by Becca Harrington, Social Work Intern
In 1998, on Valentine’s Day, Eve Ensler and a group of women started V-Day as a non-profit organization to empower women and stop the violence that so many of them endure. Now, every year during February, March, and April, Eve Ensler gives the rights of her play, the Vagina Monologues, to groups all over the world to perform, in an effort to raise money that will benefit local agencies fighting to stop the violence against women.
On March 13th, Long Islander Laura Ruhl pulled together a cast of amazing women to honor and be a voice for all women who have faced violence simply because of their sexual anatomy. Proceeds were split up between five agencies on the Island: Pride for Youth, F.E.G.S. Positive Space, Thursday’s Child, Auntie M’s Helping Hands, and the Anti-Violence Project of Long Island.
When Laura came to Pride for Youth and explained her vision, I was ready to join the ranks. It was an honor and a privilege to work with a group of wonderful women and spread the funny, horrible, tragic, intellectual, and insightful stories of women from all over the world who are violence survivors.
For me, participating in the Vagina Monologues was about standing in solidarity with straight women, lesbian women, bisexual women, transwomen – all women – and expressing the pain that we have endured for thousands of years. It was also greatly empowering to speak frankly about the vagina, stripping away the shame and guilt that women are often forced to carry.
You might be asking what does this all have to do with the LGBT community? Well, the shame, guilt, and violence that women experience are also what many LGBT people experience. LGBT youth are sexually harassed, assaulted, taunted, and bullied daily at school, in the media, and even on the internet. LGBT people, in general, are surrounded by a society that promotes a heterosexual agenda in which being LGBT is something that happens to you and needs to be fixed. It is not that far from the idea that women are less valuable than any man and she is only capable of doing and being what is deemed appropriate. LGBT people and female-bodied individuals both live a society in which they can count on being a victim more than they can count being safe.
I want to thank Laura Ruhl for allowing me to be part of her production and for generously donating some of the proceeds to Pride for Youth.
