Posted on 06/28/2005 7:22:00 AM PDT by Valin
Eve Ensler Creator of "The Vagina Monologues" Believes that women in Afghanistan and Iraq lived better lives under the Taliban and Saddam Hussein than they currently live in the wake of America's overthrow of those regimes
Eve Ensler is an author and playwright, best known as the creator of the "The Vagina Monologues." She has also written plays about the homeless, women in prison, and nuclear war.
Ensler grew up in a prosperous family in Scarsdale, New York. Her father was a food company executive, her mother a homemaker. Ensler claims that "I was deeply abused both sexually and physically by my father from an early age. He hit me with belts, beat me, threw me. He invaded me in ways completely and totally inappropriately (sic)." Ensler graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1975.
"The Vagina Monlogues," which made its debut in 1996, is based on Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women and is billed as a celebration of women's sexuality, independence and power. However, even feminist Camille Paglia has called the play "ravingly anti-male" and a "painfully outmoded branch of feminism." One scene in the play depicts an older woman seducing and raping a 13-year old girl.
The positive reaction to "The Vagina Monologues" by the media, academia, and the artistic elite (actresses like Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Susan Sarandon have all participated in the "Monologues") inspired Ensler to establish "V-Day," a global movement to change Valentine's day into a show trial of men's crimes against women. V-Day was celebrated for the first time on Feb 14, 1998, and Ensler claims that all fifty states, 700 American colleges, and 76 nations celebrate V-Day.
In 1999, Ensler befriended First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom she met at a Kennedy Center reading of the play "Necessary Targets," which was staged in Mrs. Clinton's honor. The work is ostensibly a look at rape victims in Bosnia, but Ensler has said it is really about the spiritual poverty of consumer-obsessed Americans, and how much they can learn from the Bosnians. "Coming from America, we really don't know how to be with each other," says Ensler. ". . . we know how to consume." Mrs. Clinton enjoyed the performance so much that she wrote the foreword to the book version of "Necessary Targets." Ensler said of Mrs. Clinton that "We had a wonderful meeting at the White House. She's committed to stopping violence towards women. What she hopes to do is bring all kinds of women into this movement." Candidate Clinton also invited Ensler to join her exploratory committee for her 2000 United States Senate run.
Ensler is opposed to the Iraq War. She helped form the group New Yorkers Say No to War, joined the artists network of Refuse and Resist! a Maoist group, and lent her name to the Not in Our Name antiwar coalition, also organized by Maoists. In one interview, Ensler's hysterical response went like this: "I believe that the war has been one of the great failures of American foreign policy; Al-Qaeda has multiplied from 400 to 18,000; we have killed thousands of Iraqi women and children, not to mention American soldiers. We have completely uprooted a country so that women are completely unsafe. We have also completely desecrated the countryside and the land itself. There are bombsites all over; uranium is loose. We have napalmed children….I am now trying to figure out what we are doing there. Why, and how this war has made anything better. Sure we removed Saddam Hussein, but that removal has not left anything in its wake but chaos. We have no idea why we have done this and so from my point of view as a feminist, as a woman who spends her life devoted to ending violence; I cannot imagine what on earth this government was thinking. Not to mention the complete desecration of women's rights, whether it is the ending of women's reproductive freedoms, the complete cessation of funds that go to stopping violence against women, or the lie that the women of Afghanistan are better off. I can go on and on."
In November 2003, Ensler hosted Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq; Mohammed blamed the American forces for "the deteriorating conditions of women in Iraq, particularly after the U.S. war on the Iraqi people and occupation of Iraq." She also said, in response to Ensler's questioning, that the war in Iraq "not only has brought massive destruction to Iraqi society and civil life of the masses but also it has an unleashed unbridled attack and violence against Iraqi women," arguing that "the chaos created by the war has allowed the Islamist groups to launch an attack against women."
Condemning President Bush's January 2002 allusion to the "Axis of Evil" (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea), Ensler has said that "I have problems with this 'evil' thing. Evil is a really problematic word…Evil is reductionist. It destroys ambiguity and takes away duality and complexity; it says that they are dark and we are light, they are evil and we are good. That's all a lie...There are a lot of things that govern us. But I'm not going to accuse anyone of evil."
Ensler has also belittled the American victory in Afganistan and the overthrow of the Taliban, characterizing it as American terrorism: "[V]iolence only creates violence. And there may be a momentary, apparent victory in Kabul, but that violence has created in so many other people seeds of things that will come to be, in our lifetime, as deadly as anything we've seen…I'm not saying I don't believe in self-defense; if someone comes after you, I will protect you, but I think that's very different. Our terror is better than their terror? I don't believe that."
Ensler has traveled to Afghanistan at least three times, where she visited with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Although RAWA claims to support women's liberation in Afghanistan, the group opposed the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, under whose rule women were chattel and were executed if they were accused of having sexual relations out of wedlock. Says Ensler, "There are a lot of people who say all kinds of false things about RAWA -- that they are Maoists, they are communists. They are very militant, they are very pure. They are very radical. And I'm very drawn to that. People call them uncompromising, and they are right. But bravo! I feel a kindred spirit."
Over the years, Ensler has made campaign contributions to a number of leftwing political candidates, including Howard Dean, Patty Murray and John Kerry, as well as to the Web-based political network MoveOn.
Ensler is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, the Berrilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, the Jury Award for Theater at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership, and The Matrix Award.
Great article, because it points out the type of wackos that will be back in the Lincoln Bedroom if lardass Hillary is back in The White House.
How can anyone take this woman seriously? Women were better off under Saddam and the Taliban? Will one MSM journalist ask Hillary if she agrees with this assessment? How about you, Mr. Stephanopolous?
I am not at all familiar with the website that is the source of this, must I must say that it is fair and balanced reporting. I kept waiting for the author to jump on her with 2 feet, but he did not; he just reported the facts.
I don't see a byline, so I assume it is not an editorial. In an opinion piece, I would have emphasized what kind of disgusting, anti-human piece of clinton that Ensler is. I can see why Hitlery is her buddy (probably in ways that I prefer not to think about).
Is there any doubt this lady is morally ambivalent and mentally confused. In fact she can't understand normal thinking.
Hillary said that women were better off in Afghanistan under the Soviet Union.
DiscoverTheNetwork is a subset of Frontpagemag.com, which is David Horowitz' web site.
Really, now. Reminds me of the claims made by Betty Friedan that she was beaten by her husband.
The truth, when it came out years later, was that it was Ms. Friedan who beat HER husband, not the other way around.
Both Ensler and Friedan are physically ugly Marxist/feminist (but I am redundant), privileged, over-educated witches from wealthy Westchester County.
Bored with themselves and their posh empty lives, they each set out to do something outrageous to get attention.
They prove Rush Limbaugh's quip about feminism being established for the purpose of gaining attention for unattractive women.
Ensler, Friedan and their ilk have a more insidious purpose however: They are Good Soldiers in the War on the Family. (Marx commands this as part of his prescription for crushing the bourgeoisie.)
All, of course, for the purpose of making way for Hillaryville, the ideal society.
Let the leftists have their little parties. But don't let them run the country.
OK...is Ensler channelling Hillary...or is Hillary channelling Ensler...because they BOTH said the exact same thing!
Or are they BOTH talking out of their "Monologues"
A Maoist and a Radical Feminist. Sounds like a fun person to be around.
Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?
Gag
Raging LW MOONBAT in touch with her Maoist Vagina Alert!
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