:00:00. > :00:11.Those are the headlines. Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk.
:00:12. > :00:20.Welcome to HARDtalk. Owned Stephen Sackur. Let me give you one of the
:00:21. > :00:23.world's most depressing statistics. According to the UN, one third of
:00:24. > :00:30.all when the next variant rate or some kind of physical assault in
:00:31. > :00:35.their lifetime `` rape. My guests today is leading a campaign to end
:00:36. > :00:39.that violence. Eve Ensler is best known for her plate The Vagina
:00:40. > :00:43.Monologues, but what can this passionate New York feminist do to
:00:44. > :01:11.change the lot of women around the world?
:01:12. > :01:21.Eve Ensler, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you, happy to be here. You are
:01:22. > :01:37.known as a writer and feminist activist but I wonder which comes
:01:38. > :01:41.first for you. You are known as a writer and a feminist activist but I
:01:42. > :01:44.wonder which comes first for you? Your art, your creativity, or your
:01:45. > :01:51.campaigning, your activism? I don't know. For years, I think I have
:01:52. > :02:03.struggled with which is before or ahead. Which drives which? I think
:02:04. > :02:07.that they drive each other. I think that probably first, I am an artist
:02:08. > :02:10.but I think that I have always had an activist passion and an activist
:02:11. > :02:13.drive. I don't think that art is enough even though I do trust art.
:02:14. > :02:17.Something about the combination of the two which is something that took
:02:18. > :02:20.me a while to figure out early on, how to bring those worlds together.
:02:21. > :02:22.It was a very deep struggle at the beginning because they are so
:02:23. > :02:26.different. In terms of your creativity, you have been writing
:02:27. > :02:29.for many years. Just about 20 years ago, you wrote the show which will
:02:30. > :02:32.define you more than any other and that was The Vagina Monologues. For
:02:33. > :02:46.those who have not yet seen it, describe for me the spirit behind
:02:47. > :02:49.that. It grew out of curiosity. It began with a conversation with a
:02:50. > :02:51.feminist, a forward thinker who was going through menopause and said
:02:52. > :03:00.very despairing and negative things about her vagina. I was shocked. It
:03:01. > :03:03.led me to thinking that I didn't know what women thought about their
:03:04. > :03:06.vaginas and I began to ask friends and everyone would say either
:03:07. > :03:09.amazing or bizarre or strange or mysterious things, so I was taking
:03:10. > :03:13.notes. I had no intention of writing a play about vaginas. I then spoke
:03:14. > :03:16.to an older woman who told me a very disturbing story that she had had an
:03:17. > :03:19.early sexual experience which had humiliated her and as a result, she
:03:20. > :03:23.had never had sex again. This absolutely threw me into despair. I
:03:24. > :03:35.wrote a monologue about her and that was the beginning. I still did not
:03:36. > :03:38.have intentions of writing a play but when I started to put a few of
:03:39. > :03:42.these monologues out, the response was so immediate to what I was doing
:03:43. > :03:46.that it encouraged me to go further. There are a lot of the questions
:03:47. > :03:49.behind the show but one I had is this: Is it your contention and
:03:50. > :03:52.belief, having spoken to women as you did 20 years ago, is it your
:03:53. > :03:54.contention that there is something universal about women and their
:03:55. > :03:57.sexuality, their experience of childbirth and their biology which
:03:58. > :04:01.unites all women across the world or do you think that the play is very
:04:02. > :04:04.specific to its time and place, written by a New York woman in the
:04:05. > :04:11.late 20th century and defined by that experience? The play has led me
:04:12. > :04:26.to understand the universality of it. I wrote it in New York and
:04:27. > :04:30.performed it in a tiny theatre downtown. If you had told me 20
:04:31. > :04:33.years ago that it would be being performed in 140 countries and 48
:04:34. > :04:36.languages, I don't think I would have known that that was possible. I
:04:37. > :04:40.have come to see that the story of the play is universal. I can sit in
:04:41. > :04:49.Pakistan, or I can sit in Alabama, or I can sit... Can this show be put
:04:50. > :05:03.on in Pakistan? It has been put on in Pakistan. It has been put on in
:05:04. > :05:06.140 countries by women... I have never promoted it. Women have come
:05:07. > :05:09.and found it and taken it to their countries. They have taken it into
:05:10. > :05:13.Croatia or Serbia or Germany and it doesn't matter what the language is,
:05:14. > :05:16.people laugh at the same places and cry at the same places and identify
:05:17. > :05:18.with the experiences. I'm thinking of some countries, let's say Saudi
:05:19. > :05:22.Arabia, countries where surely, officially, there is no way in the
:05:23. > :05:25.world that such a play that is called The Vagina Monologues and is
:05:26. > :05:28.about the most intimate aspects of female biology, there is no way that
:05:29. > :05:30.they could be officially sanctioned. I hear rumours that underground
:05:31. > :05:34.productions are beginning in Saudi Arabia. There are two in Iran. I
:05:35. > :05:37.think in many places, it begins in an underground way and has
:05:38. > :05:41.confidence builds and as people respond to the play, it becomes a
:05:42. > :05:44.more public format. That is what happened in Pakistan. It began as an
:05:45. > :05:50.underground production in Islamabad and then spread to other cities. It
:05:51. > :06:05.is also interesting to see the number of men coming to see the
:06:06. > :06:08.play. They are learning things and walk away from it with a better
:06:09. > :06:10.understanding of sex, a better understanding of connection, with a
:06:11. > :06:14.better understanding of violence. And what the impact is that violent
:06:15. > :06:17.has upon the lives of women. There are humourous elements to it.
:06:18. > :06:21.Hopefully, it is very funny. Some laugh out loud stuff. It is
:06:22. > :06:24.interesting that over the years of putting it on, you have had many
:06:25. > :06:27.celebrities who have wanted to take part. Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, a
:06:28. > :06:33.host of the most famous women in the world have performed monologues. Do
:06:34. > :06:40.you think that that has diluted some of the sense of anger that underpins
:06:41. > :06:43.a lot of... Not at all. At the beginning of this movement when we
:06:44. > :06:48.began V`Day, the day to end violence against women, it grew from the
:06:49. > :06:52.play. In the days when I first began to perform the play under a single
:06:53. > :06:55.yellow globe and we thought that the police would arrive and I would hear
:06:56. > :06:59.stories from women lining up at the end of every show to tell me their
:07:00. > :07:02.story. At first I thought I would hear about pleasure and sexuality
:07:03. > :07:13.but the majority of women were telling me about how they had been
:07:14. > :07:18.beaten, raped, incested. That got to me. I started to feel like a war
:07:19. > :07:24.photographer who was witnessing events and not able to intervene. We
:07:25. > :07:27.eventually decided to launch launch V`Day and we launched the play to
:07:28. > :07:46.bring attention to the issues and raise money for local groups. We had
:07:47. > :07:48.no idea about 16 years ago that that production, that evening, would lead
:07:49. > :07:55.to this explosion of a movement around the world. We are now in the
:07:56. > :07:58.16th year. The play has raised $100 million. That has all gone into
:07:59. > :08:00.grassroots groups and has been raised by grassroots groups and
:08:01. > :08:05.self`directed, autonomously in the community. I want to talk more about
:08:06. > :08:08.how you use that money and how this global movement which you have
:08:09. > :08:15.foundered the lives that it can engineer change. Before I get on a
:08:16. > :08:19.global perspective, I want to come very close to home. I'm struck by
:08:20. > :08:22.you telling me that women have approached you to speak about their
:08:23. > :08:25.experiences of rape and incest. I was wondering how the fact that you
:08:26. > :08:28.personally had been through the most terrible experiences as a child and
:08:29. > :08:39.young woman inside your own family, how about help you to understand
:08:40. > :08:42.them. `` how that helped you. Is that experience in the way you have
:08:43. > :08:46.become an artist? I think so. The way we become a human. If you grow
:08:47. > :08:48.up in an environment of violence, even if it is within an
:08:49. > :08:52.upper`middle`class context, your daily life is shaped by beatings and
:08:53. > :08:54.incest or the threat of violence or being thrown against the wall... Are
:08:55. > :09:02.you being literally accurate? Yes. Literally accurate. My childhood was
:09:03. > :09:08.shaped by that violence. I was under daily siege and threat. From my
:09:09. > :09:11.father. Yes, he was a business executive on the outside and another
:09:12. > :09:15.thing inside. This is not uncommon from the stories I have heard over
:09:16. > :09:17.the years. People live with parents and fathers with split personalities
:09:18. > :09:23.and one thing in the world and another thing inside the family. My
:09:24. > :09:28.daily existence was really a daily existence of terror. And threat. And
:09:29. > :09:34.fear and self`hatred. And depression. I think that one of the
:09:35. > :09:37.reasons I feel the commitment I feel to ending violence against women is
:09:38. > :09:39.that I grew up in a white privileged, upper`middle`class
:09:40. > :09:42.family where I had education and braces and that violence eviscerated
:09:43. > :09:45.my confidence, eviscerated my self`esteem, eviscerated my sense of
:09:46. > :09:54.worthiness in the world so that my whole life was really a struggle to
:09:55. > :10:00.come out of our darkness. Was there anyone you could speak to at the
:10:01. > :10:06.time? No, none at all. My family knew but... Did your mother know? My
:10:07. > :10:10.mother knew. We were all under that same siege. A violent person is a
:10:11. > :10:15.threat to the environment. And the family and the state, everywhere. I
:10:16. > :10:19.think that one of the things which I learned at a young age and it is
:10:20. > :10:22.probably why I started to write was because it was one of the ways I
:10:23. > :10:26.could make sense of these periods and separate myself out and have a
:10:27. > :10:31.view or a persona that was not being drowned in the experience. One thing
:10:32. > :10:35.I see around the world is that most women and I have travelled to so
:10:36. > :10:44.many countries in the last 16 years, most women have not told their
:10:45. > :10:46.stories. Those secrets are eating women alive and they become health
:10:47. > :10:49.issues and depression and suicidal issues and they become eating
:10:50. > :10:52.issues. They become cutting issues. There is no space in the culture to
:10:53. > :10:56.speak about these issues. There is usually nobody to whom they can tell
:10:57. > :11:00.it. There is not an environment or a space where you can speak about it.
:11:01. > :11:08.How do we break that silence? It is a crucial question. This raises in
:11:09. > :11:11.my mind questions about feminism. What feminism is really for and
:11:12. > :11:15.really about. So much feminism in the is now focused, you know, years
:11:16. > :11:18.after the first struggles in the 50s and 60s, focused on specific issues
:11:19. > :11:26.like getting women into the boardroom or getting the police to
:11:27. > :11:32.handle sex abuse better. Very specific topics. You suggest to me
:11:33. > :11:38.that in other parts of the world, the challenges may be greater than
:11:39. > :11:45.it is now in Western society. I don't think so. The rate of violence
:11:46. > :11:50.in Britain one out of five. It is one out of three in America. One out
:11:51. > :11:53.of three in the US military are being raped by their own comrades.
:11:54. > :11:56.It doesn't matter what country I have been to, I still believe that
:11:57. > :12:03.violence... The problems of women are just the same and as bad in the
:12:04. > :12:08.developed West as in...? I think so. Absolutely. College campuses have
:12:09. > :12:11.one out of five girls assaulted every year. 300,000 girls are
:12:12. > :12:17.assaulted on college campuses in America every year. To me, violence
:12:18. > :12:20.against women is the mother issue. It is the methodology which sustains
:12:21. > :12:24.patriarchy. Without it, things would change. If we don't get to the core
:12:25. > :12:26.of why so many women are being violated, whether it is incest,
:12:27. > :12:29.cuttings, bullying on the Internet, whether it is sexual harassment on
:12:30. > :12:38.the job, whatever it is that undermines women and reduces women
:12:39. > :12:43.and makes them unequal. That is, to me, the crucial work. Do you think
:12:44. > :12:48.that some feminists get too hung up on some of the less important
:12:49. > :12:52.issues? Everybody is working on a piece of the pie. We need all the
:12:53. > :12:58.work that is being done. I don't see it as either/or. People know the
:12:59. > :13:03.area to which they are drawn to bring about the quality and bring
:13:04. > :13:05.about change. I am particularly moved and passionate about ending
:13:06. > :13:09.violence against women because of the impact it had my own life and
:13:10. > :13:13.see the impact that it has had on millions of women around the planet.
:13:14. > :13:15.Why did you think that the women's movement in the West looks
:13:16. > :13:19.fragmented and sometimes divided within itself? I think about leading
:13:20. > :13:23.female writers, some of whom have looked at your work and accuse you
:13:24. > :13:26.of caricaturing men as evil and suggested that in the late 20th and
:13:27. > :13:40.early 21st century, that they became outdated and outmoded. Left behind.
:13:41. > :13:44.I have never really done that. I would like to say that I think that
:13:45. > :13:47.there is so many men now who are part of the V`Day movement and last
:13:48. > :13:51.year when we did One Billion Rising, millions of men rose with us. I have
:13:52. > :13:54.spoken of violence as a real thing and it turns out that men are
:13:55. > :13:58.committing the violence. I do not think that I have demonised men. I
:13:59. > :14:03.have called attention to a real problem. I have put out the idea
:14:04. > :14:05.that unless men really join us in this struggle, to end violence
:14:06. > :14:09.against women and become in solidarity with us, it will not
:14:10. > :14:27.change. I can understand that message.
:14:28. > :14:31.interesting. When you take your message around
:14:32. > :14:34.the world, the way you have tried to bring out crowds and support around
:14:35. > :14:43.the world, think about Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Do you really think
:14:44. > :14:46.that your message and the style in which you work can have a resonance
:14:47. > :14:50.through those sorts of societies? Let me be clear about the movement.
:14:51. > :14:57.It's not me. I'm not bringing my play places, I've never done that.
:14:58. > :15:00.The play has only gone where individual activists and women have
:15:01. > :15:06.asked for it. You look at a place like Kenya, where the play has been
:15:07. > :15:14.done. There was an activist there, a beautiful actress read the play and
:15:15. > :15:18.said, can I bring it to Kenya? She brought it into her community and
:15:19. > :15:23.did it in a way that worked for her community. She was already an
:15:24. > :15:26.activist working on those issues, working against violence against
:15:27. > :15:30.women. She used the play to support her work. I am not going anywhere,
:15:31. > :15:33.the play exists as a tool. If people want to use it to have a theatrical
:15:34. > :15:36.experience, to change consciences and help build a movement and
:15:37. > :15:39.enforce a movement and amplify a movement...
:15:40. > :15:42.In most performances, you might have a gathering of a few hundred women,
:15:43. > :15:45.maybe a few men as well who watched the performance. I'm thinking about
:15:46. > :15:49.mobilising a much bigger mass. Your One Billion Rising movement last
:15:50. > :15:56.year... You had a lot of people around the world. It seemed to be
:15:57. > :16:00.something strange about the message. You were telling women to go out and
:16:01. > :16:07.dance to show they had risen above the endemic violence in their
:16:08. > :16:09.societies. You said go and do it outside police stations and
:16:10. > :16:16.municipal buildings, the very symbols of the power that has held
:16:17. > :16:19.you down. But what difference will it make to a police force that is
:16:20. > :16:22.endemically committed to misogyny, what difference is dancing going to
:16:23. > :16:28.make? First of all, dancing has had an
:16:29. > :16:31.enormous impact. It is one of those powerful forms of expression and
:16:32. > :16:37.breaking free and allowing people to occupy public space. A lot of people
:16:38. > :16:42.danced for hours. Let me tell you what it did. It was not just the
:16:43. > :16:48.dancing, it was the organising for the dancing. Huge coalitions came
:16:49. > :16:53.together. New individuals came into it. Laws were passed. I will tell
:16:54. > :17:00.you an example about policemen. In Guatemala, a new law was passed. Any
:17:01. > :17:03.girl who gets pregnant under 14, the perpetrator gets held accountable.
:17:04. > :17:08.In Somalia, women have never occupied public space before. A
:17:09. > :17:12.brave and amazing activist decided she was going to do One Billion
:17:13. > :17:15.Rising on the streets, and after that, a case where a government
:17:16. > :17:24.official had raped a woman, after One Billion Rising that man was held
:17:25. > :17:31.accountable. I want to tell you a story about India, because I was
:17:32. > :17:34.just in Mumbai. At the first event we did there, last year, and the
:17:35. > :17:38.women who organised it, again, I just go to support that the people,
:17:39. > :17:41.what they are doing. Last year, thousands of students came out,
:17:42. > :17:47.because it was at the time of that famous rape and murder. This year,
:17:48. > :17:50.at that same event, there were 90 policemen, who were gathered by the
:17:51. > :17:56.chief of police, who were there to learn about sexual abuse and better
:17:57. > :17:59.practices. They were looking at arrests and how to help people
:18:00. > :18:05.accountable and how to treat women when they came in to press charges.
:18:06. > :18:10.And they stood up and they talked and they asked for feedback. That
:18:11. > :18:12.was a result of One Billion Rising occupying public space, bringing
:18:13. > :18:14.violence against women to the forefront of public issues.
:18:15. > :18:22.Deepening understanding of violence against women.
:18:23. > :18:24.You say this is driven by local women, extraordinarily courageous
:18:25. > :18:32.women, but the fact is, you are symbolic figurehead of this
:18:33. > :18:39.movement. You are a highly educated, well connected, upper middle class,
:18:40. > :18:43.white American woman. There are feminists who say that the danger is
:18:44. > :18:49.that your campaign looks, in her words, insulting, neocolonial, to
:18:50. > :18:52.many women in those countries. She talks about the disconnect between
:18:53. > :18:54.your background, your message, your mentality, and women in the
:18:55. > :19:01.Democratic Republic of Congo, for example. A country you know very
:19:02. > :19:09.well. She says your message doesn't fly in countries like that.
:19:10. > :19:15.All I can say to her is that I was in Congo last year for the rising.
:19:16. > :19:33.Thousands of people. I have never tried to get anybody to dance. There
:19:34. > :19:36.was a call put out last year. Activists responded. It was
:19:37. > :19:39.self`directed. They have agency over their own lives and their own
:19:40. > :19:42.determination, they chose to do those actions. I didn't go to 207
:19:43. > :19:46.countries and make anybody do anything. There was a call and there
:19:47. > :19:52.was an energy put out that people responded to. Let me finish saying
:19:53. > :19:55.this. I believe that one of the things that ignites people and holds
:19:56. > :19:57.people and allows people to move toward global solidarity. We should
:19:58. > :20:02.not believe that violence against women is a national, local, tribal
:20:03. > :20:10.religious problem. It is a global, universal issue. If we have global
:20:11. > :20:14.solidarity around it, the chances are so much better that we can move
:20:15. > :20:20.through it and begin to look at it as a pandemic, a true pandemic
:20:21. > :20:22.across the planet. Are you not overestimating the
:20:23. > :20:29.ability of the movement to engineer change? Mona Eltahawy, she told me
:20:30. > :20:33.in the HARDtalk studio, that until the target of our rage shifts to the
:20:34. > :20:54.oppressors on our streets and in our very homes, our revolution hasn't
:20:55. > :21:10.even begun. So when you talk about Women's Spring, using the language
:21:11. > :21:15.of the Arab Spring. Isn't it the case that it isn't really happening?
:21:16. > :21:23.I don't agree with you. I was just in India for three weeks. Those
:21:24. > :21:26.things are happening. Yes, there is enormous violence against women, but
:21:27. > :21:31.we are also seeing uprisings, women speaking out, many men joining the
:21:32. > :21:34.movement for the first time. Women are being punished for
:21:35. > :21:37.speaking out as well. Look at Afghanistan, human rights movements
:21:38. > :21:42.say violence against women is up 25% in the last year.
:21:43. > :21:47.I am not saying we have ended violence against women. We have
:21:48. > :21:51.created energy. We are fighting for laws. In the United States, the
:21:52. > :21:55.Violence Against Women Act, we worked all last year with One
:21:56. > :21:59.Billion Rising. Many activists who worked on that talk about the wind
:22:00. > :22:02.and the energy of One Billion Rising fuelling the passage of that law. I
:22:03. > :22:07.am not saying... There are many things needed to end violence
:22:08. > :22:10.against women. But I do believe that if you get millions of women across
:22:11. > :22:13.this planet rising against, in courthouses, speaking out against
:22:14. > :22:25.injustices, for example, mines in the Philippines, where a One Billion
:22:26. > :22:33.Rising was massive last year. Indigenous women are going to minds
:22:34. > :22:36.`` mines to look at not only the militarisation of mines and the
:22:37. > :22:39.takeover of mines and the loss of land but also the escalation of
:22:40. > :22:42.violence wherever there is militarisation. That is something
:22:43. > :22:46.bringing attention to those issues. They do what they do, we do what we
:22:47. > :22:55.do, we escalate energy, we bring coalitions together, and people do
:22:56. > :22:59.that in own countries. I am so struck, in the course of
:23:00. > :23:01.this interview we have talked about the most traumatic personal
:23:02. > :23:04.experiences you've had and your activism all over the world where
:23:05. > :23:10.you spoke to women who experienced the most terrible things. As you've
:23:11. > :23:14.been doing this for so long, are you not ever tempted to become deeply
:23:15. > :23:18.cynical about the way the world works and in particular at the way
:23:19. > :23:24.in which frequently men work? Of course. I have days when I come
:23:25. > :23:27.back from spending two months in the Congo, where we have a place built
:23:28. > :23:33.by women for women to heal the wounds... And every year a few
:23:34. > :23:44.hundred women are truly helped by it but hundreds of thousands of women
:23:45. > :23:47.in the same year... We have to start somewhere. If we go there, we will
:23:48. > :23:50.give up and be defeated and do nothing. But I'm asking you, after
:23:51. > :23:54.all this time, with the figures around the world being so bad, are
:23:55. > :24:03.you never tempted to give up? Never. I get depressed. I feel very
:24:04. > :24:07.bad, I have days when I weep over the violation that is happening to
:24:08. > :24:15.women around the world. But give up? No, why would we give up? When you
:24:16. > :24:18.see one woman change, one woman break through, become an activist,
:24:19. > :24:21.it's worth it to continue. I'm sorry to cut you off, it is a
:24:22. > :24:48.powerful thought but we have to finish. Thank you.
:24:49. > :24:49.On Sunday, many places saw lots of dry weather with gorgeous