"It's Terrifying to be Connected": An Interview With Eve Ensler

by Sandra Fu

Vagina. Just say the word in public and see what happens.

Several months ago, when I asked a clerk at my local rental store whether they carried The Vagina Monologues on DVD, he immediately turned a pig-like shade of pink and appeared to be torn between giggling and squirming.

And I enjoyed that.

I imagine that if I had said the words "dick", "cock", or "penis", I wouldn't have received the same response. In fact, I probably don't want to know what response I would've gotten. Perhaps the poor guy would have grown so confused that he might've inadvertently pulled his own out. But thankfully, he just hung his head and pointed me in the right direction.

So, among the numerous reasons to be thankful for Eve Ensler and her ambitious V-Day campaign to end violence against women, we can also thank her for the simple pleasures: giving us a reason to say the word, "vagina", without trepidation in the first place. Indeed, what started out as a small one-woman show discussing female anatomy has rightly metamorphosed into a full-fledged phenomenon of awareness and celebration, complete with celebrity guests, conscientious fundraising, and worldwide performances.

And the most notable cause of all: a world where women never have to live in fear of violence.

Sandra Fu: So let's talk about vaginas. The Vagina Monologues has done wonders to help women feel comfortable about their bodies and to bring more awareness about the violence inflicted upon them worldwide. And your V-Day campaign has just been phenomenal. How did your passion for this issue arise?
Eve Ensler: It started very accidentally, as all good things do. I was talking to a friend about menopause and she said such surprising things about her vagina that I wrote it down, because I couldn't believe anybody was feeling and thinking the way she was about her vagina. Then, after I talked to her, I realized that I had no idea what women thought about their vaginas. So I would ask one woman, then I would ask another, "What do you think about yours?" And before I knew it, all these amazing things started to happen. One thing led to another, and I started to construct them as monologues. When I started performing the show -- particularly at the beginning, at small venues around the country -- so many people came up to tell me how they'd been beaten, raped, victimized by incest or abused that I felt insane. You know what I mean?

SF: I can imagine.
EE: First of all, I always knew that violence is terrible and huge, but I never knew the extent to which people were being violated everywhere. I had no idea.

V is for victory. And vagina. "We initially started with one production in New York; we got all these great actors to come and perform. It was an incredible performance, but what was more important is we saw we were on to something." (Photo: Paul Smith/Feature Flash)

SF: People simply assume, "That happens to other people. I don't know anyone that's happened to."
EE: Well, the truth is it probably happens to one out of three women. I was so devastated by all the women coming up to tell this to me that I thought, "I'm either going to stop doing the show or I'm going to do something to stop the violence." Because I couldn't keep doing it. It felt irresponsible to know all that and do nothing. So, in 1997, I got all these women together in New York and I said, "How can we use the play to stop violence against women?" And we came up with the idea of V-Day -- a day, an event, a catalyst -- to really use the play to see if we could find a way to stop violence against women. We initially started with one production in New York; we got all these great actors to come and perform, and it was fantastic. It was an incredible performance, but what was more important is we saw we were potentially on to something. I would really call it a catalyst or a movement. It felt like it was the beginning of a movement.

SF: I think it has definitely become that.
EE: And that was five years ago, in one theater! We raised a few hundred thousand dollars and now it's six years later. We've been in over a thousand theaters around the world, and, at the end of this year, we'll probably have raised 20 million dollars.

SF: That's phenomenal. I understand that there was an international leg of your V-Day tour.
EE: Yes, I visited about 16 different places, particularly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Paris and Florence on my last wave.

SF: As a woman, do you ever fear for your life when you visit some of those places, like Afhganistan, where women aren't afforded the same rights as men?
EE: I fear for my life in America! (Laughs). The only place I've been afraid is in this country.

SF: Oh, the irony! (Both laugh). What were some of the things you learned on your trip abroad?
EE: I think what's really fascinating right now is that there are these two worlds, what I call V-World -- which is this incredible world of solidarity and hope. A world where women who have been violated or hurt in some essential way, rather than getting AK-47s or WMD, are literally going out and holding the violence in their bodies, transforming it, grieving over it, and then making sure it doesn't happen to anybody else. And that's one incredibly profound, definite, emerging paradigm all across the planet. I see it in cities, in towns, in villages; everywhere I go, there are women and vagina-friendly men all over the planet who are manifesting this energy. And then, of course, there's this other world, which contains the energy of President Bush and his regime, like-minded souls who still believe in the world of domination, the world of control, the world of violence, the world of war, essentially.

Behind the veil of subjugation. "And then there's this other world, which contains the energy of President Bush and his regime, like-minded souls who still believe in the world of domination, the world of control, the world of violence, the world of war, essentially." (Photo: AP/Red Huber)

SF: And all the many different victims that come out of it.
EE: Exactly. And it will go on for years and years. Having just come back from Bosnia -- where, for example, there hasn't been war for almost 10 years -- the impact and consequences of war are still more than evident. People have not even begun to pick up the pieces. And, in Afghanistan, which is at the end of 25 years of war, there's so much trauma, so much trauma. That's also true in Palestine. And now we're inflicting this again on Iraq?

SF: We're spreading it again. Absolutely.
EE: How could that be true?

SF: The astonishing thing is -- according to reports of rape and abuse in the U.S. military -- that many women are not safe here either, even from their own fellow soldiers.
EE: Yeah. You'll see raids of rape in the military.

SF: What do you think about women being asked to defend their country, in light of these recent cases?
EE: I think it's complex. There's a real irony when you're asked to defend a country that isn't safe for women, especially if you are a woman. I think that the best defense we can have is a real defense and real protection of women in their own country, as well as in countries around the world. I find the idea of Homeland Security ironic: the majority of abused women are actually beaten within their own homes! We have all this money that is suddenly targeted for Homeland Security, while the issue of women's security has never even entered the consciousness of those who are creating the budgets. And I think it's the same with the women who are being asked to serve. We're not only putting women in the line of fire, but in other obviously dangerous situations.

SF: It begs the question: should women be in the military, considering the dangers that are in store for them just from their own people?
EE: Right. Exactly. Look, there's an ongoing war against women; we face it every day of our lives. It's everywhere around us. The idea that terrorism struck this country on 9/11 might be new, but it does not strike most women as new. In our lives, we are assaulted daily by terrorists, whether it's those who assault or harass us, rape or try to rape us, date rape us or drug our drinks. I could just go down the list of daily terror assaults. And it's interesting to me that it doesn't really matter to some. Or that it has yet to achieve the kind of critical attention that all this other "terrorism" has. All of which leads me to believe that people aren't really interested in ending violence, that there are other agendas at stake.

Putting the force back into in Air Force? Cadet Jessica Brakey, just one victim of rape in the military. "We have all this money that is suddenly targeted for Homeland Security, while the issue of women's security has never even entered the consciousness of those who are creating the budgets." (Photo: AP)

SF: Exactly. I question how people can be patriotic or consider themselves patriots when, within our own country, women are subjected to violence daily. How can women upgrade their visibility in these conflicts? How can we get the world to recognize rape and subjugation as part and parcel of international conflict, not just their marginal by-products?
EE: Well, part of it is understanding the whole issue of violence against women in general, and trying to understand that the assault on women around the world is essentially, metaphorically, and directly an assault on life. When you separate women from the equation, when you think that rape is a different thing than violence or terrorism, you're basically seeing women as second-class citizens. You're also seeing vaginas as something that aren't sacred, important, or at the center of everything. I guess that my experiences traveling across America have taught me that we are so afraid to hold vaginas sacred. We are so afraid of life, because it's so much more terrifying to be alive, to be connected, to feel intimacy and to be loved. We're trained to be violent, to be separated and disconnected. I think part of how you begin to understand this is that you see how rape has been used -- and continues to be used -- as a systematic weapon of war, the consequences of which are years and years of recovery, if you ever recover at all.

SF: What are your thoughts on the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade?
EE: I feel that women have to mobilize now more than they ever have in the history of the world, and that they absolutely hold the keys to the future. There is nobody who is going to change the world right now but women, and it affects us on every front. The rights that we've worked so long for are being jeopardized -- the rights of our bodies; rights to choose; rights of stopping violence; rights to be protected; rights to say we don't want to be participants in a global war; rights to say there is another paradigm that exists that we celebrate, that we insist on; rights to educate our children; rights to say that our priorities are different from the priorities of the dominant administration. There are so many things that we need to be standing up for right now. And I'm just going to keep holding on to the fact that women will figure out a way to do it before this administration manages to reverse everything we've worked all these years for.

BUY THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES HERE

SF: What are some of the upcoming projects you have planned?
EE: I'm working on a piece, called The Good Body, about women's bodies all around the world. I've been interviewing women for three years, and I'm going to probably start performing it this fall. And I've also been working on a piece where I've interviewed teenage girls all around the world.

SF: Do you envision such global changes in consciousness happening in a grass-roots manner, where women reach out to more and more women?
EE: Well, that's certainly what happened with V-Day. We started with one city; the first year there were 50 colleges, and the next year, there were 662 colleges. It's just grown and grown and grown. We started with one city in 1997; this year, there were 400 cities. So I think it's women spreading it to other women. And that's how this revolution is going to happen: woman to woman, city to city, a completely different transformative energy.

17 June 03

Sandra Fu is a Senior Editor at Morphizm.com. She has written on women, sexuality and culture for Migente.com, drDrew.com, drKoop.com, Melt Magazine and more. She's currently finishing her first novel, Sycamore Circle.

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