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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The novelist, playwright and activist behind "The Vagina Monologues" talks about gender apartheid, the dangerous shedding of burqas and the seeds of violence we've begun to sow.
Nov 26, 2001 | Eve Ensler went to Afghanistan and did not ask the women she met about their vaginas. There were, she says, more pressing issues to discuss: "Women were being beaten, and were starving, and were living in orphanages. Going in and saying, 'So, let's talk about your vagina' -- it seemed so glib."
Instead, Ensler -- the acclaimed playwright, novelist and one-woman dynamo behind "The Vagina Monologues" -- has focused her concern for the women in Afghanistan on the much larger issue of the nation's gender apartheid. After visiting Afghanistan a year ago, Ensler embarked on a quest to raise both awareness of the crisis and funding for the Afghan feminist activist group RAWA, which surreptitiously aids the oppressed women under the Taliban. Her efforts, including a sold-out celebrity fund-raising performance of "The Vagina Monologues" (this as part of the worldwide anti-violence benefit "V-Day"), have helped her become one of the Afghan women's most vocal advocates.
Ensler has built her career on the relationship between gender identity and violence against women -- as manifested, in part, through women's beliefs about their own vaginas. She doesn't pull her punches; by her own admission, she's a radical feminist who makes people face that which makes them most uncomfortable. Her goal is to put herself out of business by eradicating worldwide violence toward women, which she hopes to achieve within 10 years. And yet she faces this daunting task with a wicked sense of humor, a breathless energy and an uncanny ability to pull everyone she meets -- from Glenn Close and Hillary Clinton to the waitress in the café where we sip our coffee -- into her orbit.
Not surprisingly, Ensler has strong views about the current situation in Afghanistan, along with an unorthodox and idealistic vision of how we might bring an end to the cycle of violence taking place there.
The Salon Interviews index -- links to all the interviews related to the Sept. 11 attacks and the events that have followed.
How did you first become aware of the situation in Afghanistan?
I've been aware of the women in Afghanistan for quite some time. Probably ever since the Taliban came to be. I've always been obsessed with Afghanistan. I have some very mystical connection to it. There are places in your soul: Bosnia and Afghanistan are places I feel like I've been to before.
I was going to do a world trip for my new book, "The Good Body" -- a play about women around the world and how they shape, change, mutilate and hide their bodies in order to fit in with their particular cultures -- and I realized I absolutely had to go to Afghanistan. Here's a country where women are essentially disembodied. Their bodies aren't a part of the culture at all. It seemed like the furthest extreme of what I was looking at.
And you went in with the women of RAWA?
We had found RAWA on the Web, and had asked if we could come and interview them. We met them in a hotel in Pakistan where they interviewed us to decide if they would take us into their clandestine world. Then they made the decision to trust us and took us in.
There were these incredible orphanages and schools in Pakistan, where girls were being brought up as young RAWA women. It was really incredible -- they were being brought up as revolutionaries. There was one group of orphan girls that I interviewed in a circle; they all told their stories, and each of them cried and the others would hold them. It was the most moving thing. Each of them would say that RAWA saved their lives, RAWA had become their mother. These girls were their family, their sisters, and they were devoting their lives to liberating the women of Afghanistan.
I was completely smitten by them. I may not be the most thorough investigator -- that's why I'm not a journalist. People move me and they enter me and then I write. It's funny, because I've become RAWA's greatest defender: I feel like I'm defending women who are struggling for their lives!
Why do you use the word "defender"?
There are a lot of people who say all kinds of things about RAWA -- that they are Maoists, they are communists. They are very militant, they are very pure. They are very radical. And I'm very drawn to that. People call them uncompromising, and they are right. But bravo! I feel a kindred spirit.
