Yesterday was Valentines Day, in case you didn’t notice.
A day of commerce according to The Atlantic’s findings.
One boy on the New York Subway publicly exclaimed his revelation that it was a day where everyone would be having SEX, with much delight.
It’s also a day reinforced between people who are barely acquainted. My dental hygienist and a shop clerk both bid me a “Happy Valentines Day,” wishes also conveyed by my professor (to his class of about one hundred students).
Ideally it’s a day to consider who and how much we love, and too often we scramble to find only trite and over-used symbols of those affections.
One of the few things known about St. Valentine is that he actually died on February 14th (according to Wikipedia). That sheds a slightly different light on the day, as viewed in the past. There is one modern source seeking to shed new light on the day as it is viewed in the future: Eve Ensler.
Eve Ensler is most known for her seminal play “The Vagina Monologues,” a challenging text that provided a context to discuss the often unseen and unspoken of female body part. The work is based on interviews Eve did with many women and delves honestly into fears, realities, and fetishes related to lady-bits. Ms. Ensler changed the conversation for a generation of women when she wrote the play in 1994. Now when I ask peers if they have seen it, I often find that younger women have performed it or that it has in some other way been a part of their creative and female awakening. After the play was first performed on Cornelia Street, there was a film, followed by other projects that made the big V and Eve synonymous. So how is this related to Valentines Day?
V-day is short for Valentines day, but V also stands for Vagina, and that is exactly how Eve and some friends branded their non-profit (founded in 1998) for the abolition of violence against women (yeah, a lot of violence against women is sexual). V-day was successful at raising funds from galas and similar sources.
In 2008 Eve went to Congo. V-day uploaded this short film to Youtube in 2010 documenting Ms. Ensler’s poetry and experience there with women who had been raped and had their vaginas mutilated.
Out of all this has come Eve and V-day’s “1 Billion Rising” act of revolution. Through social media such as Youtube and twitter they called upon women around the world to stand up and DANCE as a form of protest toward violence against women. The website describes it like this…
A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being
One of the many actions yesterday was a march–I’m sorry, “dance”–at the UN headquarters in New York. Was this a problem for the UN? Secretary General Ban Ki-moon didn’t think so. Ban endorsed the event publicly. It sounds like everyone is really on board with the idea. It is Valentine’s Day, after all, and we want true love to prevail! Idealistic romantic love, and, in the case of this action, the love of woman/human kind.
So, here we are. The day after the revolution. Has anything changed? Did Eve and her cohorts succeeded in winning over the hearts and minds of a global population who has lived with rape as a common reality for their whole lives, not to mention all documented history? Something tells me that the UN isn’t actually the biggest perpetrator. Who is the audience?
Perhaps 1 Billion Rising’s success lies in the same mode that the original “Vagina Monologues” succeeded: in giving more people the opportunity to talk about the issue, and not shy away from harsh realities. With the generally accepted statistic that 1 in three women will be sexually abused, is this enough?
ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY
ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION
In the United States the statistic is lower: one in six women (according to RAINN) will be raped, with mixed-race and black women being the most targeted. But don’t forget that rape also effects men and children.
Within the practice of activism (no matter the cause) there is an element of performance involved where the performer or organizer has to imagine the way they would like the world to be and enact that for a larger audience to see. In 1 Billion Rising women and men danced and talked about the issues of rape and violence against women. Here are some more words from Eve on what the group is accomplishing:
It has brought together coalitions of groups and individuals that have never worked together before, galvanised new people and groups and associations and masses of men who were not engaged before but now see violence as their issue – and all of this putting violence against women to the centre of the global discussion.
It has broken taboos and silences everywhere, inspired a radical outpouring of individuals and groups to reveal the world wide system of patriarchy which sustains the violence. One Billion Rising has also shown that violence against women is not a national, tribal, ethnic, religious issue but a global phenomena, and the rising will give survivors the confidence of knowing that violence is not their fault or their country’s fault or their families fault.
Today the dancing begins and with this dancing we express our outrage and joy and our firm global call for a world where women are free and safe and cherished and equal. Dance with your body, for your body, for the bodies of women and the earth.
Please SHARE your stories in the COMMENTS if you participated in this – or other actions; have insights, or criticism.
