Eve Ensler (b. May 25, 1953 in New York) is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.
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.