Blog your reaction to the video clips on female circumcision or the Eve Ensler video talk that is posted in the Supplemental Readings.My first reaction to Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologue and her Vagina Warriors was absolute amazement that such a comedic sounding topic could get so deep and personal and mushroom into a movement. As women after women revealed to Eve their own abuses they suffered simply by being a woman, Eve soon realized that there was a huge need for women to discuss not their genitalia but the many ways they were exploited and abused. Clearly having a vagina is a liability for many girls of all ages in all cultures around the world. It’s is so secret and yet so commonplace for these abuses, that 1 in 3 girls will suffer some sort of sexual abuse. Whether discussing date rape or female circumcision (mutilation), girls were sharing with Eve their deepest hurt and betrayal. But Eve did not leave the victim there, but in fact, showed a path whereby the victim could be a victor.
Eve has shared stories like the 14 year old Guatemalan girl who was habitually beat up by her husband but who became a vagina warrior by taking her pain and using it as a means to prevent others from staying trapped in such a brutal existence. At 20 years old, this same Guatemalan girl, now a woman, approached a platform to address a filled to capacity public civic center to proclaim “I did not have to stay in that relation, and neither do you!” Most inspiring was the story of the Kenya lady who was circumcised against her will at 10 years old but made it her life’s mission as soon as she was old enough to travel from village to village on foot with pictures of what a normal healthy vagina looked like, with its names and parts purposes, and contrasted with a mutilated vagina, stripped of all its essentials. In 8 years, she saved 1500 girls from being “cut”. When asked how she could be helped even further, she asked for a Jeep. Armed with that jeep, she saved 45,000 more girls from being cut. When asked what she would like next to help her reach more, she asked for enough funds to open a “vagina safe house” so girls would have a place to run away to.
Eve concluded by saying that she has discovered, sort of by accident, which makes for happiness. The 3 things she outlined for true happiness were first it must exist in action; that one must speak their truth; and to give others what they most wanted for themselves. That by healing others of what is broken in ourselves, we heal ourselves.
Ensler, E. (2004, February). Happiness in body and in soul [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=e_ensler
