Eve
Ensler
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to Quotes from Women, Power & Peace
 Eve
Ensler,
playwright, performer, and activist, is
the award-winning author of "The Vagina
Monologues", which has been translated
into 45 languages and performed in more
than 112 countries. Ensler ’s other
plays include Necessary
Targets, Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot,
Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary
Measures, The Good Body, and The Treatment. She is the founder and artistic director
of V-Day — a global movement to end
violence against women and girls, which
has raised more than $440 million in eight
years — and has recently released
two books, Insecure At Last and A
Memory, Monologue, Rant, and a Prayer:
Writings to Stop Violence Against Women
and Girls. www.vday.org
Women
are not some marginalized, insignificant group – we
are the majority of citizens. What happens
to us determines everything.
The
second highest rate of rape in the world is
in the US Army system.
We
have reclaimed our stories and our voice but
we have not yet unraveled or deconstructed
the inherent cultural underpinnings and causes
of violence. We have not yet demonstrated the
mindset that somewhere in every single culture
is permission for violence, expect violence,
wait for violence, and instigate violence.
We have not yet stopped teaching boys to deny
being afraid, doubtful, needy, sorrowful, vulnerable,
open, tender and compassionate.
We
have not yet elected leaders or become leaders
who refuse violence as a possible intervention,
who make ending violence the center of everything.
We have not yet elected or become leaders who
understand that you cannot say that you believe
in women and children, and then support bombing
Iraq. Exactly whose children do you believe
in protecting?
We
have not yet made violence against women abnormal,
extraordinary, unacceptable, we have not yet
come to see it as a pathological issue.
Women
are the greatest resource of the planet. You
destroy trees and forests, ocean and sky – it
is the same story.
If
we are to end violence against women, the whole
story has to change.
The
only point of having power it seems to me is
to empower others. The only point of leadership
is to inspire.
Unfortunately
I think we have now come to identify women
and power not as the radicalization of the
mechanism and definition of power, but instead
women climbing to the top of the current patriarchy
and bureaucratic hierarchy at any cost.
The
question is how can women who have been funded
by the same corporate interest and money, by
the same system of exclusion and corruption,
by the same system, think for one moment it
would be any different in that position.
If
you accept the argument which I hear lately
that they make about Senator Clinton all the
time, that she needs to say what she is saying,
to do what she is doing, in order to get into
office, I would argue she’s already in
office, and she now has a record that reflects
who she is. But secondly I would argue, that
how you travel impacts where you are going,
and how you behave matters every step of the
way.
Do
I hold women to a higher standard? No. I am
holding them to a different standard, a different
structure all together.
In
my early days of feminism, I did not imagine
a world of Condi Rices. Women who are so cut
off from their own ability to feel what another
person feels, their own to empathize…
I
had a different vision, which was women becoming
leaders who understood that empathy was as
primary and essential and intellect, who knew
that authenticity and strategy were only effective
as a team.
I
really don’t care if more women are in
power – that in itself means nothing
to me. I care if more women who are fighting
for people over profit are in power.
I
care if more women are in power who say that
nuclear weapons are never, ever an option,
and they should be taking off not only any
negotiating table, but they should be made
absolete all together.
I
want women to be in it to end poverty, to rethink
racism, to stop global warming, to make parenting
and sexuality and education and health care
priorities, rather than being in it to win.
Peace
happens in touch, in pleasure, in feeling,
in beauty and in nature. We are creating the
other way have to stop minimizing it or doubting
or allowing it to be co-opted.
I
am waiting for a woman to run as a woman, to
remain a woman, to usher in the values of women.
I
believe that women can and will manifest the
new kind of power.
I
am always afraid, I am never afraid.
Interview with Eve Ensler
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