One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime.
That’s ONE BILLION women. These one billion women are your sisters, mothers, aunts, friends, grandmothers, teachers, employers, daughters and strangers. This Valentine’s Day, women are standing up, speaking out, and dancing to break the cycle.
In addition to hosting an event (details coming soon!), we’re showing our support by featuring Eve Ensler, the founder of V-Day and the catalyst of the One Billion Rising movement, as our Fierce Woman for January.
She’s the first of 2013 – the year that women begin to rise together and use the power of protest to change things and empower others. Why is she the woman we’ve chosen to honor?
In addition to being one of the most progressive feminists who have been able to make taboo issues of gender-based violence and inequality mainstream, she is also the author of the Vagina Monologues, and dozens of other literary works that have critically explored the definition of being a woman.
Her work is breaking the chains of oppression all over the world; her words, whether whispered or yelled, are giving courage; her momentum is sparking chain reactions around the world and spurring strangers to hold hands in the cause of something great.
Her latest call to action with the One Billion Rising Campaign has inspired us to the highest degree. Instead of asking Eve questions, as is our monthly Fierce Woman of the Month Series standard, we wanted her to speak to you, herself, through her words, unchanged. This is her plea and her demand…
“As we succeed, our victories attract a more virulent resistance. As we get a foothold on our rights and power, the push back from the patriarchal minorities in every country becomes stronger and more dangerous…
We must be as disruptive and loud and determined and organized as the small groups attempting to set us back… We must stop being polite and behaved and find new inventive tactics to shift the paradigm… We literally hold the future in our bodies.
Imagine [one billion women dancing,] taking up space, expanding our borders and possibilities, expressing the depth of our desire for peace and change… The earth will surely move and violence against women and girls will end. Because it can.”
More to come on Eve’s greatness and the One Billion Rising Campaign throughout the month and leading up to V-Day in the next few posts…
Please follow us at @maximhy for details about our upcoming V-Day event. Let us honor Eve and the billion women that are potential Eve Enslers out there, together.