In time we will fly the skies

(Ella [volunteer] and Pearl [actress] being irresistible saleswomen for the V-Day merchandise)

I spent yesterday collecting testimonies (even that vocabulary makes me nervous and reeks of academic imperialism). Por and I talked with three women at Emergency Home, and their stories were absolutely overflowing and overlapping tales of abuse, of hair pulling, rock crushing, love turned monstrous and isolating fear. BUT. But, they were also the stories of deeply loving mothers, fiercely strong survivors. They still have the mental stamina to dream of a better life for themselves and their children, even if those children are products of rapes that will never be punished, and even though their dreams are all mixed up with fear. One woman’s worn pink t-shirt had birds all over it and English text sprayed across her heart, ‘I cannot fly the sky’. Another woman when I asked her what it means to be a woman told us it meant to be weak. She later clarified that women no longer needed men to take care of them if they were going to abuse them. Another woman shyly but proudly told us her dream is to be both mother and father for her babies.

The evening fundraiser was quite the contrast from the humble but clean and peaceful women’s compound of the morning. This was a glamorous, earnest and slightly superficial crowd. I was much more comfortable behind the VM table talking about it and selling merchandise than mingling with the models, journalists, editors, producers, writers and creative elite on a rooftop bar looking over the sex playground of the Nana district, heady with their brilliance and the balmy Bangkok breeze.

I was glad for the sense of excitement and celebration though. Free drinks and pounding music make me as happy as the next person. But after Emergency Home, I wasn’t in the mood to humor balding jerks endless jokes about, “supporting violence against women! I support that!’ As though he’s the first to present misogyny in the uncouth and unconvincing package of liberalism and wealth. I wanted to tell him, ‘Today I listened to a sixteen year old girl so crippled by her embarrassment at being raped that she hid her pregnancy seven months, till it was too late to get an abortion. How she told us her fear had been disappointing her family who saw her as their light and cherished dream of her being the first to attend college’ So no, I don’t think you’re funny.

And I know this makes me the angry feminist who would still the party atmosphere around us were I to engage him. I also know it wouldn’t help her, it wouldn’t actually make me feel better, and he would not listen. This is why I entrust my faith and voice to the Vagina Monologues; because they can engage a diverse audience with patience, wit and humour unlike my anger. If it had been Ellie, she would have delivered some bitingly clever line that let people laugh while also chastising him in the most charming way possible.