[00:00:00] Lynne: to say that I am delighted and thrilled with my guests today on Frankie Speaking with Lynne Franks and Friends is an understatement. V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, award-winning playwright, author of many books translated into many, many languages. And most of all, I don't think I know anybody who has done more to change women's lives and girls' lives all over the world ever than Eve in the many years that I first, since I first met you.
[00:00:36] So how long ago was that? Because I was at the very first production of Vagina Monologues in London, which was in like a dark little room, like a cupboard in King's Cross in London with about 15 people. How long ago was that?
[00:00:50] V: Well, the days the 23rd is our 25th year and we, they came after that. So it's probably 27 years.
[00:01:00] Lynne: Long time ago.
[00:01:01] V: it's amazing.
[00:01:02] Lynne: It's Amazing. And you, of course acted all the different paths in the original vagina monologues in that first production. And everybody in the room was just so blown away. And of course from there it just grew and grew and grew. And the next thing I saw it, well, not the next thing, but fairly soon after that, it seemed it was on Broadway with all these top stars performing it. And how many countries is it? Has it been enough? 140. or more?
[00:01:28] V: 140. Yeah. Yeah. It's I think it's close to 50 languages now, which is just amazing.
[00:01:35] Lynne: And, most of all, I think it brought the word vagina into common usage. I mean, nobody would say the word vagina ever before then, and now in countries where people would never refer to Genitals in any way whatsoever. Muslim countries, countries all over the place, really middle east far east. Now the vagina monologues has become part of the language.
[00:01:58] V: And I would say Indiana, which is just as repressive as any other
[00:02:03] Lynne: This is impressive. It's Afghanistan. So extraordinary. And from Vagina monologues came V-Day, which was a movement, of course. And I always remember when I first taught you about V-Day you would talk about the vagina. And you were always so magnetic about attracting fantastic women to you over the years who became these vagina warriors. And out we went and did amazing extraordinary performances and actions and activism. And from that, so tell me a bit more about V-Day movement, because obviously I know what I know, but you know all of it. So
[00:02:38] V: Well, first, first I want to just say how wonderful it is to be here with you today, Lynne, and how instrumental you were in our early days of the movement and making it what it is today. We would never be who we are without your support, without your vision, without your activism, without your advocacy, without your love. So thank you for that.
[00:02:59] Lynne: Oh, bless you. I remember we actually shared offices at one time. Seed and V-Day sharing offices in London and solar at one time. Let me Thank you. so much for that.
[00:03:09] V: So V-Day was really an outgrowth of doing the Vagina Monologues because when I first started to perform it, women would line up after every show, hundreds of women to talk to me and I thought, oh, this is going to be amazing. They're going to tell me about their wonderful sex lives and their orgasms, and just wonderful things about the vaginas and Volvos and lobbyists and clitorises, and in fact, the majority of women were lining up to tell me how they'd been raped or incested or beaten or abused or cut. And they hadn't, most of them had never told anyone that before. I mean, this was, no 25 years ago. So it was it was terrifyingly traumatizing and, and disturbing experience.
[00:03:52] I, of course I knew there was violence against women. I'm a survivor of violence, but I had no idea. No, I did the epidemic, the proportion, the, the magnitude of how violence against women was completely determining controlling, undermining women's lives. And I think it was clear to me. I couldn't keep doing the place. And feeling all those feelings. If I didn't do something about it.
[00:04:17] So I called a group of friends together and I said, look, we have this play, and it seems to be getting a good response. What if we use this play and violence against women not contain it? Not, you know, but to really envision ending it. I was much more perhaps naive in those early days because I, I don't think I completely understood the intractable and impossible nature of patriarchy and how. Built baked into the whole DNA. It is at this point and how unwilling patriarchs, the ones with power are to give up their power and to transform.
[00:04:56] I just saw the other day, for example, Sean Penn saying that he believed that men were too feminized now. And I thought, okay, we're in 2022. And that is coming out of. What a person who holds, you know, cloud in our culture it was just like, we're still here, we're still here. And I have no idea what that even means, but it sounds to me like that men are feeling too much are opening their hearts too much. Maybe they're not being as violent so much, who knows what it means.
[00:05:25] Lynne: What comes to mind is he was married to Madonna, briefly.
[00:05:30] V: it just, you know, just the fact that that comment could actually surface at this time is, is mind blowing. And it's, once again shows us that patriarchy is stubborn and insistent and in my opinion, capitalist, racist, patriarchy has brought. And the world to her knees. I mean, whether it's the earth, whether it's workers' rights, whether it's what's happening with immigrants, whether it's what's happening to black people and people of color, marginalized people, immigrants, we can go across the board. It all is connected to racist, capitalist, patriarchy, or capitalist racist, patriarchy. It's like a three-headed monster.
[00:06:14] Lynne: And greed. All of it headed by those plus the greed that comes with it.
[00:06:19] V: Exactly. So we decided we would start this movement. And what we decided to do is we just did one huge performance of the Vagina Monologues initially. And we wide, we just invited great actors. I had been doing it way downtown. And I remember I went to Marissa Tomei 1st because she had come to see me do it with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. And I said to her, would you consider doing it? And she was very nervous, but she said, yes. And once I had Marissa, then I went to Glenn Close and I said, well, Maurice's doing it. And each person allowed me to go to the next person.
[00:06:50] And so we did this amazing performance in 1998 at the Hammerstein where 2,500 people came in and it just blew the roof off of theater. We could, we knew we were onto something. Like there was some energy here. There was some. Dynamic. There was some possibility and, and that began. And after that, it was just this amazing world of women. One woman said, I want to bring this to colleges. One woman said, I want to make vagina pajamas. One woman was like, I want to make vagina puppets. Another woman was, I want to bring this to Pakistan. It was just like everybody had a vision. And that was, you know, when 2023 we'll be celebrating 25 years of this glorious movement that is bigger now than it's ever been.
[00:07:32] You know, I think one of the gorgeous things about V-Day is that it's local and global at the same time that women could take the play and they could put it on in their own communities and raise money that they can for their own local groups. Cause I didn't charge for the place and they could keep their shelters and they could keep their hotlines and they could keep everything in their community that was working to support women against violence alive. And, but simultaneously they were joined with hundreds of hundreds of groups around the world who were doing the same thing.
[00:08:05] Lynne: It was as if women were really waiting for permission and you gave it to them by writing this play, by using these words, and then there's this enormous, enormous groundswell of women everywhere. Who said me too, me too well before the me too movement actually. But that was it. And that was what was so incredible.
[00:08:23] V: it was incredible. And then 10 years ago, if you can leave it, I just can't even believe it, we were in our 15th year of V-Day and, you know, we've had some successes. Obviously there we have, the world word was used in the culture. People were talking about violence against women. It was finally beginning to be something that wasn't in the dark and in secrecy, but we hadn't ended it. So we were like, what can we do next? Then we thought, you know, I was in Congo and I was one day dancing with all. Amazing women who had survived some of the worst atrocities in the world, and yet they were dancing and wildly dancing and beautifully dancing. And I thought, what if we got a billion women on the planet? That's the number of women who have been big beaten or right. And I believe that's a extreme underestimation.
[00:09:09] Lynne: is one in three, basically.
[00:09:10] V: Yeah, one and three, but I think it's much higher. And let's, let's see if we can get them to dance. And we put out a call the first year and thousands of people, you know, nearly 180 countries rose the first year and we thought, okay, this will be one year. And now we are 10 years later, and I'm just looking at all the posters, all the organizing, all the. All the, all the events that are occurring. And I think this is our biggest year yet.
[00:09:38] So we know women are driven to change the dynamics that are oppressing them are hurting them are, are, are shutting them down, are making life impossible for them to fulfil their dreams, their visions, their desires and our struggle continues, la lutte continue you know, it, it's just, we are, we are going on.
[00:10:01] Lynne: And Of course which speaking the week of 1 Billion Rising, and it's always traditionally been on February the 14th, which I know only so well, cause it always rains here on February the 14th. And I have stood with other women in the square and mob lodge and everywhere else in the pouring rain, celebrating, dancing, singing 1 billion, rising with so many women who were saying yes, yes, yes.
[00:10:23] And this year, even in our little Seed Hub here in Somerset, we had a wonderful night of spoken word yesterday, while I read some of your words and the theme this year is the body basically. Do you want to talk a little bit about the theme and what that meant to you?
[00:10:36] V: Well, I think I did a piece for the Guardian a few months ago called Disaster Patriarchy, where I really examined what was happening with women and around the world during the pandemic. And it's, it's not good news, as we all know. I mean, we've just seen a. The boards, whether it's nurses who have been put on the front lines and are having to serve and risk their lives, where people who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks, or restaurant workers who work in very difficult situations and who are wearing masks and being told or asked to lower their mask, it's now called mascular harassment.
[00:11:15] Lynne: Don't have any of that.
[00:11:17] V: yeah, so men can see if they're pretty
[00:11:19] Lynne: Oh, that's, that's shocking.
[00:11:21] V: Or whether it's women in farmers, in fields who, you know, the sexual violence continues as do the lack of protections from the virus. And then you just, every area, mothers being completely overwhelmed by having to homeschool at the same time as taking care of older families, we're looking at just complete devastation in the environment simultaneously, which impacts women first and foremost, we're looking at how violence in the home where people have been caught in lockdowns has escalated.
[00:11:56] Lynne: The figures are shocking here with domestic
[00:11:59] V: every country, by the way.
[00:12:01] Lynne: I'm sure.
[00:12:02] V: And then we're just seeing, you know, all of this kind of intense again, patriarchal, racist fascism rising in the world where the shutting down of women's rights, like in this country, the momentum to try to end abortion rights is, and reproductive rights is at a full-time, you know?
[00:12:20] And so I was thinking we were all thinking this year, when we, you know, we have a council that determines what the theme will be. It's really an assault on women's bodies that is happening on an everyday. And the earth and the body of the earth. And how do we come back into our bodies, take, find the power and strength and wisdom and vision and imagination sexuality in our bodies when we are literally being assaulted from every direction. So that was kind of the basis of the theme.
[00:12:51] And then it's been so amazing just to see, you know, where each person in each country in each group comes in. In their take on the body, whether it's trans women fighting for trans women's rights and the body of trans women that are under assault all the time in being murdered in numbers that are just proportionately so high, whether it's you know, workers in Sri Lanka fighting on plantations, you know, to secure their rights, whether it's in Mexico, where they did this gorgeous, gorgeous, rising, and got the rights from Frida Kahlo to do all her paintings and all the women
[00:13:30] dressed as Rita Callo. You know, it's all over Italy where they're doing, focusing on men and really men coming in and really focusing this year on why aren't men changing and what do we do to make that happen?
[00:13:43] We're doing a beautiful event on Monday which is really just all different tags, whether it's Agnes in Kenya, who's been one of the leaders of the world in fighting FGM and has been so successful in ending in at least two thirds of the Maasai land and is now the head of the anti FGM commission and is running for parliament and will probably win. Or whether it's Nazia riding from Afghanistan, where we know since the cobble, since the Taliban took over women's rights have been desecrated and women are being pushed back into the dark ages, not allowed to be educated, not allowed to go out of their house without a male home, which is, you know, a companion not allowed to dress without a burka, not allowed to exist, let's face it, you know.
[00:14:28] And, and, and so, and then we're looking at indigenous women rising for the earth and looking at the ways in which their stewardship and their understanding of forest and lands is really what's kept all of us alive and how deeply under threat they are, everywhere, whether it's the pipelines in the U S which are, you know, about to have huge oil links or the Amazon where they're being, where the right wing, you know, both scenarios, government is burning down the Amazon, whether it's in the Philippines, where they're being forced off their lands because of mining or the indigenous and the congoli you Congolese indigenous people there who are being destroyed and murdered and raped so that multinationals can have their, their minerals. I mean, it's, it's really just beautiful to see us all understanding that it is the body, the body of the earth, the body of women, which is a container, but it's also a conduit. You know, it, it is being hurt, but it is also the source of so much strength, so much desire, so much joy and so much possibility,
[00:15:30] Lynne: Yeah. I want to talk about Congo a little bit, because you've done so much work over there. And the City of Joy, which I mentioned last night in our, in our gathering has, is in America In itself. Why this is right. If the baby bear that I just put on my lap here.
[00:15:44] Sweet. sweet
[00:15:46] V: Oh, City of Joy is our it's. It's our golden gem. You know, it, it is you know, we are now in, it's also in its 10th year. And it's, it's just. You know, I sold this really beautiful film last night that I urge everybody. See, it's on the new Yorker website and it's a film it's called mama. And it's a film about a woman named Zawadi and so while he was actually in our very first group at city of joy, she had, she has a terrible story. But she was one of our very first graduates and she had been through. Two horrible, horrible. I'm not saying anything that she hasn't said in her story, too horrible rates, gang rapes, which he had survived.
[00:16:23] And she went through an amazing process at City of Joy, which is what happens. Women come for six months, they are nurtured. They are they go through group therapy every day. They learn their. They learn about permaculture. We have also a huge farm where many of the graduates go and they, they stay afterwards and they learn how to be permaculture farmers.
[00:16:44] We have theater, we have dance, we have everything about the program is helping women go from being victims to survivors, to leaders. So that the top, by the time they leave, after six months, they returned to their communities and they are really leading people in those communities, particularly women to understand their rights, to really transform their, their reality. And it's actually happening.
[00:17:08] And going back to Zawadi, she graduated and she was doing well. And then she got raped again. And it was a devastating, devastating experience. And this wonderful Spanish activist. Filmmaker found her and brought her to a chimpanzee refugee. And she fell in love with the chimpanzees and they fell in love with her. And this film is all about how the chimpanzees had been traumatized because they were witnessing their mothers being murdered by poachers, and she was traumatized. And. Healed each other, like these two. Beautiful, beautiful. It's just the most beautiful story.
[00:17:46] And so to me, Zawadi's a perfect example of. I imagine that having been at City of Joy helped her get through that third rate because she had tools she could access, but many of our women do not get raped again. And they are doing so well. They have form collectives. They've become nurses. They're studying to be teachers they're they're herbalists they're they formed farms in their own community where they, before. People who've graduated from City of Joy in their own, in their own village. And we're seeing incredible life-changing happenings in the women who have been to City of Joy.
[00:18:22] And I think the farm and what's happening there in terms of like, we just grow everything in the world from, we have tilapia, we have nine tilapia ponds, we have avocados, we have pigs, we have every kind of fruit, we're growing coffee now and making beautiful coffee. So it's this incredibly beautiful place and vision that is completely run completely determined by the Congolese women. There's not one international person who works there. It's completely engineered and it's completely controlled and owned by them. And that's in my opinion, why it's working so well.
[00:18:59] Lynne: Absolutely. And, and is it as bad. as it was still in the DRC? I mean, it still has all the minerals that the rest of the greedy capitalist wants. It's Pretty
[00:19:08] V: Yeah. I was reading, I was talking to Dr. McGregor the other day and he said the number of women coming in is still unbearably high, who are getting raped. And um, you know, capitalism is fueling so much of what's happening on the planet right now. And this kind of morbid capitalism that is extractive capitalism that feeds off other peoples and indigenous people's lands and takes their minerals and takes there. And in doing so has to make sure they murder and rape their population is, is, is simply grotesque.
[00:19:40] And by the way, it's everywhere in the world at this point. And until these multinationals are asked to leave and get out and not take other people's minerals and not seize other people's lands and bodies, it continue, right? So our work is to keep empowering more and more women and healing women so that they could become the next leaders of their country and make decisions not to do this kind of business. Right. And allow this kind of business in their country.
[00:20:06] Lynne: As always, you're inspiring me as you're talking, I'm thinking, okay, what can I do next? What can I do next week? Do you remember? When we went to the Albert Hall, we took the Albert Hall outside of It We did a big press conference there and we got the whole situation and the DRC discussed House Commons and House of Lords. At that point, I don't remember it was 99, maybe? Can't remember, because it was a hundred years since there had been an event at the Albert Hall with Conan Doyle who wrote Sherlock Holmes of course, and other people talking about them about what was going on in the Congo. And this was a hundred years. Hence, so we brought all this talk up because at That point there was no awareness in the UK, even with the politicians about the terrible destruction and annihilation of women and and the land in the DRC, just so the greedy companies could get hold of those images.
[00:20:54] V: Well, I remember touring Europe. Can you imagine Belgium and France and w with doc, and literally being in places where people were like, we didn't know. And we were like, how is that possible? And I think, you know, this, we didn't know. Is it, you know, I've been watching this amazing series, which I highly recommend called a French Village. And it's, it's really this profound series about that began. And it begins in 1940 and it goes through 1945. And it's really about the German occupation of France and this little village called Villeneuve. And what happened. To the people in this village, through the occupation who becomes a collaborator who becomes a resistor, what choices people make for their own survival for other it's fascinating, you know?
[00:21:41] And I think sometimes you know, people's willingness to say they don't know, oh, they didn't know what they were doing to the Jews. Oh. They just thought they were taking them to another place. They didn't know it was going to be this, this kind of Unconscious quote-unquote denial. We have to come out of that.
[00:21:59] Now we have to, we have to wake up and we have to see what we're seeing and say what we know and stand in that and not, and not be afraid to call out people who are literally killing people, destroying lands, and this rating, the planet,
[00:22:15] Lynne: Yeah, yeah. There's no more, I don't know because there's no excuse. We have the technology now to know here said almost as it happens in, but see it as it happens and there is no excuse, so, oh.
[00:22:27] Well, anyway, so I'd like to sort of move back to the personal now a little bit because your passion and your energy and your commitment of course comes from your own experiences as a child, having been abused as a child by your own father. I like to ask you to share a little bit about that because of course, about a year ago, was it now you brought out your book, the apology. So if I can just need you into, to explain a little bit about what happened with your own childhood and then how the apology really has been a big catalyst for change, I assume as you've changed your name and how, how you're referred to you now. So over to you on that one.
[00:23:06] V: Well, I often wonder, like what motivates us to do what we do. And obviously for me being a child who grew up in enormous violence my father's violence and under his tyranny and his kind of fascist rule, cause it was fascism. It was his way. It was his opinion.
[00:23:23] It was his rules. His energy that completely dominated and control my life. And if I fought back or resisted, I paid the price of enormous violence. And that's what fascism is. Isn't it need when you're being occupied and determined by the patriarchal father, right. The Fiera who so I think so much of my childhood was I mean, I, I'm a consequence of violence, I'm an outcome. Right. And, and I don't feel that way so much anymore, but I did for many, many years of my life that my father's brutality towards me, his early sexual abuse, which was devastating because I love my father so much. And we were so close from like one to five and then my father stepped over that line and it all changed.
[00:24:09] And. Sexually abused me. And then once he stopped, he began to physically abuse me to prove that he didn't love me the way everybody thought he did and really to make sure he never got caught. And I think, you know, my life was so determined by that, right. I, I was a very, very suicidal person. I was very had no self esteem. I had no self-worth I, I wanted to check out and I found alcohol and drugs, very young. They saved me in the sense that they anesthetized my feelings and allowed me to at least function in a very dysfunctional way.
[00:24:48] And you know, I was wildly from the skew is I, my body was up for grabs because I never had any choice than the ability to say no, right? Because my father had taken away that note early on and, and consent early on. And so I didn't even know I had a right to say no, to be honest with you. As I recovered from that. And as I began to work and movements and, and build this movement, I began to see how many other women were in the same place. And just wondering, you know, before my, I waited for so many years believing as my father was alive, we weren't in communication, but I believe that one day his apology would arrive that he would wake up and he would, before he died at. I acknowledged what he had done to me and say, I'm sorry. Say this happened, say this is real and it never happened. And I have to tell you he's been dead. He was dead 31 years when I wrote the apology and I still was waiting, waiting for my father to apologize to me and waiting for him to acknowledge what he had done.
[00:25:48] Then I saw everything that was going on with me to, to be honest and realized that so many men had been called out so many men were being, you know, I was waiting for all the apologies. I was waiting for the, the, the acknowledgements, the accountability. And to be honest, I didn't see any, as a matter of fact, I saw a denials. I mean, Harvey Weinstein's never admitted anything. Bill. Cosby's never been at anything named someone there's never been anybody who's acknowledged what they've done. Even though 1560 women have accused these people of these acts. And I thought to myself, why is no one apologizing, like what is an apology and why is it so hard for men to apologize?
[00:26:30] And I said, well, I probably won't get the apology I want from my father, but I can write it to myself and I can create it and I can design it and I can say the things to myself that I always dreamed, he would say to me, and let's see what happens. And maybe, maybe just, maybe it will become a blueprint for how men could apologize and how, as my friend, Tony Porter says, rather than just calling men out, we could begin to call them. And, and, and for change.
[00:27:00] And so I wrote that book. It was an excruciating process to have to kind of climb inside my father and feel what he felt and experience what he had gone through as a child to bring him to become the kind of person he was and something I had always resisted because I had so much rage at my father. I didn't want to give him empathy or the time to feel what he felt.
[00:27:22] But to be honest with you, It was an amazing experience. And I really did begin to see not to justify my father's behavior. I think we, when we're talking about restorative justice of any kind, we're not justifying people's behavior, they are accountable completely for their behavior, but we have to understand the origins of that behavior or else we'll keep repeating and repeating it. And we also have to help find tools and a process where people can be free. From that behavior so they can become different kinds of human beings.
[00:27:54] And so, after I published the book well at the, the books end, the last line of the book is old man be gone. And I don't know if my father said it or I said it because by that point in writing the book, my father was writing the book as much as I was writing the book but his, his ancestry was around me through the entire writing of it. And I think the dead are so present with us. If we open ourselves to them and often they really need our help to get free in other realms where they are caught. And once I made the decision to write this book and call my father in, he was with me through the entire writing of the book until the end, when that sentence came out old, man be gone.
[00:28:34] And it was like at the end of Peter pan, when Tinkerbell just goes. Into the distance my father went and he's never been back, really never been back. And I decided at the end that I no longer had rank or towards my father or bitterness or revenge or anything really, it was over, but it was over. And so was that name. And so was that. And I knew I couldn't carry his name anymore and I couldn't carry a name. He gave me anymore. And I changed my name and I love not having a last name because that also feels very patriarchal. This idea of identifying yourself to whatever that lineage, that patriarchal lineage is. And for me, Vs are just the most beautiful letter because they are what, what, isn't an a V
[00:29:20] Lynne: I mean, as soon as I heard that you were, you change it and you were being referred to, or being called veers your name now it was like the perfect. Oh yes. I get that. Everything. If you say V-Day vagina. everything that
[00:29:33] V: Victory vulner vulnerable. I mean, it's just, and also the thing about bees is that is that they are openings. They are invitations it's, you know, and it's felt so wonderful, you know, you know, it's taking a while for people to get it, but that's just part of the process. But but I feel like this is my next life and I am no longer a prisoner, a victim. you know, So much of my anger kept me attached to my father, right? Because I was always in his story. I was always responding. And once this book ended, it was over, I'm in my story now. This is my story. And I really strongly recommend it to anyone who hasn't been able to get apology to really take the time to write yourself the apology you need in the voice of the person you wished you had written it to.
[00:30:21] Lynne: It's very powerful, very powerful. Yeah. Actually, one of the things that I work on now with archetypes, that I've been developing the storyteller and I work with women on changing the narrative and actually to write an apology from the person who has abused or traumatized that you is, it's got to be the most powerful things you could possibly do. Wonderful gift to so many women. And now you're working on very different projects, which is Wild, which is a musical which is Something
[00:30:49] new for you.
[00:30:51] V: A musical fable. I w I don't want to categorize it as a typical musical cause it's not. And I was, I, not one who's ever been like that. Wild from musicals. What I, what happened was I was approached by Idina Menzel and this amazing writer and singer named Justin Tranter. Who's written like 15 number one puppets. He's just, and he's the most magical, incredible being he's just fabulous. And they, they wanted to do something together, musically, and they approached me about writing a story. And I said, well, the only thing I really want to work on right now is climate change and what we can do to stop the catastrophe.
[00:31:27] And so they were like, great. And I came up with this fable. And then we began to write songs and I'd never written songs before. And Justin was so generous to allow me to work with him and one brilliant young woman named Carolyn Pniell and we, and a wonderful man named Aaron Cantata. And we all Edina of the whole group of us wrote these songs. And I just think they're wonderful. And we put the show up at American repertory theater in December and it was so. Fantastic. And we were literally 10 days into the run and we w we were sold out for weeks to come an eight out of the 10 cast members got COVID and we had to close, was just so, but there's a very good chance. We may be coming to London this summer. So I will let you.
[00:32:13] One of the things I hope is that we can travel everywhere with this piece. And it's really like eco it's, like eco re. Musical fable. Like it's urgent art. It's like calling up, it's calling up youth. It's really the, the young people drive this show. We had in, in Boston, we had we work with the Boston children's choir and we had 50 members of the children's choirs singing on stage. Every night and we'll do the same thing in, in Britain. We'll get choirs there. It's really about young people's voices and visions and, and their prophecy, their understanding of what is happening now and what will happen in the future.
[00:32:57] If we don't change our ways. And it's really a way of honoring what they know because they are so passionate and this piece is the young woman named Sophia and her best friends, forte to impossible, they go to extreme metal. In order to get their parents not to do something that they want to do for money in their community. And I think it's this wild fantastical thing that happens. And it's fun and it's disturbing and it's, it's, it's coming right out of the urgency of the now.
[00:33:27] Lynne: And that leads me to a question that I like to ask all my guests, which is the future. If you were giving guidance, which you are through wild, as well as all your other work to young people or your own vision of the future, how do you see it looking? Where do you see the change can come? We know we have to get away from this terrible patriarchal capitalism that is destroying people and the planet. So how could the future look? What could we do to make changes just in the simple ways in our own lives, I suppose?
[00:33:56] V: Well, I want to say one of the things I'm seeing in this very, in this youngest generation now is that they're very different. They are not growing up in gender handcuffs, they are not growing up in with, with, with the kind of th th they, they're just a very different generation. And I'm very excited about that.
[00:34:14] I think if I could say anything to you, and I said this to you every night of the play, get us out of your way. Like, most of the adults are just, they're tired. And not that we, we don't want to join you, but I really believe if we look at all these young activists like Gretta and all these young indigenous activists who started Stan, who walked from Standing Rock to DC and Black Lives Matter activists and, and, and, and, and young feminists on the streets of Paris bearing the breasts, and we can just go to. They know what they're doing, they know what the truth is. And I would say to trust what you know, and to not be stymied or stopped or judge or let the judgment of adults stop you from being fierce and revolutionary, because we need you to be revolutionary right now. We need you to seize this moment. We need you to push forward.
[00:35:07] Now I was looking at all these young people in this French village who were part of the resistance in the woods training. And they had no idea what they were doing, but they knew they had stopped the Germans and they knew they had to protect Jews. And they knew like certain basic things and they were going to give their lives to do that. And I think all of us are being called now to step out further than we've ever stepped out before in demanding protection for our earth. In demanding that we stop drilling and extracting and, and taking out fossil fuels. Demanding that our priorities shift so that we are focusing on the collective and we are focusing on people eating and having medicine and surviving and workers' rights and unions and unions and, and people being protected on the most basic levels.
[00:35:58] And I think we are, we are really being called now to. Shift this paradigm shift, the way we have been living, which is profit, which is hierarchy, which is some people matter. And other peoples don't. This what I find kind of insane celebrity culture, that the lives of 50 people are the lives that matter. And everybody else's life is insignificant.
[00:36:25] You know, I think we have to really, really begin to ask ourselves, what are each one of us going to do? On a daily basis to shift the dire situation we are in the world and you decide what you need to do and wherever your bliss, wherever you are, talent, wherever your energy is driving you do that. If it's going and standing on the border and fighting for immigrants rights to make sure that they're not separated from their children. Do that. If it's making sure restaurant workers have $50 an hour, so they're not relying on tipping. They don't get sexually abused, do that. If it's fighting for abortion rights, if it's demanding that critical race theory and anti-racism and books that tell the true history of America from what was done to the indigenous and black people and on demanding that they are taught in schools and not shut down and not censored, you know. Find the thing you are driven to do, because it's all part of the same story. And don't separate out this story. Like, don't say like there's one issue over here. And one issue over here. It's not it's.
[00:37:36] We are living in racist, capitalist patriarchy. It is one cabal. And. Work on your piece of Acabar and work on transforming that. And don't think you're not doing enough and don't think, oh, I should be doing more because all that is is guilt and self-hatred do what you're doing and do it passionately and do it with devotion and commitment.
[00:38:00] Lynne: Absolutely beautiful. Every one of us to take our power, particularly the young people. And for those of us who are in the wise woman phase, it's actually just giving it from our own experiences, whatever wisdom we've learned to support these young women. I started working with young teenagers in my area where I live and I'm loving it.
[00:38:20] So I'm coming to the end, unfortunately which I would love to go on for hours and hours. So I'm, we mentioned earlier about the Guardian so the Guardian newspaper which you, who you write for regularly are doing a special piece curated by you or a series of pieces, Actually. Over this period of February the 14th and onwards uh, where you have written a fantastic piece of yourself, and then you have asked some wonderful women writers to share their their writings on the whole subject of a women's bodies, girls' bodies, the body of mother earth. What I'd like to ask you to do is explain a little bit about that. And then two, we'd finished with you reading the piece that you've written for the Guardian, which is online for those of you who'd like to follow up and we will put a link to it as part of this podcast, because it's so important.
[00:39:08] V: Thank you Lynne, and thank you for bringing this piece out. I'm so proud of this series and I want to thank the Guardian and Leah Harper who edited this piece. And Ngadi Smart who made those just extraordinary illustrations. And all the women who wrote, I mean, from, I don't want to start listing their names because I'll forget somebody, but there are just brilliant writers in this piece. Well, I'll mention some of them from Emma, Thomas and Emma Thompson to Agnes pariah writing on kenya to nausea and Afghanistan to Saru who writes on, on restaurant workers rights to Francis Ryan to Jessica force it to, to a reefer Akbar, Monique Wilson, Terry Tempest Williams, Chanel and silver writing on the body. Judith Clark writing on women in prison, Juneau, Dawson writing on a trans woman's body. I'm sure I've forgotten someone. Oh, Yeah, well, I may have forgotten someone, but there, there are just glorious, glorious pieces and, and I urge you to really go and 10 really spend time with them and, and read them and sink into them because it's so profound to see how many different women there, 16 women just went in and took all these different takes a label michelli wrote a beautiful piece about mama and the mother and the earth and the body. So this is the piece kind of my introductory piece that I wrote. And I, I urge everybody to think about what is the body, what is the story? What is the story that your body has? What is the story? And, and to really listen to that story, because not only are women's bodies abused and, and, and, and, and hurt, but we neglect our own bodies. We don't take care of our bodies because we've never believed we were worthy or had the time or the space, and we're always taking care of others. So I dedicate this today to women around the world that we really may come into our bodies. We may love our bodies, we may cherish them and really honor them through taking care of them so that we may rise.
[00:41:19] For so many years. I lived as if I didn't have a body childhood abuse meant mine was a conquered land, a place that had been pillaged and vanquished from the various. 13 years ago, I found out I had stage three before uterine cancer. I discovered it late. And by the time I did a tumor, the size of an avocado already occupied by uterus. It had busted through my colon. I did not know it or feel it.
[00:41:50] This sent me off on a quest, traveling the world in search of answers, asking women everywhere, when did you leave your body who owned your. What space is your body allowed to occupy? How has your body been hurt, changed or refused by the government, your job, your family, the Supreme Court, white supremacy, climate catastrophe, poverty police violence, settler colonialism, transphobia, imperialism, capitalism?
[00:42:19] Women's bodies are forever under threat, on alert, ducking, crouching, hiding, making themselves smaller, less obvious, waiting for the insult guarding against the unwanted touch, the grab, the punch, the rape, the murder. How does your body fight back? When does your body rest?
[00:42:38] Nurses are expected to sacrifice their bodies for those who refuse to wear masks, restaurant workers are forced to take down their own masks. We're seeing sickness and death. So the unmasked customer can decide if their face is pretty enough for a lousy. California farm workers, bodies are assaulted so routinely while harvesting fields that they have nicknamed them feel the cows all or feel the panties because their underwear is ripped off them when they are raped. Black women's bodies are shot by police in their beds, in their cars for a traffic violation in front of their child on a wellness check. The wrong body in the wrong house. Afterwards, even their stories and names are disappearing. Speak her body say her name.
[00:43:22] The body of a girl, child soul by her parents to an old man in Herat Afghanistan to keep her starving family alive. The body of another girl sold online for the price of a mobile phone. And another source by a British socialite for her rich sadistic boyfriend who served the child's body to his luminous circle of the depraved.
[00:43:43] Women's bodies carrying the memories of trauma, predisposing them to cysts and tumors, bumps, lumps, and sickness, long after the damage is done. Women's bodies always serving, feeding, bathing, holding, caring, and nurturing other bodies, never having time to think about their own. Women's bodies hated for their perfection for their imperfection. Hated for being too thin, too fat, too round, too flat. Hated because they can do all that and make you feel all that.
[00:44:13] But bodies are now remembering. Re-attaching, returning, becoming bodies maybe for the first time. The burning from Daddy's unwanted fingers shoved inside at five. Now becoming word, becoming fire. The language of purpose of power. Bare breasted bodies in the streets, pushing back against femicide. Indigenous women's bodies, horseback in kayaks, protesting over pipelines about to spill oil. Fist strays bodies pressed up against rows of erupting police bodies rising my body, my choice. Differently abled bodies occupying the Carters of Congress in rage body smashing the steel doors of a factory where their sister and brother workers needlessly died. Women's bodies unapologetically alive, freeing the beauty and Birdsong inside. No longer captive or denied, but becoming one surging body sweeping and other bodies as they fly.
[00:45:18] Lynne: As always, thank you V. Thank you from my heart to yours and thank you, for the hearts of my granddaughters and their generations to come after them. God bless you.
[00:45:30] V: Thank you Lynne. I love you so much. I'm so happy. I got to have this conversation with you.
[00:45:37] Lynne: For our unique exercise to go with this podcast. I was thinking that 1 Billion Rising this year has a theme of women's bodies, girls' bodies and the body of mother earth herself. So why not think about your story with your own body, the story your body wants to tell and how do you want to tell it? Perhaps there a painting, a poem, or even a letter to yourself? So today get in tinue with what your body is saying to you.
[00:46:07] Thank you so much for listening and taking part. Remember we're going to be putting up new episodes every two weeks, and I do hope you'll be back with us again soon.
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[00:46:47] Until then see you next time.