Ensler is a prominent anti-violence activist. In 1998, her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day raises funds and awareness through annual benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues.
The ‘V’ in V-Day stands for Vagina,and stopping Violence against Vaginas.
The Vagina Monologues includes a section entitled “The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could”. This portion of the play, as originally performed, has been criticized for including a lesbian “rape” scene of a 13-year-old girl by a 24-year-old woman who uses alcohol to lower the inhibitions of her victim. At the conclusion of the segment, the narrator (the grown-up thirteen year old girl) fondly reminisces about the rape, claiming that it helped to nurture her and help her grow as a woman, and finishes the play with the line, “If it was rape, it was good rape”. The segment received criticism not only for depicting any rape as “good”, but also for forming a double standard, as elsewhere in the play, male-on-female rape is depicted as not only inexcusable but the ultimate act of violence against women.
Ensler’s most recent Monologues spin-off has been the “V Is for Vote” campaign, which registers single women and pressures politicians to make ending the abuse of women a central — rather than special-interest — issue.
“I think violence against women in America has become ordinary — it’s been made absolutely acceptable. Battery and rape are such a part of the framework of our culture that we don’t see them as outrageous. Just even trying to get candidates to talk about violence against women, it would be like getting them to talk about air. It’s so basic, and how do you get people to see that it’s extraordinary and unacceptable?”
“I think what all of us have in common is that we’ve been taught and trained and programmed to focus on fixing and mutilating ourselves. That’s a core reason why women do not have power in the world. It’s this huge distractor. It’s gotten us off the path. The only way you can undo it is by looking at the insanity of the obsession of it.”
“How do we, as a culture, stop buying in? I think activism is the cure — the more you focus on people who are really in need, the harder it is to hate your body. I think it’s a huge antidote.”
“The idea of the “V Is for Vote” campaign was to say, “Let’s take what we’ve built as a vision of ending violence against women and begin to translate it into having an impact on the political system.” But it goes beyond this election; I hope it will get political candidates to see that violence against women is an issue that needs to be brought into focus, that violence against women is at the center of everything.”
“We are the majority of the population, we raise the children, we keep the culture and the communities together, our bodies give birth to the future. When you’ve been violated, you don’t feel a future in your body, so you translate that to your children. Society just breaks down.”
“There are two things going on. There’s the violence that comes toward us, and there’s violence we do to ourselves — we’re picking up the magazines, we’re dieting, we’re getting the lipo. Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, “You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission.””
EVE ENSLER IS A BIG OL’ HYPOCRITE!!!