‘The Vagina Monologues,’ 15 years later

“The Vagina Monologues” has been translated into 45 languages and performed in more than 119 countries, and in 1996 it received the Obie Award for Best New Play. Eve Ensler is the award-winning author of the book by the same name, a feminist-activist, and the founder/artistic director of V-Day — a worldwide mission to end violence against women and girls. Random House has re-released the book on the 10th anniversary of V-Day. Here's an excerpt:

Introduction
It is hard to believe that almost fifteen years have passed since I first said the word “vagina” on a small stage in a little theater called HERE in downtown New York City. When I first read these monologues, my most pressing concern was being able to get the words out of my terrified mouth. I certainly could not have conceived then what would follow in terms of both a movement to end violence against women and girls, and the life of The Vagina Monologues itself. I had no intention of even writing a play. I was already a way way downtown playwright. I assumed a play about vaginas would permanently secure that status.

If I have learned anything in these last fifteen years, it is how to hold two opposite thoughts at the same time. The most radical play I had ever written turned out to be the play that was accepted and invited into the mainstream. Saying the word I was not supposed to say is the thing that gave me a voice in the world. Revealing the very personal stories of women and their private parts gave birth to a public, global movement to end violence against women and girls called V-Day.

In terms of existing in the world of opposites, I see now that living between The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day movement, between the ambiguous energy of theater and the less nuanced world of activism, has both stretched and inspired me. The art has made the activism more creative and bold, the activism has made the art more sharply focused, more grounded, more dangerous. The trick in both has been to avoid ideology and fundamentalism in one direction, fragmentation and irresponsibility in the other. The trick has been to lay a certain groundwork — i.e., the play, the intention of the movement — and then to trust individuals and groups to bring their own vision, culture, and creativity to the experience. The trick has been to create something that is both concrete and fluid, something that can spread quickly and yet has integrity, something that is owned and changed by many and has certain ingredients and laws that allow this adaptability. The trick has been to live in the contradictions while maintaining principles, beliefs, and purpose.

I believe this friction has been at the core of what has energized and spread V-Day so quickly around the world. The excitement and danger of speaking the word, of performing the play in tiny villages or conservative cities, with unlikely performers (ministers and doctors and telephone workers and members of parliament) and in unusual venues (churches and synagogues, women’s living rooms, stadiums, factories), has propelled the play to be performed in 45 languages and 119 countries, raising nearly $50 million through grassroots efforts to end violence against women and girls.

There have been so many victories. Women speaking the word where it had never been uttered. Women standing up against local and national governments, religious forces, parents, husbands, friends, university administrators, college presidents, and the voices inside them that judge and censor. College students across the world making V-Day a radical annual event (it’s been noted that there are two things on every college campus, a Starbucks and a V-Day). Women reclaiming their bodies and telling the stories of their own violations, desires, victories, shame, adventures.

Women finding their power, their voice, and their leadership ability by becoming “accidental activists.” Women finding one another, standing up for women in other parts of the world, releasing memories that have numbed their bodies and depleted their energy. Women standing onstage, on edge, in reds and pinks, with New York accents, southern accents, African accents, Indian accents, and British accents. Speaking, screaming, whispering, laughing, and moaning.

There are so many tales, so many images. A group of about thirty Comfort Women* between the ages of seventy and ninety chanting “PUKI” (pronounced “pook-ee,” which means “vagina” in Tagalog) with their fists raised. Most had never said the word in their entire life. The president of Iceland declaring himself a Vagina Warrior. Hundreds of girls in Kenya dancing in the African sun as the first V-Day safe house opens, ensuring protection from having their clitorises cut. A Catholic girls’ school in Cap Haitien overflowing with more than five hundred people, packed with enthusiastic men talking back to the performers. An armed, sirened motorcade in Port au Prince, Haiti, traveling through the streets, with STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN signs on all the cars. Nurses at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reading The Vagina Monologues, releasing Congolese moans on a rooftop.

Women in Islamabad, Pakistan, dressed in red salwar kameez and saris, performing for their sisters who were there from Afghanistan — everyone laughing and weeping. Thousands in the streets of Ciudad Jurez, coming from all over the world, standing up at the V-Day march to stop the murders and mutilation of women. Mary Alice, the brilliant New York actor, taking down the Apollo in Harlem with her orgasms at the first V-Day celebrating African American, Asian, and Latina women and girls. A fourteen-hour bus ride to Himachal Pradesh in India to open a sanctuary for women. The mayor of Rome opening the V-Day Summit there. A walk through a seven-foot vagina in the lobby of the San Francisco V-Day. “My Vagina Was My Village,” the monologue about a raped Bosnian woman, being performed at the UN, at Madison Square Garden, in Bosnia by college students who were there during the war, at the Royal Albert Hall, in Johannesburg, Macedonia, Athens. A seven-language performance of the monologues in Brussels, during the V-Day European Summit.

The word “vagina” standing out as the only English word in an Arabic article written in the Beirut Times. Red feathers being handed out at the Indian Country production of the play in Rapid City. Learning to sign “clitoris” in a performance by deaf women in Washington, D.C. Vagina T-shirts, lollipops, buttons, quilts, puppets, panties, posters, votes, attitudes, and style.

So much has happened. So much has changed. We can now point to places where violence has been reduced or has been stopped altogether or where the consciousness has most clearly shifted. We have had huge victories.

Then, of course, there is the opposite. The world is still profoundly unsafe for women. Violence escalates. War abounds.

In the last year, during V-Day’s Spotlight on Women in Conflict Zones, I traveled to Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I visited women in cities throughout the U.S. and Europe. I met with our V-Day sisters from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.

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