On a global level, it is estimated that one billion women and girls – that’s one in three – will be raped or beaten in their lifetime.
Let that fact sink in, because it’s heavy and intense and hard to believe. It means that statistically speaking, it’s basically impossible for you not to know a woman or girl who has experienced some sort of abuse. Although it is less common in the US than it is in other countries, gender-based violence is still a prevalent issue that plagues – and sometimes destroys – millions of American women’s lives every year.
Enter Eve Ensler. In 1998, the playwright penned The Vagina Monologues, a production dealing with the female experience. Its frank discussion of taboo issues like orgasms, rape, and menstruation has made it extremely controversial, but the feminist community immediately claimed it as a classic. Every Valentine’s Day, thousands of collegiate women’s groups across the globe put on productions of The Vagina Monologues in order to demystify issues of violence against women on campus. “Even at a progressive university like Harvard, there are still lingering stigmas against rape victims and misapprehensions about what qualifies as rape and sexual assault,” Zoey Bergstrom ’16, an Astrophysics and Physics concentrator in Cabot House, said in an email.
Performances of The Vagina Monologues are often part of the V-Day movement, a global activist uprising to end violence against women also created by Eve Ensler. I heard Ensler deliver the keynote address of the 2012 National Organization for Women (NOW) conference in Baltimore, Maryland about One Billion Rising, V-Day’s most recent project. One Billion Rising – which takes its name from the statistic about the number of women in the world who experience violence – encourages women and men to elevate Valentine’s Day from a Hallmark holiday into a day of activism. In 2013, V-Day estimates that one billion people in over 200 countries coordinated risings to demand an end to violence against women. This year, One Billion Rising is once again encouraging survivors of violence and the women and men who love them to rise against gender-based violence.
This Valentine’s Day, you can rise with Ensler and V-Day by going to see The Vagina Monologues on campus! (See http://www.hercampus.com/school/harvard/vagina-monologues for more info!) The Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (OSAPR) is staging the play at the Loeb Ex on 64 Brattle Street on Thursday, February 13th at 7pm, Friday, February 14th at 7pm, and Saturday, February 15th at 2pm. Tickets are free, so all you have to do is email vaginasintheex@gmail.com to reserve them.
Bergstrom, who is producing the OSAPR performance, has been involved in The Vagina Monologues since freshman year, when she acted in the show. “Many situations in which violence against women occurs are little discussed and poorly understood by the general public. This show explores the topics of sexual assault, domestic violence, gender identity, and even the language we use to describe women, in a way that provokes related conversations in the audience members. For me, that is what makes the show so powerful,” she said.
“This is the moment of our rising. Will you rise with me?” Ensler asked the crowd at the NOW conference. I know that I will, and certainly hope that you will as well.