Eve Ensler Speech
Audio version

Hi everyone. I just want to say I am so emotional right now. You’re incredible, Marianne. I was sitting here when Gloria was saying thank you, which was like the best thing anyone could say.

I was thinking about you all day today - just coming here and just holding fifteen years of your work and all the incredible women who are involved with Feminist.com and I think what’s so incredible about you is your humility. You’re just so humble; you serve, you serve, you serve women, and everything you’ve done since the very beginning of Feminist.com has been about serving and moving other women forward; and moving other women’s voices into the world; and promoting other women; and making other women better; and making other women freer; and making other women more alive and more empowered.And that’s what Feminist.com is - it’s the site for that. And so you’ve modeled that for other women to do that for other women. And I don’t think there’s anything more important than that.

I was just thinking about the day we were sitting in your kitchen - Karen Obel and Susan Swan and Lauren Wechsler and we were talking about V Day - and the idea of V Day came in your kitchen, and it was almost thirteen years ago. And I was thinking how when all that started, all our meetings at my house and your house and just, we didn’t have any idea about what we were doing; we had this play and we were trying to make sense out of it, and how were we going to build a movement; and how were we going to get people to come and perform it; and here you are fifteen years later and here we are. And it’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!

And I just want to say to Gloria and to Carol and to Jennifer and to Purva - there are just so many extraordinary women in this room - and men - in this room tonight; just the power of this small group of people; what it’s done to impact the entire world. It’s just extraordinary. It’s like we’re in the hot center of change; the hot center of transformation. And that’s just what I really have to say what women do and what we know how to do. I just want to say for me having just come out of a year that has been very profound and very difficult and also incredibly beautiful and coming very, very close to dying. It really is the power of people’s prayers and love - but really it’s the power of potential change that kept me alive. It’s the power of thinking, oh, we can go on and keep struggling for change; and we can keep struggling to liberate the women in Congo and we can keep struggling to make women more free and girls more able to be their true selves. And that is what we’re here to do. And you’ve done that. You’ve done that. And all the women who have supported you have allowed you to keep doing that.

And I want to honor you from the bottom of my heart, and I want to thank you, for all of us, whose voices you’ve moved onto your site; whose voices you’ve kept alive and for being a brave feminist and not apologizing for being a feminist and saying you are a feminist [cheers and applause]. And putting the word right out there: Feminist.com [laughter]; and not saying, ‘oh no, I’m not really a feminist; I don’t mean I’m a feminist; and I could be a feminist’ - but like you’re a feminist! And bless you for that, because now it’s turning around and people are actually beginning to get that that’s a really good thing. So thank you, thank you for your consistency and your bravery and your courage and your humility and your heart. Thank you.

December 3, 2010, New York City

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