police, court officials and doctors at
Baghdad’s forensics institute, the number of victims of honor killings in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003 may total in the hundreds. (By comparison, in neighboring Jordan, where women’s-rights advocates have succeeded in bringing attention to the issue, activists report an average of h20 honor killings a year.) “This isn’t just an issue about women. It’s about the whole society,” says Safia al-Souhail, a female Iraqi politician who was appointed ambassador to Egypt last week. “We have to stop it. It’s going on everywhere, and no one is speaking about it.”

The rise in honor killings comes amid ongoing violence, including four car bombs last week that killed at least 28 Iraqis. The instability that has plagued Iraq since the war’s end 15 months ago has curtailed the spread of liberties that U.S. officials once promised would have taken root by now. Violent crime remains rampant. And while interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi last week vowed to “annihilate” the armed insurgents, few Iraqis expect relief from the dangers that have become part of daily life.

Women are at the greatest risk. Many have become virtual prisoners inside their houses, seeking a safe haven amid rising rates of rape, kidnapping and carjacking. At the same time, as the power of Iraq’s Muslim clerics has grown, the everyday freedoms that Iraqi women enjoyed under Saddam’s secular Baathist regime have eroded. Women who once felt free to dress in Western clothing and shop alone now must wear a hijab, the traditional Muslim head scarf, when venturing outside. Many government offices require female employees to wear a veil at work. “Since the war, women feel they cannot go anywhere without it,” says Jacqueline Zia, 30, who runs a hair salon in Baghdad. The perils of being out after dark have forced Zia to eliminate the salon’s evening hours, which for years provided women with a social outing away from their husbands.

The deadliest threats often come from their own families. Reliable statistics on honor killings are nonexistent; as in other countries in the Middle East where the tradition is tolerated, such as Egypt and Morocco, honor killings are largely treated as private family matters in Iraq. In conservative tribal communities, women who lose their virginity before marriage or who have an extramarital affair are sometimes murdered by family members seeking to avoid the shame and social isolation that the clan is subject to if one of its female members has sex outside marriage. Under Saddam’s laws, which are still in place, men convicted of honor killings can receive up to three years in jail. But because the crime is rarely reported, few are actually prosecuted. And since there is widespread sympathy for the killers among police and judges, those who are convicted rarely serve more than a few months.

The secrecy surrounding honor killings often begins in the virginity-testing room in Baghdad’s forensics institute, where a woman’s fate can be sealed. Typically brought in by suspicious family members, a woman lies face up on a bed fitted with stirrups and is examined by three male doctors, according to Iraq’s legal requirements for such tests. The findings are then written down and may be critical to proving an honor-killing case later on. Pathologist Hassan Faisal al-Malaki, one of three doctors at the lab, says he currently tests about 10 women a week, up slightly from before March’s invasion. Al-Malaki says the increase is due in part to parents’ fears that racy television shows and Internet sites outlawed under Saddam but now freely available are influencing teens’ sexual behavior. “Boys are much more oriented toward sex today,” says al-Malaki, who says girls sometimes arrive at his office in terror, knowing that the results of the test could lead to their death.

Last November, Qadisiyah Misad, 16, ran away from her family’s home on the outskirts of Baghdad. Within days, one of her brothers and a cousin tracked her down on a city street and hauled her back home. According to Essam Wafik al-Jadr, the judge who prosecuted the case, one of Misad’s brothers cornered his teenage sister in the living room; he then drew a pistol and shot several bullets into her. “The parents requested that the brothers kill her,” says al-Jadr, who learned of the killing when Misad’s body turned up in Baghdad’s city morgue. He decided to prosecute the brother for an honor killing. The punishment hardly fit the crime: Misad’s brother received a year in jail, and al-Jadr is not even certain he is still incarcerated, since he was eligible for parole within a few months of his conviction.

Most perpetrators face even milder retribution. Al-Jadr’s court in southwest Baghdad has tried at least 10 men since January for killing women in their family. But most of the killers are not called to account. In many cases, the women’s parents do not want the men prosecuted, viewing their daughters’ death as unavoidable. Even when investigators find evidence of a murder, they often fail to persuade family members to cooperate. Last month a Baghdad coroner reported the death of Mouna Adnan Habib, 32, a mother of two, who had been delivered to the city morgue with five bullets in her chest. Habib’s left hand had been cut off ^Ë a practice common in honor killings, in which men amputate the woman’s left hand or index finger to display as proof to tribal leaders and relatives that the deed has been done. In Habib’s case, relatives suspected her of having an affair. “They saw her talking to a man a few times,” said al Jadr, whose staff investigated the case. Local police have told al-Jadr that they believe Habib was killed by her nephew rather than her husband but that they cannot find the man, who they say has not since returned to the family house.

Some believe the breakdown in law and order has contributed to the spike in honor killings. An unintended consequence of Saddam’s fall is that there are fewer restraints on violent young men bent on taking matters into their own hands. Last September, Ali Jasib Mushiji, 17, shot his mother and half brother because he suspected them of having an affair and killed his 4-year-old sister because he thought she was their child. Sitting in a jail cell in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, he says he wiped out his family to cleanse its shame. He had thought about killing his mother for some time but says it wasn’t until the fall of Saddam that he was able to buy a Kalashnikov and carry it out. “With the security before, it wasn’t possible,” he says.

Activists seeking stiffer punishments face bitter opposition from religious and tribal leaders. Like many other professional women, Julanar al-Zubaidi, a Baghdad schoolteacher and mother of four, fears that the state of women’s rights could get even worse if Iraqis elect a government dominated by religious hard-liners. “The current government we can live with,” she says. “We’re very worried about what comes next.” Those anxieties are spurring a few activists to venture into the political arena; the only chance they have to eliminate honor-killing laws, they say, is to flood political parties with women who can win positions in the government and fight from the inside. “Nothing will change unless we get elected,” says al-Souhail, who has emerged as a leading women’s-rights campaigner. “It’s going to be a big fight because no one in Iraq declares it a crime.”

The persecuted women do have a few places to turn. The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, a project run by Iraq’s Workers’ Communist Party, is hiding three women in a safe house hundreds of miles from their families. One of them is a 16-year-old girl named Rana who was raped by her neighbor last April in the city of Nasiriyah. When her family discovered what had happened, her brothers decided to kill her, since she was no longer a virgin. A cousin who was aware of the plan took Rana to a nearby Italian military base; she was later moved to Baghdad and finally to a secret location farther north. Having fled her family, she is unlikely ever to return home. “We hope to get a written guarantee from her parents that she will not be killed,” says Zemnakow Aziz, a Workers’ Communist Party official. “Even then we cannot be sure they will stick to it.” Ultimately, Aziz says, he will try to find an Iraqi family abroad to take her in.

Shaima, the Baghdad prostitute, still hopes she can one day go home, perhaps when her father dies. “My mother might take me back then,” she says. She first left her family at age 19, after her parents forbade her to marry her neighbor, with whom she had fallen in love. Five years later, Shaima still waits for a reconciliation that will come only when the country decides to value her life as much as her family’s honor.

With reporting by Brian Bennett/Washington and Scott Macleod/Cairo

The Vagina Is So Yesterday — Ensler Says Now It’s All About Her Stomach

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/24/DDG6P7AB9C1.DTL&type=printable

By Annie Nakao, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wherever Eve Ensler goes, ferment ensues. Who else could provoke bejeweled Manhattan socialites to greet each other with a rousing “C — !” — followed by hugs and giggles? Or inspire Cairo housewives to bake “vagina cookies”? Or cause headlines to blare: “Tokyo braces for ‘Vagina
Monologues.’ “

Five years after she blasted the word “vagina” out of whispered usage and posted it up in big, glittering lights off-Broadway, the charismatic playwright’s blitzkrieg movement to stop violence against women has gone global.

“The Vagina Monologues,” Ensler’s hilariously bawdy take on women’s most private part, has been performed in more than 30 countries and translated into 28 languages. More than 2,300 Ensler-endorsed “V-Day” celebrations (for victory, valentine and vagina) were held all over the world on Feb. 14. In the past seven years, “V-Day” events have raised more than $25 million to fight violence against women.

Documentaries, book projects and an army of celebrity admirers trail after her like the wake of an ocean liner bearing down on yet another port. None of it seems to slow down Ensler, 51, who has by turns aided Afghan women activists during the Taliban regime, founded safe houses for battered American Indian women in South Dakota, conducted prison workshops for female inmates and, more recently, organized anti-war protests. This once-obscure New York playwright has become an iconic feminist figure with geopolitical clout.

But last week, Ensler looked surprisingly petite, even vulnerable as she nestled deep into an imposing red couch in the baroque lobby of the Hotel Monaco, just a stone’s throw from the Geary Theater, where her new play, “The Good Body,” has its world premiere tonight. Not that she’s missing her stage persona: the jet-black precision Louise Brooks bob, pale skin and scarlet lips. Maybe it’s the pale, bare legs and red toenail polish — she’s wearing a short dress and casual black slippers — that make her seem girlish.

“If people come to the theater and actually experience loving their body for just 10 minutes, I’ll be very happy,” she says of her new work. The body is an essential lens through which Ensler sees the world. But she’s moved on from the vagina material to her “not-so-flat, post-40s stomach.”

“I thought if I said it enough, vagina, vagina, vagina, it was like magic — I felt good about it, and I did,” she said. “That’s when I began a new obsession. How many hours a day do I think about my stomach, dressing it, covering it, fantasizing about how it’s supposed to look?”

Unlike “The Vagina Monologues,” this play is largely autobiographical, sketching a childhood spent as an anomaly to her own mother:

“She was blonde and glowed

In her pack of golden puppies I was dark and hairy

Eew! How did this one get into my litter.

My mother would do anything, everything to clean me up,

Shut me up, make me good, make me right.

“The play looks at what it’s meant for women to be ‘good’ and what it could mean for women to be ‘great,’ ” she says.

And what is good?

“Thin, flat, small, blond,” she said. “Blond is a piece of being good.”

And great?

“An original who follows her own voice and is probably loud and ambiguous and complicated and a mystery,” Ensler said. “Women have a real decision to make, whether to be good or great.”

The play reveals her own past loathings about her body: “I watch ab- roller infomercials until 4 a.m. as I eat an entire bag, a family-size bag, of peanut M&Ms.” Ensler, who grew up middle-class in Scarsdale, N.Y., was abused physically and sexually by her father and spent most of her young adulthood as a suicidal alcoholic.

But “The Good Body” is also full of grimly humorous characterizations of other women struggling to be good.

Like Carmen, who worships her Latin Cosmo girl mother, possessor of the highly prized “round, plumpy, high Mercedes-Benz ass.” Carmen, however, is told she is “the ugly one. … When I was a kid she would just back me into the mirror at home like a broken-down truck and she would poke at my spread like it was a jellyfish. ‘Oh god, Carmen, Carmen, you’ve got the spread. Mira. Mira. It’s bad, Carmen. You better work hard on a nice waist and a brain or no one will ever f — you.’ “

Or Bernice, who is taunted as a “chubbalah, Godzilla, fatso” girl. “Fat girls do everything double. We have to be funny. Fat girls give the best head. Fat girls always swallow.” At “fat camp,” Bernice sneaks out to go “chunky dunking” in the pool, where she and some other fat girls dive from the board, creating a huge wave that washes away the beach chairs. “It felt so good. We did some fat girl water ballet. It was Swan Ass Lake.”

Humor has always been Ensler’s linchpin in making private tortures so very public.

“If it wasn’t funny, there’s no way we could tolerate thinking about it,” she said.

It’s not a style of feminism everyone likes. The same “Vagina Monologues” that catapulted her from being a little-known playwright to becoming what some see as the Joan of Arc of a global movement for women’s rights has earned her the enmity of some feminists who find her hopelessly naive and accuse her of trivializing serious issues — navel-gazing is a common slam at Ensler — and even of objectifying women’s bodies.

Ensler is puzzled, if unperturbed, by criticism.

“I really believe when things are funny, ideas go into the bodies of human beings,” she said. “One of the reasons why the women’s movement has not been successful is because it has not landed in the body.”

Pointing to her head, she said, “It’s all up here.”

That’s clearly not what she feels happens onstage.

“Women don’t really exist in this culture,” Ensler said. “We only have sound-bite versions of ourselves. What’s amazing to me is when people see the show, something gets released in them. They see their deep essential selves. That’s what I think can happen here.”
————————————————————————
The Good Body: Opens tonight and runs through July 25 at the American ConservatoryTheater’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. (415) 749-2228 or see www.act-sfbay.org.

E-mail Annie Nakao at anakao@sfchronicle.com .

V-Day Manila Organizers To Produce “TVM” in Tokyo

Tokyo Braces Itself for ‘The Vagina Monologues’ by Eve Ensler, the Controversial International Hit Play

This early it is creating controversy as various groups question the use of the word ‘vagina’ and its Japanese translation in a theatre play in Tokyo.

This early it is creating controversy as various groups question the use of the word ‘vagina’ and its Japanese translation in a theatre play in Tokyo.

New Voice Company (NVC) announces the Japan Premier of Eve Ensler’s ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (TVM) in Japanese: June 23 – July 3, 2004 at Theatre V Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan. TVM Premier is directed by NVC Artistic Director Monique Wilson, Translation by Keiko Itoh. The Japan Premier will feature Japanese actresses: Koko Furuta, Kaori Okamoto and Chizuru Onoyama.

TVM is precisely what its name suggests – a series of stories, in which women talk about the most secret part of their bodies. But it’s a great deal more. Using intelligence, integrity and comparison, Eve Ensler has created not just one of the best shows in the world today (it has premiered in over 40 countries and been translated in over 25 languages) but the most morally serious. In TVM, Eve has given voice to a chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, brave, highly original and thoroughly human stories. Based on interviews with a diverse group of women – the play brazenly explores the humor, power, pain, wisdom, outrage, mystery and excitement hidden in vaginas. TVM is alternately hilarious and deeply moving. Covering issues from sexual abuse, first lesbian experiences, indignities of pelvic exams, women’s dreams and desires, orgasms, sex, marriage, infidelity, childbirth and womanhood, the play deftly combines drama and comedy.

V-Day Launches “V is for Vote” Campaign to Rally the Vagina Vote Towards Ending Violence Against Women and Girls

Two Centerpiece Events Announced:
“Vaginas Vote, Chicks Rock” September 13 At NYC’s Apollo Theater Featuring Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda, Rha Goddess, Julia Stiles, and more…

“Women And Power III: Our Time To Lead” Conference, September 11-13, at NYC’s Sheraton New York Hotel Featuring Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, Pat Mitchell, Carole Black, Iyanla Vanzant, Marie Wilson and more…

Hundreds gather in New York to encourage voting and make stopping violence against women a key campaign issue

NEW YORK – (June 8, 2004) V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, announced today the launch of V Is For Vote, a grassroots voting campaign aimed at inspiring women to vote and to elevate violence against women as an important issue in the 2004 Elections. To drive this message home, women from across the country gathered last night at the Culture Project Theatre in New York City with V-Day Founder/ Playwright Eve Ensler, who channeled the unstoppable power of the arts and activism to motivate and inspire women to vote.

“V-Day is made up of thousands of activists and voting is one form of activism. We are here today to encourage all women to ‘Value Your Vagina – Vote!’ and to make ending the rampant violence against women which affects one in three women in the world a central focus of politics alongside jobs, healthcare, and security,” said Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day and playwright of The Vagina Monologues, and The Good Body. “More than 22 million registered female voters did not vote in the 2000 presidential election. We need to get out there and support political leaders and legislation that will end violence against women.”

Event highlights included a political call to power led by Eve Ensler, a preview of a new performance piece created by Rha Goddess on young women and voting entitled “We Got Issues!,” with special remarks from actor/activist Kathy Najimy.

“This election, more than ever…we show up at the polls with our hearts and our souls and we vote for freedom, equality, and to save women’s lives” said V-Day supporter actor/activist Kathy Najimy.

THE ISSUE: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN:
Why should violence against women and girls be central to the 2004 election? A two-year study conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Women shows that women want a new movement with new priorities. In the nationally representative study 92% of women identified that reducing domestic and sexual violence is their top policy priority, followed by pay equity, childcare and healthcare. In addition, a nationally representative poll conducted by Penn and Schoen demonstrated that 92% of Americans believe that violence against women is an important problem that is not getting enough attention and the majority (55%) thinks that law enforcement agencies are not doing enough to prevent it.

Unmarried women are the LARGEST group of people not participating in our democracy, and have the greatest potential to change the outcome of this election. Sixteen million unmarried women are unregistered; more than 22 million didn’t vote in 2000. Over 75% of V-Day activists are college age and fall within this category.

THE CAMPAIGN – V IS FOR VOTE:
V Is For Vote is a grassroots voting campaign created with and by the thousands of local V-Day activists and organizers in the U.S. V-Day is outreaching to the political candidates urging them to make Violence Against Women a central issue of their campaign platform alongside jobs, education, security and healthcare, not a sideline or women’s issue. Ultimately, V-Day will mobilize its activism into political power through V Is For Vote as V-Day supporters “Vote to End Violence.” V Is For Vote. The message is simple, but for millions of women and children around the world, it could mean the difference of a lifetime.

Throughout the summer, V-Posse leaders will register, educate about the issue, and get out the vote in their communities. To date, the campaign has leader/activists signed up in over 30 states. V-Day activists will stage V Is For Vote events across the country with Ensler appearing at select events pending her performance schedule.

Two key events:
Women and Power: Our Time To Lead – Presented by Omega and V-Day, September 11-13, 2004 at NYC’s Sheraton New York Hotel, the conference is a unique gathering for women who want to redefine power and lead from core female values. In addition to Eve Ensler, other leaders will include Jane Fonda, Academy Award-winning actor, social activist; Gloria Steinem, activist, author, founder of Ms. Foundation for Women; Julia Stiles, actor; Pat Mitchell, president of PBS and its first female chief executive, former president of CNN Productions and Time Inc. Television; Carole Black, president and CEO of Lifetime Entertainment and many more. www.eomega.org

VAGINAS VOTE, CHICKS ROCK – ON Monday, September 13, V-Day’s “V is For Vote” and Rock the Vote’s “Chicks Rock, Chicks Vote” in conjunction with Omega and The White House Project’s “Vote, Run, Lead” are joining to produce THE event of the 2004 Election season. Actors, singers, rappers, dancers, thinkers and leaders will all come together at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem for a night of entertainment and political empowerment. Confirmed talent (list in formation): Shohreh Aghdasloo, Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda, Rha Goddess, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon (pending availability), Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Julia Stiles, and many more. This event takes place less than two months before the presidential election and we are using the power of arts and activism to motivate and inspire all women, especially young women to raise their voices and get out the vote. To be the first to hear when tickets go on sale, sign up for V-mail at vday.org/vmail

V-Day has made great strides in working to end violence against women. Since the organization’s inception in 1998, V-Day has raised more than $25 million for grassroots groups working to end violence against women and girls in their communities, and the V-Day movement continues to grow at a rapid pace throughout the world. In its first year of incorporation (2001), V-Day was named one of Worth Magazine’s “100 Best Charities.”

The “V” in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina – and through November 2nd, for VOTE.

About V-Day:
V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Playwright/Activist/V-Day Founder Eve Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues. In 2004, more than 2000 V-Day events will take place in the U.S. and around the world. To date, V-Day has raised over $20 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, crafted national media and PSA campaigns, funded over 2000 community-based anti-violence programs, reopened shelters, and built safe houses in Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq.

For more information on V Is For Vote: www.vday.org/vote
To learn more about how to get involved with V-Day, visit www.vday.org
To read Eve Ensler’s essay on the Vagina vote, visit www.vday.org/vmoment

V-Day is a non-partisan, 501 (c)(3) organization and we do not align ourselves with any particular political party or candidates.

Juarez Slayings Report Finds Police Abuses

By Louie Gilot

Mexican federal investigators did not learn much about the killers of Juarez women from studying the first 50 files released to them by the Chihuahua state police, but unearthed what they said is proof of widespread police incompetence and abuse in the cases.

In a much-awaited report released Thursday in Mexico City, Maria Lopez Urbina, the special federal prosecutor appointed by Mexico President Vicente Fox, listed 81 Juarez police officers, including 17 detectives, who might have committed criminal or administrative violations.

Lopez based her findings on the review of files containing incomplete and unsigned statements, sometimes dated before the commission of the crime, and almost no forensic testing of evidence, she said.

Groups such as Amnesty International and the Mexican Human Rights Commission have come to the same conclusions in earlier reports, and some advocates said they were disappointed with the not-so-new findings.

“We all know that the police did not do their job in these cases. I guess it’s nice that the federal government is now saying it. But we want to know who the killers are,” Esther Chavez Cano, director of Casa Amiga, a Juarez rape crisis center, said.

Thursday’s report is the fruit of four months of federal review and marks the beginning of what the federal government said would be a long involvement in the investigation in a 10-year-old string of murders of women that falls within the jurisdiction of the state of Chihuahua.

Starting in 1993, at a time marked by violent power changes in the drug underworld, about 300 women have been killed in this industrial border city. About 100 of them were raped, tortured, strangled and dumped in desert areas in and around the city.

This year, in which a new governor for the state of Chihuahua will be elected, Fox sent agents to shake up the Juarez drug cartel, which is said to be behind some of the killings of women. The president also appointed two women to look into the mysterious and brutal murders: Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Morfin as a special commissioner to advocate for women’s and victims’ rights.

Morfin addressed Fox at Thursday’s presentation of the report, saying, “Mr. President, an extraordinary federal intervention is urgently needed.”

Lopez said the federal government, which is already investigating 14 of the approximately 100 cases, found reasons to take on three more. The crimes must violate federal laws to fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government, and not all the murders of the women qualify.

Lopez’s 174-page report concerns 50 homicide files dated between 1993 and 2001, most of which were attributed to domestic violence and solved by state police. One of the cases is that of a mentally ill man who killed his mother and another involves a woman who killed another woman in a bar fight.

“That is just what we were given first,” said Sergio Medina, a spokesman for Lopez.

More studies will follow as the state police turn files over.

Lopez did praise the state police’s recent handling of killings of women, such as that of Rebeca Contreras, who was found dead March 10 near a Juarez quarry. Police response in the case was “fast and efficient,” she wrote.

Lopez also said she will start a definite database of women murder victims and of disappeared women to help identify bodies. Lopez’s office has already funded a DNA database that now contains more than 80 samples from family members of women who have disappeared.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com, 546-6131.; The Associated Press contributed to this story.

V-Day Raises Record Amount to Benefit Groups Combating Violence Against Women

By Sue Moncure

Performances of “The Vagina Monologues” during UD’s fifth annual V-Day event broke all its records for fundraising, raising $29,000 for organizations whose primary mission is to combat violence against women and to advance the status of women.

According Jennifer Guise Schladen, V-Day producer, the Panhellenic Council donated $5,000 to sponsor “The Vagina Monologues”; $15,000 was raised in ticket sales during the three-day run March 10-12 on the campus; $4,000 was raised by the sale of merchandise and audience donations; and $3,000 was raised through promotional events the month before the event. The $29,000 total, which also includes money raised from other sources, exceeds the total of $20,000 generated over the past four years, she said.

According to Shael Norris, college campaign director for V-Day, “This is V-day’s mission and dream: to see college students create this kind of support in their community. It not only raises awareness for thousands of people in the area but also changes the scope of what the local recipients of this money are able to achieve within the community.”

This year’s recipients are Emmaus House, the Delaware Women’s Conference and the V-Day Spotlight on the Missing and Murdered Women of Juarez, Mexico.

V-Day is part of an international campaign to end violence against women. In the past six weeks, “The Vagina Monologues” has been performed on more than 600 college campuses, and 350 performances were produced by community-based organizations. In the six-year history of the college campaign, $4.3 million has been raised.

Other UD groups sponsoring V-Day included Students Acting for Gender Equality, HAVEN, Men Against Rape Society, the Department of Chemical Engineering, Gamma Sigma Sigma, the Not Quite Ready for Bed Players, the Golden Blues, Vocal Point, the Deltones, the Black Student Association dance troupe and Hillel. V-Day also was sponsored by several local and national businesses.