Emma has been interviewing author Eve Ensler for Elle UK this week, and today’s piece is the last one from the series. In this one, Emma speaks to Eve on the ideological, and literal, assaults on women’s vaginas – from the Presidency down through to the ranks to everyday life. They assert solidarity with transgender women and discuss the next stage of the new women’s Resistance.
PART 4. “The next stage of the women’s uprising is upon us.”
Emma Watson: I have a question from another one of my Book Club members, Sierra, who says: “As an intersectional feminist, how do you balance retaking ownership and pride in vaginas whilst still being an ally for trans women? Not a critique, just something I’ve been wondering recently due to the backlash after some of the Women’s March defined their womanhood by their vagina.”
Eve Ensler: This is what I am going to say: it’s not either/or.
I know many women, for example, transgender women, who were very happy in the march and see themselves as very connected to those Pussy hats.
I know other transgender women who feel like being vagina-focused is exclusionary. But what I would say this: there are three billion women in the world who have vaginas. One out of three of them are being raped or battered.
I think we have to talk about vaginas now.
In the first part of this conversation (read here), Emma and author Eve Ensler discussed the difficulties of bringing The Vagina Monologues to publication and the activism it helped create. In the 2nd part, she speaks to author and activist Eve about the dangers of patriarchy, women’s rights to choice, and her harrowing trips to Bosnia and Croatia to meet survivors of wartime rape camps.
PART 2. “There’s a profound emergency in America.”
Emma Watson: Are things changing with regards to the patriarchy?
Eve Ensler: I think what is sad is that the men in power still don’t understand that the liberation of women is their liberation as well, because they’re still hungering for domination. I think that desire for domination, that predatory mind-set, is destroying our world in every respect. Whether it’s immigrants who are being denied entry after the U.S. bombed their countries, whether it’s the greed of extraction of oil which devastates the earth, whether it’s women’s bodies endlessly raped and abused and denied reproductive rights – there’s such a predatory mind-set at present. I think the younger generation were born with so many of the Rights that my generation didn’t have, so they naturally took them for granted. Now when those rights are under siege, suddenly people are waking up and realizing, ” We have to resist. We have to fight.”