Back Stateside...

Oh my. So this is certainly not the end of the adventure, but the end of my Fellowship and the current Vagina World Tour have arrived. I hope to keep blogging/writing/publishing/learning/questioning and presenting about this experience, so stay in touch! Especially if you want to come to a presentation, or if you have any advice about publishing. I wanted to include my final Watson Report. My personal Vagina Monologue is at the bottom.


FINAL REPORT
Thomas. J. Watson Fellowship

Jennifer McKenzie

“Women Echoed Each Other”:
Breaking Silence with The Vagina Monologues

I have delayed writing this report, because I endowed it with a melancholic symbolism as The End of my Watson Year. I imagine you would respond by saying that the Watson experience is one that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and that the perspective and direction it has nourished in me is but beginning, not terminating. I agree, and am trying to view this report as a reflection; a validation of sorts, an opportunity to truly thank the Watson Fellowship, to share what I have done, and to ruminate on how I have changed. Writing this and thinking about what I want to say, I do deeply feel this gratefulness- but even as I marvel at what this experience has meant, I also can’t help grieving its loss. This year I felt so incredibly alive. I was so enmeshed with my project and the daily business of creating and fully living a life in Mexico, England, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Thailand, Cambodia, India and South Africa; everything felt vital and somehow more vibrant.
Even now, as close to the experience as I still am, it can feel like a dream. Looking at my photos can feel unreal. To have been so many places in such a short time… But this was only a month ago, and it was my life, just as these more mundane days of the job search are. My backpack probably still smells like South Africa, but it is in my basement and not on my back. I’m going to fight against this though; I refuse to give in to nostalgia and rather choose to struggle to hold onto the truth of the experience. I don’t want the people I met, the stories I’ve imbibed, to reek of fantasy and glimmer with this nostalgia. It was real, I did these things, and I am changed. My goal I guess is to preserve this sense of wonder, of awareness, curiosity and openness that should be as vital here as it was traveling this year. Yesterday I was walking home from yoga along Division, the very street up which I walked to Elementary School. And yet, it was like I had never seen it before. It felt as new and unfamiliar to me as any random street in Budapest, Barcelona or Bangkok. And one thing I’ve learned this year is to take that fresh perspective, and instead of letting the unfamiliar be lonely, let that perception, whether it is actually a new street or one I’ve traversed for years, color my mind with new thoughts. So although this the end of my Watson journey, I am trying to remind myself that meaning is not dependent upon location, but rather my own attitude. I loved my life and hence myself while I was traveling this year. I want to be present and intentional “here” (wherever that ends up being) with as much passion as I was there (oh, there were so many “theres” this year).
This year I learned dozens of words for vagina in eleven different countries and even more languages. Of the over four thousand V-Day events this year, I covered twenty-five. My methodology included monitoring press reaction but was primarily based upon extensive interviews and participant observation among cast, crew, audience and beneficiary organizations. I also attended the V-Day European Organizers Workshop where I met V-Day staff and author Eve Ensler as well as influential activists. I completed over 200 interviews, and spoke with well over 225 informants in individual and group settings. But what do these numbers tell you about what this year was like, about what I learned and accomplished? The experience was so much more nuanced than mere statistics.
To my great surprise and joy I found that my project, while personally challenging and simultaneously gratifying, was a cathartic experience for my informants as well. And informants quickly became friends. I could never have realized before I stepped on that first flight (of many) how my role became so much more rooted in the personal validation I provided this year than on any final product. The Vagina Monologues portray real women’s stories. Just as most of these women had never shared these experiences with anyone before they became Vagina Monologues, most of my informants had never given themselves the chance to process what being involved in the play meant to their lives. I am honored to have helped them to feel legitimized, and delighted to find my work this year was often so reciprocal. I had feared being a story vulture. The first question I always asked was why they came to be involved. And I cannot stress enough the depth of the responses, the complex yet universal reasons women felt lured to speak out publicly, sometimes at great risk. Oh so naturally, my process of collecting testimonies about their experience with the play became about so much more; about their experiences being women, about their joys and trauma relating to their own vaginas. Often we both ended our interviews exhausted, but filled to the brim rather than drained. I think every interview ended with a hug, and as I left on the Mexico City metro, or the Bangkok BTS, or a Mumbai rickshaw, I would mull over the words I had just heard. And I knew that other soul heading off in another direction in the same city would be similarly holding in their mind the words they had just spoken- sometimes for the first time.
These conversations truly transformed The Vagina Monologues into dialogues. All of these incredibly poignant moments flicker through my mind. I found I would be thinking of Spanish abuelitas waving around bright pink vibrators while attending the Marathi dress rehearsal, in which some women were dressed in red sneakers and others in Saris. Or perhaps I would be chilling in the anti-trafficking NGO I studied in Belgrade, and something would conjure an image of the Mexico City AIDS Conference Vagina Monologues Open Mic, and I would be two places at once: preparing for the first rural performance in the previously war-torn former Yugoslavia and simultaneously remembering how thunderous monsoon rain couldn’t dampen the spark of stories that poured forth from HIV/AIDS activists. Though I am gone, or rather here than there, I still often have that experience of being many places at once. Because I know women are still speaking everywhere I went and beyond. I can almost hear them as I walk these familiar streets. I know what they are saying and I love them.
I used to make collages. I loved how all the pieces made a vibrant whole, and how seeing the images in bits or combined made me reconceptualize their meaning. In the same way I hope to collage what I have learned this year into a shareable product. I have an article that is being published (attached), and hope to expand this into a book. I also look forward to sharing a presentation about this year with communities around the city. I feel urgently responsible to do something with all that I have learned this year- as though I owe it to these women who so bravely spoke out to me, and who wished to share their stories with a wider audience than one.
I fell absolutely in love with my project. Just as past loves have busily occupied my mind and heart, during down time I was thinking about how to pack lighter, or about how to make informants feel more comfortable, or what sort of challenges they must be facing in their unique contexts. I was in love with my work and it also allowed me to focus on my relationship with myself. And, a year later, I’m convinced that I have found the equivalent of my soul mate in terms of the kind of work I want to do. I am still moved and engaged by it and would see The Vagina Monologues any day. I truly felt as though I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and doing what I needed to do. This year helped me to learn how important it is to give myself over to the work that I do; I enjoy being a vessel and feel I am most effective in this line of work. I have learned how to listen. I have learned when to talk. I am a witness. I now firmly believe that the world is smaller than I was led to believe, and am more sure of the role I am meant to play as an active citizen of this world.
After the kick-off event of the first V-Day ever done in Cambodia, I was getting late night eats with the leaders and their friends who had attended the screening of the documentary about The Vagina Monologues, ‘Until the Violence Stops’. In the humid night we were talking about how it has become a tradition at the end of the show to ask anyone who has survived abuse to please stand. Over curry and drinks the women were marveling at the strength of the women who stood in Brooklyn, in Kenya and beyond. They were chatting about how connected we are in the violence that is done to us, but more than that, connected in our strength and ability to feel empathy for one another. We could have been a scene in the movie. I listened intently, and noticed that one other woman was also silent. But hers was a brooding silence, her ears turned pinker and pinker, she had stopped eating. As I knew she would- she spoke. She said she felt like a liar sitting here at the table with us and speaking as though these were things that happened to other women, because that was her experience as well. She said she had never spoken about her abuse to anyone, but that when she saw all those women standing she desperately felt she had to do something. The organizer responded perfectly. As the women at her side reached out to her, as our eyes filled, Nora asked, “Would you like to stand now?” The woman considered it. And though we were in a rowdy crowd, she pushed back her chair and under the Cambodian sky she stood. She was regal. We all stood as well. I will never forget moments like these; how sometimes we have to stand, and how much easier it is when we stand together.


My Vagina's Watson Year

My vagina comes from a very female family My radical mother chose my genetics from a sperm bank and raised me to be always leaving her. Ever leaving her to follow the "wild collective song" that Eve Ensler shared with the world. She said, and I found, that women echoed each other. This song, these vagina monologues, became dialogues. They rang forth in cowsheds, hotels, restaurants, elderly homes, refugee camps, public parks, schools, malls, domestic violence shelters and antifascist festivals.

Danijela, a V-Day activist in Sarajevo, told me about one time when she was sitting on a beach. She was moved. Maybe it was the sea, or maybe it was what she calls the beautiful breaking of silence. She stood and started shouting monologues. I can picture her: surf in her hair and salt in her voice, spouting, "My vagina is angry! It is! It's PISSED OFF. It needs to talk. It needs to talk to you!" I imagine the shock this must have been to the sunbathers around her. I have learned this year that shock can be good. The moments when we are most jarred, most overwhelmed, open a little window of opportunity: for a
new thought; a new conversation; a new question, doubt, or validation. Opened up the window for a lot of joy.

Me and my vagina have been traveling this past year. We've been listening. We've been focused on the stories of others. The art of witnessing; the practice of empathy that sometimes swamps. Believe it or not, it wasn't sexy. Most of the time. I'm trying to absorb the survivorship, the hope and community instead of the rape and abuse and
fear. I'm hoping to put into practice what I advocate. I want a quizzical, questioning, intentional vagina. I am most present in my body when I am traveling.

My own vagina monologue has merged with the main players of my year. Their story is mine and mine is theirs, and taboos are broken and words created where they didn't exist. This year there were a lot of moans. Mine tended to be rooted more in the exchange rate, Mumbai traffic and computers crashing than in lust. I cried in most of my
interviews, and hugged in all. There was vagina art, lots of chocolate, alcohol, coffee, eighty year-old senoras auctioning dildos, massages, red lipstick, and vagina birthday cakes.

Lori in Serbia used to go to refugee camps alongside the medical services. Afterwards, they would do an informal reading of The Monologues: just there, behind the van, in the streets where they happened to be. She said afterwards, a woman inevitably said. "Ah.
Now we have all heard this... And so I will tell you my story." And like magic, they would begin to share. Lori said, ‘It's the end of the performance, and they are speaking. You are speaking with them. The performance is over, you are packing your stuff- you are leaving. They are staying and speaking more and more and more. You are gone and
they are still speaking." Though I am gone, or rather here than there, I know women are still speaking everywhere I went and beyond. I can almost hear them as I walk these familiar streets. I know what they are saying and I love them.

Women talking about their vaginas tend towards circles. They sit in circles, they hug in circles. What I learned, and tried to share, was the place where all these circles connect. Like links. Becoming ever stronger. Like ever widening ripples that touch individuals and catalyze communities. In the end of my own vagina monologue, there is no
end. There is only connection; there are only more stories.

A Sunday-like Sunday

I am in Port Elizabeth, (P.E.) now, and it is a quintessential lazy Sunday. I am catching up on sleep, grooming, reading, solitude and sun. Stumbled into a sweet coffee shop, then stumbled upon St. Georges park and the monthly flea market where I purchased a carved wooden flower to replace the button on my sweater and dried apricots, which I munched while languidly reading against the kiddy park and people watching. Last night after a sauna-esque bus skipped the station, I was left stranded in a creepy vacant mall parking lot. A kind family adopted me and drove me to my backpackers.

Tomorrow I have a group interview- perhaps the last interview of the year. I hope to volunteer at the Women's Haven here for a few days, before heading to Cape Town to see Mollie's life, and to meet Dawny! As you can probably tell from this post, I am feeling present-bound and more focused on current enjoyment than on deep reflection. This feel alright at this stage. More than okay, it feels good. Though, crunching through some fallen Oak leaves today, I felt a hunger for familiar seasons, one that will be satiated soon enough. I feel like napping, stretching, crying (in a good book kind of way); I feel like kissing someone, I feel momentarily brave.

I am reading Bahjallanie's "Midwives" and though it probably shouldn't, it makes me want to be a midwife in spite of having ruled it out. I love helping people, women, babies, vaginas. I loves science without doctors offices and bureaucracy, and I love warm fuzzies. I think I could be comforting, I know I wouldn't be squeamish. Hm. Something to think about, talk to Steph about.

In Which: the end was filled with laughter

I didn't realize how much I was online until these last few weeks when my absence was noted by conscientious friends, Mom was called, etc. Course I don't want to make anyone worry, but nonetheless it was a cozy feeling to have people looking out for me. Aware of me, even the cyber version of me. I know you're rolling your eyes, but I do have a tendency to think I am forgotten, and to underestimate my friends- not them, but them in my life. I picture myself, when everything is going crappily, crying with the end conclusion (of flooded art buildings, burnt sinks, unhappy endings, wailing: "I don't have anyyyy f-f-f-FFFFFriennndddds!" And Dawn, or Katie, or any of my fabulous loved-ones, exasperated, but kind, reminding me of my own ridiculousness.

Since Durban research I have been traveling with Mollie- another gift I've received from Andrew. We absolutely hit it off from the first moment as I tumbled off that stale buss in East London. Chattering wildly and hyperly as we made our way to the bathroom, she: "ARRGH! I just started my period and don't have my diva cup!" Me: "Ha! Mine's inside me!". With a glee resembling A.D.D. we bought 2 kilos of carrots and yogurt and trundled immediately to the coast, where a peace both friend and sea-related overswept me, and hasn't disappeared since. From then on, we didn't really stop laughing. We laughed as we nearly got stranded there and drank cider and played horrific pool, we laughed as we WOOFED at an organic permaculture farm and dismantled prickly pears and assassinated invasive plant species; as we crashed a farm party (we taught the lady farmers the macarena while the men shyly chugged beer by the fire and gossiped in a middle school parody- apparently we were quite the hit!); We laughed our way down the Wild Coast, as we unstranded ourselves in Umtata, as we perused the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. We marveled at the sparkly depth and magnitude of the stars on the farm where we stayed.

Being in her constant jolly presence relaxed me in a way I haven't felt for ages, and I promptly responded by absent-mindedly forgetting things everywhere I went, which have since been returned through the kindness of strangers. Because of her easy company I checked out of my "reflective travel mode", and just enjoyed. Sharing details, decisions, and company- processing verbally and being entirely myself... We were bad at shutting up to sleep; I read maybe twenty pages during the time we were together. She helped me with my Americorps app (I got an interview!), and even de-boned chicken for a Mexican feast we prepared for a VM focus group with Rhodes Univ. Students.

Rainy day

Don't ask me why, but the rain in Bulungula smells like Michigan air. Which means o me it smells of nostalgia, innocence, magic summers and sadness I'm not old enough for. Too many mothballs of grief for comprehension.

Mollie and I got up for a rain splashed sunrise, from which the sun was as sluggish to emerge as we were to wake. Walking the fluctuating waterline in the liquid dawn, I kept hearing slapping footfalls running up behind me. Whether they were really leaves, paranoia, or ghosts I know not. But I wasn't scared.

It reminded me of other early morning beach walks, it reminded me of reminding myself of my mother. That moment in the D.R., with my toes the first to touch that Caribbean morning foam, and jotsom and ... flotsom? (How does it go?) I was maybe beginning to grow up, because the similarities between my mother and I were comforting, were a dose of her, as opposed to the stereotypical teenage grimace at any familiar resemblance.

I am sitting here in the eco-lodge, fresh solar made Xosa bread and veggie sausage brekky on the way. Mosaics and murals and drift wood chandeliers are above me. It is a rainy day, a rained in day, a day of rain, and the sea is visible just outside the dripping and salty window. There is local jazz playing, and this morning, everyone is slow to wake. We have bi passed the paraffin-powered showers in deference to the water shortage and our own cozy laziness. Need I say more? I am happy.

Taking my vitamins

(Political cartoons. Second one a counter attack to the outrage and rebuttals. He is being sued I am told.)

Durban is a delight. My first day I awoke at dawn (momentarily) and peeled back the curtain to see a rose sunrise splashed across the horizon, which was two-thirds round, round, ocean. Drinking nescafe and obligatorily admiring their obese sea-lion-esque labs, I saw whales spouting! (okay, moment of sharing: wrote “whales sprouting” stared at it for a sec, ‘something is wrong about this. Then realized, and struck me as hilarious. Sprouting!) There were dozens of dolphins cavorting amongst their own breakfast of sardines. The water was quiet. Auntie Raj told me she calls it a tea-cup sea when it’s like that. Staying with Nikita’s family and their friends was a window into a large family. Her parent’s relationship, forged in the Apartheid resistance movement, is the kind everyone dreams of. Or, the kind I dream of anyhow. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a partnership more tender and respectful. She told me, “Watch them- every morning it’s like they fall in love again.”



Some of the tension, and most all of the cold, is alleviated here. Walking the tree-lined avenues, meeting interviewees at Botanical Gardens where symphonies play, used bookstores, curling amid funky décor and ordering hummus, sipping coffee in sunlit street cafes- all of these things are welcome. My enjoyment of them can feel vaguely guilty, because I appreciate these things for their familiarity. But I have long given up trying to find the quintessential “South African” experience- it is all South African, just as it was all Indian. The 7-11s in Thailand were Thai!



I’m also at the point in my year where I make real vegetable soup and squash for dinner, where I transcribe in the corner and read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” (my find!). In Spain the difference between Emily’s lives and subsequent attitudes and I was so clear- she was so interested in making friends with everyone, “Where are you from? How long are you here? Where are you coming from and where are you going next?” And I was just happy to be with a familiar soul and tired of asking and answering those same questions; I am meeting people all the damn time. I love it. Of course I do. But today for example, after three interviews, one rape disclosure, I am exhausted. I had real connection, I made them feel comfortable, I described my project for the thousandth time. I am not lonely. But I am a bit weary. And I just don’t want to play nice with the other backpackers.



Like the veggies (whose need I feel after too much hearty South African fare of meat pies, “chips”, billtong, and bunny chow), the solitude and my new book are my nutrition. Another job application is my nasty vitamin pill. I am fortifying my cerebral cortex. Though the academia of Wits University was tantalizing, I don’t really want to go right back to school even if the economy seems to want me to- instead, I need to keep LEARNING other ways. I cannot wait to go to Portland’s public libraries! We are so damn spoiled with educational opportunities.



I do have this sense of… Not quite getting to the heart of the issues here. My interviews are satisfying, interesting, similar, but my research stays on a safe level. The Medical Research Council says that there are 40,000 rapes per month in South Africa. ONE THOUSAND RAPES EVERYDAY. Interpol says SA leads the world in rapes. The facts are more than sobering, they are crippling. A new fear- being raped and becoming HIV positive. These conversations are moving, but I am on Florida and Davenport road, I am not seeing the townships, the grit, so apparent in Jo’burg, is hidden- where are the drug pushers? The children sniffing glue? The cornrows being done on the corners? I keep wanting rip off the facade, “5,000 toddlers are raped every month! 20 infant rapes per day here!” One out of two women in South Africa will be raped or violated. I feel frustrated, impotent- my questions feel futile- “What is the point of The Vagina Monologues?” I ask, and here, I wonder, I need answers. “What does it mean to have it here?” I am trying and trying to focus on the individuals, how these young women’s lives were broken open, how they now feel stronger, inspired, validated. Nombuso told of having her first baby at fifteen, of not knowing anything about sex, about her babie’s father stalking her, raping her. She paused. And then segwayed, “I think I am strong for leaving him. And that’s why I did The Vagina Monologues. We have to tell girls about these things!” But these statistics are looming, and threatening to swallow the beauty. Can I do this work my whole life? Will I be able to keep believing in humanity? … There are some books and films that capture life’s ephemeral and epic yet mundane qualities- every now and then I get a glimpse of this perspective for my friend’s lives, ever so rarely my own. Oh, I don’t know how to explain this. Gonna go eat some "grenadillas" ie. passion fruit, to feel some vibrancy.

Howziit. Stayed in Jo'burg, hey.

Accidentally spent nearly two weeks in Jo'burg! Interviews, outdoor rock music festival, rare rain made the coziness that much more appealing. I went to uni with Niks during the day, and between interviews just revelled in a university setting- I was feeling nostalgic and strangely drawn to go back. Until I went into a classroom! Got sucked into the daily life of a beautiful family, and felt so at home I procrastinated leaving. Like Ana in Brighton, Nikita welcomed me not only into her heart and insight about The Vagina Monologues, but brought me home with her. Her fourth/fifth generation Indian South African family were an amazing transition- daily curries so comforting. I am covered in lab puppy hair- I have no doubt at least a kilo made its way into my backpack. Their incredibly tight knit family made the uniqueness of mine shine anew. Her mum, Auntie Janie told me, "You have no sisters?" No, none. "Well, now you have Nikki." I got goodnight kisses along with all the other "kids" and am driving down to Durban with them today where I have gazillions of interviews set up with her cast for the next three days. Then I head to meet Mollie and woof! So excited to get my hands in some dirt and see some greenery after Mumbai madness and Jo'burg cemented and gated cosmopolitan entity.

Severally Alone

Jo'burg feels oh so different from Mumbai, though there are parts that are eerily familiar. I admit I let myself be intimidated. How does fear form? In warnings, in an extreme sense of not belonging, of standing out- being the only white person in sight. In an emergency button I'm supposed to push in case someone tries to break in during the night, in, "so I'll just ask directions" and "umm, no. Don't talk to anyone" Everyone, black, white, foreign, local say to be in by darkfall- which means 5 pm! Because of the cold and the fear I feel strangely hibernated tucked in to wait out a violence that will probably not come, but whose presence seems lingering. Venturing to the market felt like an adventure- the way people were talking I pictured- what? gangs roving the streets? Instead, it was a sunny crisp Sunday afternoon. Could have been any inner-city area. I saw a literal craigslist of agitated white handwritten papers with crowds pressed in. It felt surreal, people lined as though watching parade or army pass by- but staring instead at a wall full of overpriced non/possibilities.

Babies are the warmest people I have seen. Securely strapped to their moms' backs like sleeping spherical precious cargo. I want their security- or even the comfort of caring for a little person. I imagine they are tiny sloberingsnoring furnaces- even warmer than the sun that settled over my own shoulders and back as I sipped endless tea- trying to imbibe warmth and confidence.

The minibuses felt incredibly familiar, and safe to me. It felt like AMIGOS, or like Mexico city. I love watching everyone on their way to work, school, the drivers joking with each other, instead of shooting up as I'd been told.

I slept under four blankets, the tip of my (I swear) growing nose frigid. While the chimes chimed, and the dog orbited my "cottage," the inexplicable movie of my dreams unfolded. They say you don't imagine strangers, but I have never met the man I loved last night. Only I could see his bruises. I traced the texture on his back where he had been beaten with wood. The grain pronounced in his epidermis like a wood cutting. We were trying to save a child.

The city felt untouchable, impotent, from the 50th floor of the Carlton Center. It made me feel lonely and as though I could never understand or touch anything about this place. I love the quotes at the beginning of 'Maximum City'; "We are individually multiple" (Kabir Mohanty) and "I am severally alone" (Kumar Gandharva). The Soweto Artists gallery was the perfect anti-venom- Peter's colorful chalk pastel rubbed off onto me, and the grassroots single room filled with dancing, pain, music, AIDS, poverty, gossip and flirtation calmed me in a very real way.

I've lightened up and am so very mobil that there is none of the distracting "settling" in that normally eases me into a place. This nomadness, my utter lack of a plan that is in fact necessary- knowing this is almost the end, and that Dawn is coming- all of this swerves me into countdown kind of mind. Is this good? Bad? I think it just is. So much of life IS; value judgement free because of its inevitability. I am not an advocate for passivity, but the moments we have the least control can be oddly liberating.

Jo'burg

If you' told me I had acclimated to India heat I would have given you a sweaty hug or flicked my "long" hair to spatter you with salty bits of Jen. Transferring in Addis abbaba the sun was still strong, but a pleasant vitamin something inducing relief from Mumbai. But, here in a South African winter, I am utterly wimpy towards the cold. I have to wear layers? Socks?! SHOES?!! Woah. It feels crisp like autumn, generous watery sunlight. I slept like a baby cozzied under five blankets. I am waiting for an overpriced taxi to head to real city digs, and a bit high on new beginnings. Trying not to be intimidated by warnings and crime statistics. Have meetings set up for the next few days, and lots I want to see. Nicest send-off, moody lady turned grateful sap. With fresh pesto still in my stomach, Mumbai club sweat dry on my skin, friends dropped me at the airport at 2 am. It's the first time I've been "taken to the airport" since Portland, sweet sweet. Well, here goes! Invigorated by newness and wild African wind getting to know the terrains of my face, my smile.

Audience responses to The Vagina Monologues in Mumbai, India: "Nice way to change the world"

28/5/05 I would like to wish that this show is staged in every corner of this country.

Staging this play took a lot of courage, grit, will, determination & VAGINAS OF STEEL!!

…The most amazing theatre experience of my life…I am a proud feminist being a guy myself. I’m most willing to help you out with your cause to help stop atrocities handed out to women. I’m into media and will be honoured to help.



29/5/05 You spoke about me!!!

Just gifted this play performance on our wedding.

16/7/05 Especially loved the way you hit on the deep issues with so much subtlety

Thank you for ‘bringing up’ the ‘down there’!



24/9/05 Thank you for helping us respect our vaginas.

Great if we could have more men watch such performances; would make them more human.

They say change begins at home!

My vagina says THANK YOU!

25/9/05 …makes me want to celebrate my womanhood!

1/10/05 It’s the first time I ever said vagina.

An ecstatic celebration of womanhood. Thanks.

The show must go on!

Never thought I could see a play so great, so different, here in India!

The inhibition toward the word vagina has turned into respect.

Being a gynecological doctor, looking at numerous vaginas telling the stories of their mutilations, anger, sorrow, love, happiness—Never thought somebody could put it in better words!

16/12/05 Coming from Holland it’s great to see such a controversial piece acted out with such a power and strength respecting women all over the world!

18/12/05 I think the Monologues should be enacted in regional languages to reach a larger audience.

5/1/06 Now maybe I may understand my mother/wife better.

14/1/06 Keep on doing this; it means a lot to all the vaginas of the world!

Now I can discuss the ‘vagina’ with my daughter without being embarrassed.

Thanks for introducing me to my vagina.

12/3/06 I’m only 18…I feel like a more mature and comfortable young woman. Thank you.

I hope this turns into a movement.

7/5/06 …really changed a lot of my perceptions about women.

Am also glad I brought my mum along!

Matured people’s sex education.

Could there be a monologue by a TRANSGENVER longing for a VAGINA?

Simultaneously heartrending & entertaining.

I have been dealing with VAGINAS for some time now (I’m a gynecologist) but I guess I knew really REALLY little before I watched THIS! Thanks for all the education.

25/6/06 It has increased my respect for myself manifold. Comparison of vagina and heart was awesome!

I’m glad I got my 17-year-old to see the play – quite an eye opener

19/10/06 …it should be performed in various REGIONAL LANGUAGES so it reaches out to more people, especially women from all parts of India.

I’m so delighted to see this play in India where we really need to tell these dialogues & emancipate & empower our wonderful women.

As men, particularly in a society like that of India, we really do not come across “sources” where we get to hear the other side of the story. And that too portrayed so beautifully…

19/11/06 Very enlightening for a man!

Thank you so much for bringing this to Delhi, even if a few of us are less ‘tabooed’ it will make a difference. May we continue to celebrate ourselves and our vaginas!

Thank you for liberating everywoman in this audience, in a country where everyone of us is still a sex object, you’ve let us become a thing of grace and beauty.



I would love to hear more Indian women’s voices. Come to us, we’ll give you the stories!! (International Planned Parenthood Federation)

8/2/07 All females in my life will get more care and respect and love.

8/4/07 Just another instance when I realize that I appreciate a woman’s place in this world.

I’d really, really like to be part of it!

I wish sex education classes in school were like this!

I think a lot of what you said appeals mostly to the urban audience. Your next step should be to adopt it into every Indian language and spread the message to the masses to stop rape. THIS IS YOUR CHALLENGE. Would like to help.

10/5/07 More of us men should watch it. It will mature us and teach us to respect women.

Am coming here to see the play for the sixth time…

I have four daughters. Last year I held a mirror to them & showed them their vaginas and reaffirmed all that you just said in your play.

I’m sure my boyfriend and to-be-hubby will respect me & my vagina much more.

A must for everyone in India.

14/7/07 Prithvi 151 st show

An inspiring play handled with care, compassion & class…Need to give Indian women confidence.

Thanks for making the private public!

A must watch for our society.

…to touch the real, practical lives of women in such a simple way.

Hope the show runs and runs! It was the most empowering show I’ve seen! I’ve truly been touched!

15/7/07 I think it was absolutely brilliant. I’ve seen over 100 plays and it’s one of the best I have ever come across. Have waited almost a year to see this play. Must say it was work the wait. Amazing!

26/7/07 Prithvi Instilled and encouraged a strange but wonderful feling of freedom & acceptance of self.

It sure makes me love myself more.

The two times I’ve seen this wonderful wonderful play I’ve been bombarded with Tch! Tch! Tch! Oh no! Did she say clit/yani/vaginaaaa! Well, you’ve achieved what you always wished to – made them say the much-dreaded word…VAGINA!

I discovered myself!

My vagina is wide awake!

I am a man. It saddens me to see something so beautiful, natural & loving be so blatantly abused. Thank you for enlightening us.

Your play moved me, touched me beyond words. I am going to come back again & again.

Different, intelligent, vaginal.

22/7/07 Being a man…I would have to call watching your play my most liberating experience.

30/9/0 7 Deshpande v-good

Impressed that this could happen In India.

I was encouraged to see the play with my 20 year old daughter. No regrets!

Truly progressive!

Brilliantly ‘organismic.’

Must be made mandatory for men!

5/10/07 Max Adlass in Wadala

There was a moment when I had tears in my eyes. ..I have newfound admiration for women.

Make this compulsory viewing in all colleges, the army, the police force. It will sensitize people who matter.

I spent 18 months doing episiotomies in a public hospital. Your play affected me powerfully; I’ve traveled from Pune just to see this play – worth every mile!

Fulfilling

Easily the most beautiful, innovative, expressive, bold & brilliant way of bring up issues related to us – Vaginas.

7/10/07 Vivid, vivacious, voluptuous, volatile, voracious…wonderful!!!

I loved the Indian take on things

Lucid, humorous day-to-day discourse to expose gender & sexual politics should to on!!

Never in my dreams would I have ever imagined myself screaming the word VAGINA in an auditorium…

This is what India needs and needs now.

After ten shows that I could not get tickets to, I have finally managed to watch it! Definitely worth the wait! The most refreshing and honest work I have perhaps ever seen!

Made me look at my vagina in a new way. Also hurt my tummy laughing!

Every 17-year-old bloke should be made to listen to this!!

Going home to check my vagina tonight!

Sri Lanka 22/10/07

Liberating! I’ve waited many years to enjoy these amazing Monologues.

Prithvi 20/12/07

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! A post grad, married 10 years, mother of two and today you made me realize what a wonderful thing I have been carrying around all this time – my wonderful, pulsating, throbbing , alive, beautiful fragrant vaginaJ

Thanks for making me experience this feeling. I am in my 8th month and I think my Baby loved it as well.

29/12/07 I’m from Iran. I wish there was freedom of speech there too.

It was fun screaming out CUNT & VAGINA with my mother, uncles, aunts & cousins! I’ve waited 40 years to do that.

Having been working in the field of reproductive & sexual rights, I felt that it was a great step to bring such isues in the open.

I’m never gonna wait for weekends now, as that’s when my hubby gets some time’ to make me come.’ I’m gonna enjoy on my own.

I saw VM for the second time today, with my husband. I recently got married and I had told him that I specifically want him to, want us to see this play together. And I loved it all the more this time too.

As a man, I felt sad and thankful at the same time.

Pune Festival at Nehru Audi

14/1/08 Please let me know when you are back. I WANT MY MOM TO SEE IT!

I’ve been waiting 2 years for this!

Thank you so much. I could feel the spirits of all the women hovering ( a doctor).

…genuine…

It opens everyone up.

Absolutely amazing, dashing, bold and factual. ‘Courageous move.’ Wonder how it will be taken in our country in ‘Hindi’. Be careful.

23/1/07 I am a girl & I should buy a hand mirror fast. A must-watch for men alongside women.

Gave me a new perspective on understanding the beauty of women.

Felt closed, stifled and dead; today realized which part of me died.

I’ve see this in Holland and in the Caribbean. This was the best!

Captivating…enthralling…

Such an amazing, thought-provoking portrayal about women’s liberation. Wish you could bring this somehow to the Gulf where women are so suppressed & not allowed to voice themselves. Hope to see you there sometime in the not-so-distant future.

You know something likes this exists, but never wish to see it.This play turned my reluctance into acceptance. I liked it a lot for a long list of reasons.

Such a thought-provoking play. When will women be taught that they also have the right to all the pleasures. Whenever they have and second or third partner they feel as they have become whores. I thing you should also include this aspect. As men think it’s their right to change partners, but now women.

…like a journey…

Highly provocative. I can see why is wasn’t allowed in Singapore where I came from It even awakened me to emotions in myself that I didn’t know I had.

Calcutta 29/1/08

…little too much

Pathbreaking is an understatement. It is surely a new beginning.

The similarity between the heart and the vagina was an eye opener.

…from darkness to light…

I am nineteen and I had already forgotten how it is to be a woman. Thank you.

It takes a lot of courage & love to do what you are doing. It’s a huge responsibility to give back the vagina’s dignity. Thanks for it.

Can you bring the Vagina Workshop here?

…therapeutic…

9/2/08 …great local adaption

I feel all powerful…

You should put on a show for all our guys in Kashmir (the Indian army).

This makes having an orgasm more legitimate. How come no talk on the period; that’s one time most women hate their vaginas!

HAND OUT A MIRROR!

8/03/08 You gals are the guardian angels for all the vaginas throughout the world!

This is an experience that will stay with me for all my life.

Total gender bias you make a production for vagina monologues. Why not penis monologues as each coin has two sides, you have to show both the sides. If you don’t, I will.

I used to love pussies, now I love them more than ever & respect them.

Bangalore 4/4/08

I once did 9 episiotomies in a single night shift in …The last monologue brought back memories of exhaustion, blood and the needle, thread and technique.

Saw the original in NYC 6 years ago.

It was a revelation.

Thank you for bringing in a VAGINA VOCAL REVOLUTION!

9/4/08 This is the first play that I have seen.

It must be performed in Islamic countries

19/4/08 This is the second time I have watched this play & it has had an unbelievable impact in my life,

my thought process & my understanding of women. Absolutely fucken incredible!

It was an experience of a lifetime. I have never been kind to my VAGINA…it should be part of curriculum…

JUST THANK YOU.

…I could never imagine so many facets of my vagina…

26/4/08 This totally gave me a new perception to vaginas and since I watched it with my mum, I think it

made the topic of vaginas easier between us.

26/6/08 I am recommending this to everyone I know/don’t know.

Of all species, only humans have the pleasure of enjoying sex. An hour and half back, vagina was important for me. Now it’s sacred and person.

Slightly tougher for men to identify. Suggestion: make a new play – vaginal dialogue (including views from men).

Striking truth!

The past 90 minutes changed the way I look at life & myself.

27/6/08 This is the second time I am watching this and I must say I have changed.

I love the VAGINA MONOLOGUES. I’ve done a reading of it, I’ve read it end to end a million times, I’ve seen 4 other versions, but today, wow, today was amazing…

27/6/08 I thought I was a doctor and knew it all, but you just liberated me & my vagina.

It needs to be shown for women who might not see it otherwise.

8/6/08 Going into the play I was so blank and coming out brimming. So much so that my

dictionary falls short.

2/7/08 Helped clear a lot of my myths.

I wish my husband was there watching!!!

5 years to get to see this.

The only missing cycle is the WIDOW VAGINA.

16/7/08 I am a gynecologist. One night I got a call: “Doctor.I am having an itching sensation in my

vagina.” “Damn it…scratch! “ It was 2am. Keep it up!

A beginning!

Finally the vagina speaks her heart & claims her true place!

Recommended for all high schools.

16/7/08 Helped me question.

I am 30 year old urban Indian woman and never examined my vagina. Will do it tonight!

Today happens to be my 48th birthday and I was invited to the play by my 18-year-old son –It feels like I got the chance to grow up on a rainy Monday.

28/7/08 I watched the play with my 2 teenage daughters. It was very liberating for me & I hope my daughters also found it so.

I have learnt so many new ways of self-expression. I am amazed at the sheer truthfulness of the monologues.

…overdue message…

Suggestion: try and concentrate on rural areas & small towns.

The unexpected ordinary but extraordinary. I am 21 and you changed the way I look at girls. Thank you.

…extremely subversive…

It makes us feel that we have entered the 21 st century…bravery with elegance.

28/8/08 I am a father of two daughters, older one aged 10. I would like her to be guided in the right

manner about her body.

`…leads to opening up of our sordid minds…

Thanks . I’ve largely undone twenty years of damage by assholes.

I have actually revisited myself.

Should be part of gynecology curriculum in all colleges.

One of the few experiences that has moved me.

Being a doctor, I didn’t know that I didn’t know so much about vaginas.

Awakening epitomized.

I wept. (a man)

Spellbinding. I am sure millions of ladies, girls or maybe even males have been liberated by speaking and more by listening and even more by laughing. I could watch it 1,000 times.


This was the most beautiful and satisfying piece of work I’ve seen I can go back home beaming PROUD to have a VAGINA.

These things have to be said out loud. (a man)

My appreciation goes by your tribute to women in labor and delivery. (a midwife)

Wonderfully woven in pleasure and sadness. You made me laugh and cry all at the same time.

Great exposure.

Whenever someone unwanted touches my vagina, it shouts and cries and no one hears it. But it speaks…

“The first step towards spiritual awakening is self-acceptance…” VAGINA MONOLOGUES has led me to the FIRST STEP.

I am liberated, but now I am overliberated.

10/9/08 A very fair liberation of the fair sex. A clear & honest narration of the w(hole) truth.

It’s liberating to think about a piece of my anatomy which I had forgotten existed. Thanks for the experience.


My vagina throbbed with life today.

A complete eye opener. I have my Mom’s suffering from uterine cancer and now can empathize more with what she’s going through.

I WANT MY MOM TO SEE THIS PLAY. (a man)

We will attend as many times as we can! Love you people! I am 20 years old and I’ve never felt this way before.

I can say it now, I can feel it now, I don’t know whether I can celebrate it yet.

IN HINDI – KISSA YONI KA 13/01/08

I’m proud to be a woman today.

It’s important to this society.

Should come up in other languages as well. You can even start an AIDS awareness program with this.

Don’t stop. Let the yonis storm the whole of India.

Superb translation. This performance should go to every corner of India.

Funny, but after seeing the performance some words do not sound obscene anymore.

This play can empower girls of India to become great and wonderful women of India.

22/1/08 Feel liberated as if someone has freed me of my hypocrisies.

It’s slowly breaking free from its English original.

Hindi version is more lyrical.

23/1/08 VAGINA MONOLOGUES is beautifully crafted, but I feel as a girl that it should be telecast on

television so that each and everyone can watch it and learn lesson from it: to respect a woman.

A goose -bump affair. Every incident strikes a chord.


You girls are the spice girls (very spicy).

16/3/08 Life has started today.


28/6/08 Nice way to change the world.

I feel so proud to be an Indian – as a product of this generation that allows for women such as you to leave a mark in this society.

The English performance was moving, disturbing. The Hindi show was an eye-opener. You are changing lives with every show; please go on.

29/6/08 I’ll continue with the thought that I have to learn many more things. This play of yours has given me a damn big vision about the whole world round


More power to women, especially in our country. I strongly feel that this play should tour the country especially in the interiors of our country so that more people can be part of the ‘V Movement.’


6/8/08 Awakenings. The last episode was soul stirring.

Must play all over India, a country requires such a play, especially men.

It’s struggle, it’s right, it’s awesome step beyond existence. It’s very important!

Educative for a shunned society.

28/11/08 Could be a replacement for sex education if nothing else.

"acting"

While working on the umpteenth draft of this article, whose scope is becoming more expansive and ambitious than I am to include transnational feminist networking, etc. etc. I started pondering the beautiful depth inherent when I am talking about V-Day actresses; the debatable nature of acting vs. portraying, acting on a stage while acting in an ACTivist sense to intentionally change the world. Hmmm.... Thought I'd share. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss academia in the sense that I miss the support, the colleague feedback, etc. I want to peer edit! But I have to stalk my peers via desperate e-mail please around the world instead of meeting at the Bistro for caffeinated red marker sessions. Sigh. It's true, the dork-level of my infant glasses'd self lives on.

Literal and emotional snapshots of the train experience:

A fully veiled woman on the train is staring solemnly at me. I feel self conscious, want to somehow communicate my dilemma between self expression and cultural respect. Then I notice a meticulous child-drawn flower on the ball of her hand that grasps the handles. The six wavering orbs glow from their deep mahogany henna. I picture a child's glossy black head bent in intense concentration over her palm. There is a look of fierce love on her face as she she feels the tickle, the cool henna, as she smells its sweet earthiness. The child is already on to the next task of growing up, and she is letting the henna dry, carefully making chai and food, so conscious of the crumbling dark lines of connection.

On the train I am absorbed in, thoughts? Something. So absorbed that I don't realize my hand on the railing is all mixed in with a woman's long dark hair, and has been awhile. I startle, remove the offending limb. But she hasn't noticed, or if she has, was not bothered. I peer around shiftily, but no one is looking alarmed at the firangi sticking her paws in people's ponytails. I laughed out loud. What an illustration of the lack of personal space!

The moment I knew I wanted to be friends with Anneke was during her description of an old woman's attack on the train. I laughed so hard, I loved it, because I could picture it perfectly. 'I was in the ladies train and this old woman practically scrambled up my back trying to get on the train!' I just pictured a tiny wizened monkey-like ancient mauling her. Her visiting friend Ritz got nearly mowed down when she tried to plunge into an exiting mass of women. It is utter madness, and hilarious how everyone will be all sweet, maybe singing or haggling, smiling at me, adjusting my bra strap so it's more appropriately hidden. And then a big stop like Dadar or Mumbai Central comes and the same kind ladies morph into sternfacedloudvoiced monsters as they push out of the car like a force of nature, like a birth contraction. When the train is packed tightly I feel like all the little fish stuck in the net in 'Finding Nemo'.

After an emotional and successful interview I was in a perfect mood; which is to say, a complicated happiness- tempered and shaded by depressing realities but also real connection. Sitting in that silly mall, we drank overpriced Gloria Jean coffee, while outside the sparkling glass I could see slums decking the hills. I'd cried as Sangita described her connection to 'My Vagina was my Village' She told me how she connects with the piece because it is not located in some vague realm of time or 'other' location. For her, it is present, it isn't Sarajevo. It is her region, where a girl was raped by every man in her town, wood and glass shoved inside her vagina. 'I see her' she told me. So no, I don't think it's all fun. I feel her with me" Even in this work, I can disconnect with the closeness of these stories, their multiplicity. Feminist theorists can bicker all they want about problematic universality, etc. etc. but I can't connect with theory, it means nothing to me compared to hearing these stories replicated the world over.

I feel at home here in a way I only ever can right before I leave. I breeze through the station, snag a five rupee samosa, validate my tickets, give my samosa to a charming urchin, buy another one and invest in some stomach-hardening sugar cane juice. The gears work over the stalks of cane, and a bell rhythmically chimes along with the production of the oh so refreshing frothy green elixir. Ring, ring ring. We stand and drink companionably from the ambiguously clean glasses, flies adding to the rhythm section. I miss the train- there is a moment when I could have ran and swung into the car, graceful and lithe- but I'm not, and I'm too hyper-aware of the slicing rails.

Death is just a few feet away at all times here. As I watch a train running parallel having caught the next one, I can't help shiver despite the sweltering heat, as I observe just how close all these transported humans are to being sliced apart. I'm not usually morbid, but the accident seriously disturbed me. As it should have. I picture people slipping, which would be an easy feat in the packed cars from which people overflow, stand on the roofs... I want them to live. In my fears for their death I affirm the value of life. A woman lifts her baby to snag the hand-holds. The baby chortles, the women smile, a moment passes and we're to the next station.

"We can do it with this text": Utilizing the Vagina Monologues Internationally

I am submitting this article to be published in an academic compilation of essays regarding the Vagina Monologues. I would love feedback, and if the formatting is too messed up here, let me know and I will e-mail you a word document.


“We can do it with this text” :
Utilizing The Vagina Monologues Internationally
Jennifer R. McKenzie

INTRODUCTION

I am constantly on the move, hurtling through foreign currencies, new flavors and languages, and I am not allowed to return to the U.S. for a year. The constant in my life: The Vagina Monologues. The words I am learning: vágina, paparoocha, chong claud, pichka, fannie, coño, choot, and yoni. The terrain I am passing through: Mexico, England, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and South Africa. Having been passionately involved in V-Day for four years at Willamette University, I am now traveling the world documenting The Vagina Monologues’ international presence. Everywhere, participants and audience members tell me they have experienced magic, that they feel a part of positive, “mad hysterical energy,” as one V-Day actress named Rupa told me in Thailand and Jelena in Serbia echoed, “I don’t know how to explain it- there was a lot of magic surrounding it”.
What has been most surprising and inspiring throughout my experiences are the innovative strategies diverse communities are utilizing to indigenize The Vagina Monologues within their cultural contexts. V-Day activists around the world are mobilizing; they are seeking out new experiences, and making the text relevant to themselves and their communities. Actresses on every continent are embracing perceived universalities, empathizing with differences, finding solidarity and adapting where necessary. They are using The Vagina Monologues as a tool to answer their local needs.
V-Day a fallibly human movement, and could never express the experiences of all women. Given this reality, what is crucial is that we contribute to its evolution and that it inspires our own storytelling and actions. There is much that can be critiqued. Yet this is not how those involved relate to it, and in spite of this, the play has a tangible international presence that is expanding every year. These ‘vagina warriors’ are performing in cowsheds with a borrowed couch in rural France; in restaurants; touring in a Roma caravan; in hotels, birthday parties, public parks, girls leadership trainings, malls, women’s shelters, cinemas, women’s prisons and cafés; in SOS hotline trainings: at universities; at antifascist festivals, among disabled groups and alongside refugee medical services; at elderly homes, among NGOs, and on beaches in Croatia.
While allowing for constructive examining of how V-Day can become more inclusive, we also owe it to these remarkable organizers to respect their agency, creativity and bravery. V-Day is not a dogma but an invitation, and it belongs to those who choose to utilize it. Eve Ensler addressed this shared ownership during the European V-Day Organizers Workshop in London:
“When we love something, we want to believe it’s ours: because it gives us value, and it gives us identity, and it gives us purpose. And what I am being taught constantly in this movement is to give it away. To give it away, to get out of the way. Serve it up …You can say, this is my movement, this is my thing, and you’ll keep it very small, and it will be your thing. But your objective should be that as many people get to be involved in V-Day, and to want people to come and take it away from you! Come and take it! … Spread it to your community, be bolder than me, be ahead of me.”
Wherever they are staging events, activists are as bold and innovative as Eve could wish. They take what they need while creatively molding it to suit their context. Instead of asking how a movment like V-Day can possibly appeal to such a breadth of international women, I demonstrate that appeal by examining and seeking to understand the creative strategies and functions it satisfies for international organizers. Their words and experiences highlight the usefulness of V-Day as a strategic tool. In this paper, I examine how productions in three locations indigenized The Vagina Monologues, and demonstrate its effectiveness in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic and at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico, in sustaining and reenergizing weary feminist activists in the former Yugoslavia, and in creating a rare Thai and expatriate community in Thailand.
Their strategies are unique, but their creativeness is so pervasive as to be common. These examples serve to highlight the poignant possibility of our expanding transnational sphere, which Valentine Moghadam describes as, “Globalization has in fact brought social movements together across borders in a ‘transnational public sphere,’ as real as well as conceptual space in which movement organizations interact, contest each other, and learn from each other” (Moghadam 4). Transnational feminism approaches like V-Day can only grow through learning from eachother through efforts like these in Mexico, the Balkans and Thailand.


MEXICO CITY



‘My vagina is going crazy in fact…
It’s mad already…
AIDS has invaded its deepest, sweetest, most secret places
…My vagina is dying of AIDS…
Are politicians watching?
Do they know this?
Do they know they are diminished every time a vagina perishes?
…This great army can wage a war against vagina injustice
….Chronicle the story of vaginas
Learn the history of vaginas
… Uplift the dignity of vaginas
Hold it high for the world to see
That the vagina, like the penis, is human”

(Poem in Vagina Monologues Session
World AIDS Conference ‘08 Mexico City)

In the conference room packed with international HIV/AIDS activists, the early August rain was deafening. We were there for The Vagina Monologues session of the XVII International AIDS Conference. The reading of select international Monologues and open mic seemed disorganized, with the organizers mispronouncing author Eve Ensler’s name. I braced myself for a flop. Instead, I was privy to an inspiring and intimate conversation. As one of the organizers gushed afterwards, “I’ve never seen this happen with a hundred strangers before.” Leading activists piled informally on the steps--some HIV-positive, one held her sleeping infant-- and the microphone was passed amongst them with care. Many were hearing the stories for the first time. As the presentation proceeded, the emotions inspired in them and the audience were palpable.
Although The Vagina Monologues has been shown over 5,000 times in the last nine years there, and is performed an impressive twelve times weekly in Mexico City alone, what happened here was unique. The professional production has put the word vagina into daily discourse , sparked controversy, focused on the missing women of Juarez, appealed to a massive public and become a rite of passage for female celebrities . Yet what we saw that monsoon-drenched afternoon was not acting. As one participant said, “this was more authentic because it was real women. We’re not actors, we’re just women, women who happen to be in the Women’s Movement, or the HIV movement.” The words rang with this authenticity, forged instant community, and provided a platform for dialogue about the intersections of the pandemic with sexual violence. Activists synthesized The Vagina Monologues to illuminate their cause and needs. They used it to address overlapping issues within the HIV/AIDS movement such as speaking about taboos, breaking stigmatized silence in this ‘silent epidemic’ and validating individual experiences while applying them to community action. The connection and similarity to The Vagina Monologues is apparent in their goals:
“Women’s voices are central to our success in identifying and ensuring rights-based responses to the epidemic … It is a space for us to … bring forward women’s voices-old and new, diverse and unified- to comment, shape, critique and respond to current and future interventions responding to women’s realities risks and needs. We aim to bring the voices from the margins to the center. We aim to trace our history as a movement and to map our way forward.” (Feminization of violence and feminization of the epidemic)
Although there were more attendees than seats, The Vagina Monologues was utilized to create metaphotical space, and facilitated the kinds of conversations activists both hungered for and sought to use in their own work. Seodhna Keown described her experience at the session in a paper titled, ‘The Feminization of HIV-a call to Action,’ saying it created, “a safe space for women and men to share, opened up a discussion and dialogue about our own personal experiences of our bodies, our relationships, our pain and our joy. I witnessed an incredible community of women supporting one another to share their intimate experiences on being a woman!” She sees The Vagina Monologues as a resource, and was inspired to replicate this kind of tool in her work with sexual health education. Kristan Schoultz, Director of the Global Coalition of Women and AIDS called for more creative strategies like The Vagina Monologues to, “vibrate with the richness of women’s experienes, and offer a vibrant demostration of how different the response can be, when women take the lead” (Schoultz 4).
The organizers of The Vagina Monologues reading had hoped to inspire activists to creative responses not only through witnessing the texts’ potential, but through then breaking our own silence. After the reading, tears and laughter drowned by the rain, the emcee said, “ I think maybe we should just begin to tell each other stories … We’re at this conference to talk about breaking taboos- that’s really what The Vagina Monologues is about. It’s about relating what happens to us in our lives, and speaking words that haven’t been spoken.” Even then I doubted. Who would stand in front of hundreds of strangers, walk to the front of a cavernous room and speak into the waiting microphone? There was a mere moment of tense silence. And then the stories began to pour forth. Their power and poignancy drowned the thunder and created a different kind of electricity. Though many languages were spoken, we were sharing the same conversation.
Some were stories of affirmation, “I want to encourage everybody to keep a vision of the pleasure that talking vaginas can have. And that people want to hate you for. I want to assure you, that at age sixty-seven, my vagina is talking to other vaginas and having a pretty damn good time!” One woman spoke about inseminating herself to create her son. Others shared about their empowerment through short skirts and their joy with multi-orgasms, “You cannot reach that without empowering yourself, and feeling that your body and your pleasure belongs to you.” Activists also shared their pain and survival through molestations and injustices,
“While in exile, at the age of five I was raped by a neighbor in Swaziland. We moved countries. And went to South Africa, and I was raped at thirteen. And I had to leave the country and go to Zambia because I was raped. And I was raped again at fourteen. I went to a theological seminary to study to be a priest, and I was raped at twenty. And then, I was raped by the former Deputy Director of South Africa. First he said I wore a miniskirt. And I folded my skirt in such a way that it enticed him. And then he said it was because I wore a cloth that nearly all women in Africa wear- to the bed, to the market. But on top of that, his lawyer said that my rapes at five, and thirteen, and fourteen and twenty were my sexual history, and proved that I could not tell the difference between consensual sex and rape. I refused to give in to it. Everyday I have to keep reminding myself that I did nothing wrong. And I have to keep fighting the fight!”
One activist told her sister’s story of rape and subsequent crusade to document sexual assault on Chilean university campuses. One young woman, appropriately named Lluvia (rain) told about using the The Vagina Monologues in a community project in Gueretero, México:
“We talked with many women from different groups, mothers, and young women. And it’s incredible how many want to talk … We can do it with this text, we can organize ourselves and our states, and our cities, and our countries … This session is an example. We have many women sharing very intimate things, and it’s only because of the text. It’s an invitation … When our vaginas start to get organizing, and to talk to each other, no one can stop them.”
The crowd applauded raucously. Another woman thanked those who shared: “I feel very fortunate to share this space with such powerful women. Even though they have suffered something I can’t comprehend in my head or my heart, they are still here fighting for all of us. I cried when I heard them.” The open mic had to be cut off, though participants were lined up to share their stories. They drifted into the hall speaking amongsts themselves. The stories in the text allowed their own stories to be shared, and then communally uplifted and validated.
This kind of intimate sharing and strategic use of The Vagina Monologues is an example of activists creatively applying the text to their cause. I have learned this year that there is no traditional or typical V-Day performance. This is highlighted even more in organizers’ informal use of The Vagina Monologues in the context of an international conference to create community, inspire alternate strategies and re-emphasize the interconectiveness of issues. Conference organizers suggested that, “Approaches that rest on the experiences of women and girls encourage and engage their participation in decision-making, and emphasize the importance of changing community attitides to counter gender inequality” (4). Initially I thought V-Day had been overdue in addressing HIV/AIDS and the health issues surrounding vaginas and violence against women. But after the session I realized it is even more powerful to have communities making the connection themselves. As one organizer emphasized, “We wanted to link the connection between violence against women as a major risk factor for AIDS- violence against women and rape. Especially now, in Darfur and the Congo - there are so many places where women are HIV positive because they were raped.” I imagine all of these diverse activists taking the lessons they shared at this session back to their countries, the breaking of silence expanding like ripples. As the organizer of the session said,
“I think it’s enormously powerful, and beautiful and fabulous and bold, and it creates a space. And it’s a space that can only expand.”


BALKANS
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina



“[The Vagina Monologues] had great impact on women and communities, but also on activism. [V-Day] changed what activism means, it fulfills us in a different way”
Rada Boric

(Director Women’s Studies Center Zagreb, Croatia, Feminist Aunt and influential V-Day activist )

“It is an activisty way of doing The Vagina Monologues”

(Biljana (Lori) Stankovic Founder of NoviSad Lesbian Organization has been performing unofficially for ten years among diverse communities and informal settings)


Walking through stormy Sarajevo, I was stressing because I was lost and late to meet Nuna Zvizdic, the director of Zene Zenama , and long-time V-Day advocate. I walked through the gorgeous shrapnel-pitted and cemetery-ridden city, and after knocking on bemused neighbors doors, finally found her. Nuna held my eyes solemly while her reply was translated regarding why the The Vagina Monololgues and V-Day are significant to feminist work in the Balkan region: “They are very important because they are improving the development of strategy for women’s rights, and against violence against women. It’s one part of the strategy.” I asked her what she thought was the connection between art and activism. She gazed at me evenly, and responded, “Isn’t it the same thing? Activism is really the art of survival.”
The region of former Yugoslavia has many such survival artists and a strong Vagina Monologues presence. In many ways it is the V-Day Mesopotamia. Eve’s work with Bosnian women refugees sparked the flame that ignited The Vagina Monologues from theatre to a public movement. The Monologue ‘My Short Skirt’ was even adapted into a hit song in Croatia. As Rada Boric, the Director of Women’s Studies Center in Zagreb, Croatia and influential V-Day activist said, “-when you think [the play] might have been forbidden in many places like Kosovo, and then … after the bombing, to have ‘My Little Skirt’ being first on the top pop list- that somebody dares to play it! A pop song, in a war-torn Mostar or even Sarajevo…”
With numerous creative endeavors like these, the Balkans have embraced V-Day in Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. The recovering region is a dramatic backdrop for the play. As Serbian V-Day organizer Jelena Djordovic wrote in her article about the first official production in Belgrade: “Staging V-Day in this region, which was for years devastated by wars in former Yugoslavia, provided a metaphor for the possibility of bringing peace and coexistence of different cultures and religions. It was aimed at strengthening women’s solidarity and support and sending a strong political message demanding an end to violence against women.”
V-Day has fulfilled the even more unique function in this region of sustaining activists. The Vagina Monologues provided a powerfully positive outlet which fits and fulfills them. As a strategy, the play re-energizes even as it drains, unites activists in a shared commitment and collaboration, supports focus on their individual needs and encourages them to celebrate their efforts. In the words of Danijela Dugandzic, Bosnia and Herzegovina V-Day activist and Pitch-Wise founder , “We said, okay, we’re still feminists, and these are feminist issues, but we’ll do it through this venue, and form, and actually it’s the form that really suits us … we saw that we really enjoyed doing it through art.”
This artistic strategy sustains activists by allowing them to creatively focus on the range of female sexual experience, joy as well as injustice. It is affirmative and this focus on positivity is catalytic and refreshing. Sandra Ljubinkovic, the Director of Belgrade Anti Trafficking Center said, “I personally, and we at the ATC, are done with victim-hood, and victims, and this deep deep dark. We know that. We did that. We worked on that, but then we decided our strategy will be a bit different. It’s affirmative- it’s not light, but it’s affirmative.” As Jelena Djordovic, co-director of ATC, illuminated to me over exponential cups of coffee, tangerines and chocolate:
As a way of talking about violence against women, it is extremely powerful. It is a new way; it is talking about violence against women in a very powerful message- through art, through music, through dancing through play. We don’t play much around violence against women, it’s all very clear: ‘it’s difficult, its bleak’ … Battered women, bruised women, you know? And all that weight around it, it’s all heavy, it’s all dark. So The Vagina Monologues is something different, it is vibrant, it brings people together. It’s like a way of attracting people through dancing- and through beauty. And then bringing them to this very safe place where actually we can talk about very difficult issues … I think my dream is to use The Vagina Monologues to energize the activist community. Because people are really exhausted and drained, and disempowered.
V-Day further energizes activists through a renewed common commitment. Danijela describes the final moment of the play where they ask people who have suffered violence to stand:
“you have everyone standing up. And this is like an awful moment. I mean, I looked around, and I started crying, because you understand you live in this society that is so violent; and everyone understands that this is something that unites us. Like- fuck! I didn’t know that everyone is going to stand up! Every person in this room, 800 people has been or knows someone who has been through violence- this is awful, you know? And then people of course keep on standing when they say [remain standing] if you’re going to keep this from happening to women and girls.’”
As well as renewed dedication, Sandra describes the importance of sharing a common dream. She says a world without violence against women, without the need for The Vagina Monologues would be “a more contemplative world … But that’s like… a dream, yeah? And we have to dream, we have to dream. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible, we couldn’t be doing this… For activists this is very important. Because it is what sustains you, and also what drains you at the same time. Because you give so much” Jelena emphasizes how V-Day encourages this shared dream among activists:
“a shared idea about the world, and emphasizing dreaming about this world against violence against women. What would it look like? What would we do? And really feeling it! … Capturing that feeling- this is something we rarely have a chance to feel, because this doesn’t exist. We’re always trying to get it and its difficult- we come up again, we fall down again, because the struggle to create a safer world is very hard and there are many obstacles… V-Day is a really beautiful and magical experience which personally re-energizes me a lot.”
The movement and presence of The Vagina Monologues have re-energized many activists as it did Jelena, and allowed them to focus, for once, on their individual needs. For many activists hearing The Vagina Monologues was “revolutionary.” At local gatherings around the region Monologues were regularly read, “and this was beautiful, you know? It was really beautiful. Just among activists.” These readings inspired vagina workshops. At a conference in Thailand Balkan activists were relaxing after a long day and Rada was asked, ‘Teta (auntie), why don’t you do with us a vagina workshop?” She saus, “it started there, and they all loved it! … it started by talking and it was so wonderful I created a program…I really started softly…You can’t believe the impact. Whenever we have a women’s meeting in the smaller communities usually I do two Monologues for the women, in the night just sitting wherever we are. Women are falling apart… One day we might eventually know the impact of The Vagina Monologues.”
There can be power in preaching to the choir. Jelena points out that although many of the participants were veterans with issues of sexuality in their work, they were not engaging their own needs. The workshops facilitated more self-care which leads to greating sustainability of activist endeavors, they:
“reminded us how many of us learned about our bodies through violence rather than pleasure. But also how important it is to create these spaces where we talk about ourselves, our desires and our bodies. We had time to think about it, away from our daily work, activism and families. We reminded ourselves we need time to self-reflect, to look at ourselves more deeply. Because only by change in ourselves, can the change we envision for the world happen.”
Bosnian organizer Danijela similarly discovered that fellow activists:
“were never actually talking about themselves, or themselves through their vaginas …It is fun, but also every time we have this workshop, we find out that most of the women have suffered from violence, or know someone who has been through violence. … This is the shocking thing, you will always unfortunately find women who say, ‘it happened to me’ and it’s just… It is beautiful how this silence breaks, but it is also very emotional. Sometimes I just cannot hold it.”
In addition to beautifully breaking silence, V-Day is a chance for activists to celebrate their work. Rada describes one year when activists were so exhausted they just gathered together for a Vagina Monologues reading at a jazz club, and with accompanying music “had their party.” It was a chance for them to focus not on yet more advocacy, but upon celebrating and validating their efforts. As Dunja from Women’s House in Croatia said, “It was a nice atmosphere. Something…Something was in the air … It was not for awareness raising, it was more- let’s celebrate! Not so much about getting to the public, but about how strong we are, and what we can do together.” She jokes, “Usually we quarrel, so it’s great to just be together!” This is another element of sustaining activism that V-Day provides in the region, as organizers collaborate and support one another in their common goals; in Jelena’s words, “[V-Day] created a space for activists to talk about their work, to talk about their fears, to talk about difficulties they encountered through their work stopping violence against women.”
For ten years the The Vagina Monologues was done in readings among NGOs and women’s organizations, conferences and trainings. Now many activists are focusing on spreading the message beyond their own community. The dilemma is Jelena’s words was, “How to do it inernally as much as it happened over the years in the activist community, but also to spread it out. It needs to be spread out! It needs to be, because... its a beautiful way of really breaking taboos and pushing people outside of their comfort zone. Shaking them. Its cathartic!” Sandra summarized the resolution of this dilemma, “it has less and less sense that we do performances for each other. I mean we know that, we know each other, so there is no purpose. I’m interested in the people I don’t know. I want to reach as much people as possible. I want to touch hearts.”
With this goal in mind, activists collaborated to swath a “Vagina Triangle” between Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo. Their V-Day tour in a “crappy little van,” was intentionally political. They focused on reaching a larger public, crossing constructed borders and looking beyond problematic ethnic divides to focus on common experiences and collective solutions. Rada said, “As we all know, it’s about living on the edge. The blur on the border is nicer than something firm, it overlaps and it always has that kind of texture. Women are crossing borders- we don’t like borders, life is the most exciting on the edge” She elaborated, “This is a deeply feminist piece, with wonderful humor- in The Vagina Monologues we laugh even in the places we shouldn’t. And it’s a perfect balance.” Activists continue to use this balance to sustain themselves as well as to reach out to a wider public. They dream of expanding the movement to schools and bringing it to a more rural demographic, as Serbian Biljana (Lori) Stankovij, NoviSad Lesbian Organization founder did during her ten years performing unoficially:
“We did it in refugee camps with a mobile medical team…its an activisty way of doing The Vagina Monologues. These refugees, the stories they have… the taboo of the vagina is so big. So I don’t think, it doesn’t matter if there are ten, fifteen, two-hundered…If you make a womb atmosphere they will stay, smoke a few cigarettes, and speak about it before they go home, and then they will also speak about it there…Like in the refugee camps… they said, ‘Now we are all here, and we have seen this performance, and we are all women, so I will tell you…’ And then she adds something from her story. And then the others say, ‘Yes!’ And you just see:

It’s the end of the performance, and they are speaking.

You are speaking with them.

The performance is over, you are packing your stuff, you are leaving.

They are staying and speaking more and more and more.

You are gone, and they are still speaking.”



BANGKOK


“We were all together there.”
(Volunteer V-Day actress Rita)


During the first all-cast rehearsal of the first Thailand V-Day ever, Thai and expat women sat separately at lunch. It was a huge group of women, predominantly Thai but with over a dozen nationalities represented in the cast and production team. Bangkok is a unique entity of Thailand, and within the metropolis exist numerous cliques, divisions and communities that remain quite rigidly separate. Many of the volunteers were hearing The Vagina Monologues for the first time that long hot afternoon. They wept during Sonoko’s raw unleashing of ‘Say it.’ Even though many could not understand the language, they felt it, just as they responded to German Rita’s epic moans in “The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy.” Their tears of empathy turned to explosive mirth. Dry leaves swirled in and puddled among the dozens of women’s shoes piled by the door, and something hapenned. Suddenly Thai Pearl was giving Canadian Yvonne a tender massage. Thais and expats were spread evenly on the floor supporting each other and melding together a tenuous community of the type rarely seen there. As one actress said, “In the team, we were bonding together, singing together, dancing together. Before, it was a bit like, some of the internationals talking, and the Thais would be in the corner. And even when we went to lunch the Thais would all sit at one table. But then it was like – we were all one. There was no division between the Thais and internationals. And we were all together there.”
This endeavor was intentionally used to unite farong (foreign) women and Thai women in a community. The play was innovatively done bilingually with subtitles, a unique solution. American director Alanna Gregory found that in Bangkok:
“There aren’t many cross–cultural based communities. It’s just Thais. French people. UN people. Americans... Trying to build a community for women in Bangkok was definitely one of the goals …It isolates one group if you only do it in English, or you only do it in Thai. And you shouldn’t. You should get both of them in the same area. Because how many times has that actually happened?! … Just sharing the same space.”
Share it they did, as V-Day was used to create not only a shared community between Thais and expats, but a common cause. The experiences of the cast were as diverse as the stories present in The Vagina Monologues. As actress Sunanda commented:
“It’s extremely diverse. I really do feel like one of the only things we have in common, if you don’t count being in the play, is that we’re women. But I think that’s one of the great parts about it. Because it’s really women from all walks of life, different attitudes, and outlooks and experiences. Because it is about every woman … Before I started I had no idea what to expect. [I was surprised by] the range of emotions covered. I cried at the audition. ‘Cause… It was so shocking, and disturbing, and just really sad. So just the range of them, and how you can laugh at some of them, and some of them just make you want to cry. It has the diversity that our group has.”
During a conversation about the diversity of the team, French Mary said, “We’re all from different countries and different backgrounds, and Thai Miu replied, “And so what? Because we all have the same organs.” And Mary, not understanding, “Orgasms?!” We laughed. “Well,” Miu said, “we hope!”
The diversity of The Vagina Monologues and their cast was reflected in the motivations of those involved, “People were drawn to it for very different reasons, for community, to make a point, further awareness in your own culture and country, or maybe because they’re survivors- its different, and its positive, and its not trying to make up for anything” These unique reasons melded into a common cause. In spite of, or perhaps because of their diversity, cast members spoke of themselves as a complete entity, whole because of their many parts. As Pearl effused,
“I can feel people here, feel it’s a very good thing in this world to support. Not just this group, but we as women! Humans! We can do great things, and I can feel that people who come here have very positive energy to move this world on … I just can feel that we are whole, the Thai women as well, not just the foreigner … I can feel that my energy is shared with the energy of these people with these good attitudes- it’s just perfect! I like to see you! I like to see Alanna! I like to see everyone in the show, it makes me happy!”
The volunteer production team envisioned this bilingual production as an initial foundation to eventually become an entirely Thai effort. Yet many actresses, particularly the Thai women, spoke passionately about its greater strength and chemistry as an international project. As Dusanee expressed, “It’s great to meet with other women from different backgrounds … and to get to know we have the same interest … involved in this, I would say, really special special show … Because without this I would not have met these girls …So I think it’s a great opportunity to involve the farong, also Thai women, and that will make the show interesting. Because if it were only farong women, that would be – not very interesting. Or if it’s only Thai… But if it’s a mix!” Actress Karin similarly asserted:
We’re reaching out for women to be more understanding of other women …Any woman that’s been a few years, and even a few months in Bangkok will see that this is a world that is divided in so many different parts… this is a very difficult place for women whether it’s expat, or Thai, or transgendered women … this is perfect. Because it speaks for all the women in Thailand. It’s great, because our production is multi-national. The Western women are from many different countries and have different experiences and different ages, same with the Thai women … It’s more than just participating, the women acting together become like a family, a team, a unit- like a nucleolus. The added energies become so much more effective when combined.
These diverse backgrounds enriched the team experience and were reconciled into a common agenda. Pearl said, “That’s why it’s interesting too. Because we have Thai people, and we have I don’t know how many nationalities, I don’t even ask. But I feel that we feel the same way. And believe in the same thing. And we come for the same objective, to stop violence against women.” Mod, one of the transgendered actresses said, “[the team] has a lot of the people from a variety of nations- I think they want to share, and it’s very universal. And I think the female, even though she comes from a different country, she has same idea about sensitivity.”
The blending of different backgrounds formed a community with a cause that allowed for a greater understanding of their unique realities. With that understanding came a strong sense of solidarity, as especially Thai women came to realize their gender oppression was not isolated. Dusanee said with relief, “with the Thai women … our perception is that western culture is very open …you are so open you can talk about this, you can act like this, and not feel anything. But in Asian countries, maybe like this or also other countries, we still feel like- oh! We cannot talk about this, especially in public.” She elaborated, “So by combining Thai and farong, maybe we can understand that… Oh, we are the same, Thai and farong women. That we have the same concerns, same problems.” Being a foreign text validates shared issues and insecurities, but also allows the show to be more radical and to escape censorship it would otherwise face.
The efforts addressed the needs of all women, including expat women. There is a tendency to hierarchize oppression, which in this instance might have led to a presumption that ethnic oppression is more debilitating than gender oppression; yet my research showed the communal action provided crucial support for expat women, in a refusal of hierarchical thinking. As one actress said, “I didn’t really do this for Thai women, I did this for myself. I did it for myself, being in Thailand. I wouldn’t do it in London. Here I did it because I feel these things more.” Another echoed, “I feel invested in it because I personally feel a great sense of stress, of sadness, of inadequacy. Of being little, anytime I see on soi 5 [notorious red light district] forty women, maybe half of them aren’t 17, having to sell their bodies … There’s a piracy of Thai women going on … A little empowerment helps me, personally, to feel like I am doing something. Because I often feel so… What can I do? It’s a huge problem!”
The bilingual production united diverse volunteers and reached a wider public than it would have had it been presented in only English or only Thai. It was initiated to unite typically separate communities, but could not have prophesized the strength of those connections. As one actress said, “I guess the nature of the issues creates a bond. … We feel so comfortable around each other, though we don’t actually know much about each other, except we are in this play. But to me that says so much, because we already love each other. It’s like loving a stranger, in a sense.” Through loving the stranger in each other, the anonymous women whose stories they presented onstage, as well as themselves, they came to realize they were not such strangers after all.

(Haven't solidified conclusion yet... may add more theory in here re: transnational feminism)