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Anorexia Was My Attempt To Have Control Over My Body And Manipulate My Body And Starve My Body And Shape My Body. It Was Not A Very Good Relationship. It Was The Sort Of Relationship My Father Had To My Body. It Was A Tyrannical, "you'll Do What I Tell You" Relationship.

-Eve Ensler

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Anorexia Was My Attempt

Eve Ensler

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Anorexia Was My Attempt To Have Control Over My Body And Manipulate My Body And Starve My Body And Shape My Body. It Was Not A Very Good Relationship. It Was The Sort Of Relationship My Father Had To My Body. It Was A Tyrannical, "you'll Do What I Tell You" Relationship.

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Good Relationship

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Guarantees That

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I Got To A Nine-hour Surgery, I Lost Lots Of Body Parts And Rearranged, I Got Really Months Of Infection That I Lost 30 Pounds. But The Idea Of Pumping Poison Into My Bloodstream Just - I Couldn't, I Couldn't.

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Geography Teachers

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Prison Population

Security Is Elusive. It's Impossible. We All Die. We All Get Old. We All Get Sick. People Leave Us. People Change Us. Nothing Is Secure.

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Stop Fixing Your Bodies And Start Fixing The World!

There Is A Global Epidemic Where One Out Of Three Women Will Be Beaten Or Sexually Assaulted In Their Lifetimes? How Are We Going To Build A Future Of Love And Connection? And Why Would This Not Be Of Utmost Concern To Men?

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What I Have Found Is That Even When You Try To Transform Existing Structures They Are So Powerful They Often Overwhelm, Seduce, And Control You.

If You Are Divided From Your Body, Then You Are Divided From The Body Of The World.

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I Think Culture Is Where Things Change In Us Deeply. But Right Now, I Think That People Are Very Traumatised. They Are Very Scared. Having Grown Up In A House With A Perpetrator Who Was Violent Every Day And Terrorising Every Day, I Feel Like That This Country Is Suddenly Very Much Like The House And The Family I Grew Up In. Every Day We Are Glued To Our Phones, Glued To Our Television; "what Is This Psychopath Going To Do Next? How Will He Embarrass Us? Who Will He Bully Or Hurt Or Humiliate Today? It's So Easy To Get Locked Into A Syndrome Where The Perpetrator Is Ruling Your Life.

I Am Worried About This Word, This Notion - Security. I See This Word, Hear This Word, Feel This Word Everywhere. Security Check. Security Watch. Security Clearance. Why Has All This Focus On Security Made Me Feel So Much More Insecure? ... Why Are We Suddenly A Nation And A People Who Strive For Security Above All Else?

Danger Lurks When People Are Dissociated And Detached From Their Own Story Or Feelings.

I Think We Need To Teach Pleasure. What Beautiful Touch Means. What Reciprocity Means. What Being Connected And What Intimacy Means. Boys Get Out There At A Young Age And The Performance Posturing Is So Great And Ends Up Being Hard And Aggressive.

Good Is Towing The Line, Being Behaved, Being Quiet, Being Passive, Fitting In, Being Liked, And Great Is Being Messy, Having A Belly, Speaking Your Mind, Standing Up For What You Believe In, Fighting For Another Paradigm, Not Letting People Talk You Out Of What You Know To Be True.

Our Bodies Are Critical. If I Learned Anything From Getting Really Bad Cancer Seven Years Ago, It's That Your Body Is What You've Got. If You Don't Take Care Of It, You're Not Going To Be Here.

I Began To See My Body Like An Ipad Or A Car. I Would Drive It And Demand Things From It. It Had No Limits. It Was Invincible. It Was To Be Conquered And Mastered Like The Earth Herself.

When I Wrote 'the Good Body,' I Turned 40 And Suddenly Had This Stomach. It Seemed Like The End Of The World. Because I Didn't Value My Body. I Was Constantly Judging It, But I Also Didn't Live In It.

End Of The World

I Think There Are So Many Children Being Brought Up In Some Form Of Violence, Be It Violence Of Poverty Or Sexism Or Racism Or Homophobia Or Transphobia. That Violence Takes A Life To Transform Or Overcome. I Don't Think People Should Be Spending Their Lives Dealing With That. I Think People Should Be Thriving, Playing, Creating, Evolving.

Naming Things, Breaking Through Taboos And Denial Is The Most Dangerous, Terrifying, And Crucial Work. This Has To Happen In Spite Of Political Climates Or Coercions, In Spite Of Careers Being Won Or Lost, In Spite Of The Fear Of Being Criticized, Outcast, Or Disliked. I Believe Freedom Begins With Naming Things. Humanity Is Preserved By It.

I'm In Good Shape. My Cancer Means I Have Lost A Lot Of Organs And I'm A Lot Lighter. I Have Devoted Myself To Yoga And I'm Doing Handstands.

One Of The Things I Think About When We Talk About A Violence,and Relationship To Spirituality Is That It Seems To Me When You Take Something From Someone That Isn't Yours Or You Hurt Someone Else, Fundamentally, You Actually Do That To Yourself. You Actually Unmake Yourself, You Work Against Your Own Being And Your Own Matter.

With The Gulf Spill, I Absolutely Merged In The Time When I Had That Infection. I Couldn't Get Out Of The Gulf Spill. There Were So Many Similarities: The Drains And The Siphoning And The Tubes. And Also In The Way The Earth Was Hurt, The Ocean Was Bleeding. Remember The Video Cams Of The Oil Gushing? I Couldn't Stop Watching That.

When We Give In The World What We Want The Most, We Heal The Broken Part Inside Each Of Us.

If You Were Around In The '60s, You Already Know That Music And Art And Love Are A Critical Part Of The Revolution. This Is How We Fight.

I Think We Have Made Progress. There's No Doubt About It, We Have Moved Forward. But There's Some Essential, Core Thing That Has Not Been Deconstructed. And I'm Telling You, It's Connected To The Body. I Know It Is.

For Many Years Now, I Feel Like My Own Body Struggle Has Been Linked And Connected With Women I Meet In The World. I Think We're In This Together.

There Is Just So Much Excess In Terms Of The Market For Self-remodeling. I Think Most Women Are Perfectly Gorgeous And Beautiful The Way They Are.

We Have No Idea How Many Women Were Raped In Wars - Because No One Ever Asked. So Sometimes When People Say Statistics Have Escalated, I Wonder If, That Is True Or Are We Just Hearing About Things Now That We Didn't Hear About Before.

Cancer Was The Most Terrifying, Arduous, Painful Thing, But It Was Also A Profound Gift In The Sense That I Was Holding So Much In My Body For So Many Years That Was Dark And Terrifying Which Was Preventing My Coming Back Into Myself.

What If, Instead Of Being Afraid Of Even Talking About Death, We Saw Our Lives In Some Ways As Preparation For It. What If We Were Taught To Ponder It And Reflect On It And Talk About It And Enter It And Rehearse It And Try It On?what If, Rather Than Being Cast Out And Defined By Some Terminal Category, You Were Identified As Someone In The Middle Of A Transformation That Could Deepen Your Soul, Open Your Heart, And All The While-even If And Particularly When You Were Dying-you Would Be Supported By And Be Part Of A Community?

…find Freedom, Aliveness, And Power Not From What Contains, Locates, Or Protects Us, But From What Dissolves, Reveals, And Expands Us.

When You Rape, Beat, Maim, Mutilate, Burn, Bury, And Terrorize Women, You Destroy The Essential Life Energy On The Planet.

I'd Stop Calling It "chemotherapy." I'd Call It "transformational Juice." Infusion Suites Would Become "transformational Suites" Or "journey Rooms."

I Think The Greatest Illusion We Have Is That Denial Protects Us. It's Actually The Biggest Distortion And Lie. In Fact, Staying Asleep Is What's Killing Us.

You Have Visits, Then You Have Disappearances. You Enter, Then You Exit. You Come, You Go. It Would Be So Great If You Could Just Get To Human Enlightenment On A Linear Path.

When You Bring Consciousness To Anything, Things Begin To Shift.

Why Aren't We Looking At The Causes Of Breast Cancer? Why Aren't We Spending Our Energy On Looking At What We're Doing To The Earth? On The Pollutants We're Putting Into The Earth? And The Pesticides We're Putting Into The Earth? What We're Releasing Into The Air? Instead, We Just Cut Off More Organs! That's Where Metaphor Comes Into It - Not Even Metaphor As Much As Reality.

What I Would Say To Young Women Is: Pay Attention To The Real. Pay Attention To What You're Really Thirsting For. What Do You Really Want? And I Think That's Much Harder To Decipher In A Culture That Has No Interest In It. What Interests Me Is, Are We Going To Wake In Time? Are Human Beings Going To Wake Up To Ourselves, To The Incredible Poverty That's On This Planet, To What We're Doing To The Earth, To What We're Doing To Women, To What We're Doing To Boys? That's What's Important.

If You Listen To The Real In You, That Part That's Pulsing And Has Questions And Is Trying To Figure Something Out, It Will Shape Your Life In A Way Where, When You Get To Be Sixty, You'll Succeed. You'll Be Happy About Your Life.

You Know I Think So Many Of Us Live Outside Our Bodies. My Dream Is That People Will Find A Way Back Home, Into Their Bodies, To Connect With The Earth, To Connect With Each Other, To Connect With The Poor, To Connect With The Broken, To Connect With The Needy, To Connect With People Calling Out All Around Us, To Connect With The Beauty, Poetry, The Wildness.

Stop Trying To Fix Your Body. It Was Never Broken.

Rock-and-roll Was An Example Of Change In The Body Of The Culture. I Think It's Really What Helped Bring The Anti-war Movement To Its Peak And Moved People Into The Streets To Seize The Day - The Movement Was The Embodiment Of What Was Happening In The Music. This Is What Taught Me That It Was Possible To Bring Art And Activism Together. Without That Piece, That Energetic Embodiment Piece, The Rest Is Just Intellectual Construct.

We Get Off Track. Capitalism Takes Us Off Track. You Get Off The "real" And Get On The "wheel." The "wheel" Becomes The Winning And Losing, The Succeeding And Failing, The "i Will Achieve." All That Stuff Becomes So Preoccupying, Particularly If You're Born With Low Self-esteem, Or No Sense Of Yourself, Or Even If You're Just Born In The Consumer Culture. It's Very Powerful.

I Was A Young Feminist In The '70s. Feminism Saved My Life. It Gave Me A Life. But I Saw How So Much Of What People Were Saying Was Not Matching Up With What They Were Doing. For Example, We Were Talking About Sister Solidarity, And Women Were Putting Each Other Down. We Were Talking About Standing Up For Our Rights, And Women Weren't Leaving Abusive Relationships With Men. There Were Just So Many Disconnects.

Dancing Insists We Take Up Space, And Though It Has No Set Direction, We Go There Together. Dance Is Dangerous, Joyous, Sexual, Holy, Disruptive, And Contagious And It Breaks The Rules. It Can Happen Anywhere, At Anytime, With Anyone And Everyone, And It's Free. Dance Joins Us And Pushes Us To Go Further And That Is Why It's At The Center Of One Billion Rising.

I Think That It Was Really Rock-and-roll Stars, Women Who Were Breaking Boundaries With Their Bodies And Their Voices And Their Beings And Their Music. I Spent A Lot Of Time At Concerts,just Watching Women Rock Out. They Expressed So Much Of What I Believed Could Be Possible.

Anorexia Was My Attempt To Have Control Over My Body And Manipulate My Body And Starve My Body And Shape My Body. It Was Not A Very Good Relationship. It Was The Sort Of Relationship My Father Had To My Body. It Was A Tyrannical, "you'll Do What I Tell You" Relationship.

Good Relationship

People Didn't Feel So Much Shame Around It And That They Didn't Feel So Much Humiliation Around It. And The Other Thing That People Have Given Me A Lot Of Feedback About - Something I'm Very Excited About - Is All The Stuff Around Chemo As An "empathetic Warrior."

The People Who Are On The Front Lines Every Day In Hospitals, Nurses, The People Who Are Running Clinics, The People Who Are Taking Care Of Your Children, Those Are The People Who Are The Lovers Of The World, Are The Good Of The World.

To Love Women, To Love Our Vaginas, To Know Them And Touch Them And Be Familiar With Who We Are And What We Need. To Satisfy Ourselves, To Teach Our Lovers To Satisfy Us, To Be Present In Our Vaginas, To Speak Of Them Out Loud, To Speak Of Their Hunger And Pain And Loneliness And Humor, To Make Them Visible So They Cannot Be Ravaged In The Dark Without Great Consequence, So That Our Center, Our Point, Our Motor, Our Dream, Is No Longer Detached, Mutilated, Numb, Broken, Invisible, Or Ashamed.

I Think So Much Of Neoliberalism And Capitalism Has Caused People To Live In A State Of Greed, Fear And Consumption That Is Covering Up So Much Of What We Really Want.

The Mechanism Of Violence Is What Destroys Women, Controls Women, Diminishes Women And Keeps Women In Their So-called Place.

I Don't Get Tired, Because Every Time A Woman Doesn't Die Or Doesn't Get Beaten Or Doesn't Get Raped Or Doesn't Get Honor-killed Or Doesn't Get Acid-burned, It's A Huge Victory.

I Feel Very Passionate That We Need Cat Scanners In Every Country In The World. There's Not A Cat Scanner In All Of Eastern Congo. People Don't Use The Word "cancer" Because They Don't Get Diagnosed. They Just Die.

When I Was Younger I Felt Very Disempowered, Very Disappeared. I Felt Worthless, Like I Had No Right To Exist. I Think A Good Part Of My Life Was Spent Recovering From That. Pulling Myself Out Of That.

What Happens When Someone Throws You Against A Wall Or Tells You You're A Jackass Or Puts You Down Or Calls You Bad Names? It Goes Into Your Body. We Hold It In Our Body. If We Don't Have A Way To Let That Go And Release That, It Becomes Sickness Eventually.

What We All Have To Know Is The Struggle Is Long. It's Long. It May Not End In Our Lifetimes. But The Struggle Is What Gives Our Lives Meaning And Purpose. I Tell People To Take Time Out Of Activism Every Day To Take Care Of Their Bodies, To Take Care Of Their Souls And Spirits.

I Think It Was A Realization Of This Cancer, An Understanding Of The Broader Implications Of What Cancer Is. The Greed, The Ravaging Of Lands And Seas For Profit, The Taking Of Things That Don't Belong To Us; What We've Done To The Environment In This Fast-paced, Careless Hunger. I Think All Of That Was Happening In My Body.

Denial Is Really Death. People Think That When You're Connected With Other People It's More Painful. The Opposite Is True. When You're Connected To The River You Have Despair, But You Also Have Joy, And There's A Flow In The River.

I Think Violence Against Women In America Has Become Ordinary - It's Been Made Absolutely Acceptable.

The Love Is All Around Us. I Made A Life Of Love.

Cherish Your Solitude. Take Trains By Yourself To Places You Have Never Been. Sleep Out Alone Under The Stars.

I Think The Human Species Is Very Suicidal.

The Cancer In Me Became An Awareness Of The Cancer That Is Everywhere. The Cancer Of Cruelty, The Cancer Of Carelessness, The Cancer Of Greed.

One Of The Most Radical Things Women Can Do Is To Love Their Body.

I Think So Much Of My Early Life, Even Though I Grew Up White And Middle Class, I Was Completely Shattered By The Horrifically Violent Atmosphere I Grew Up In. I Am A Consequence Of Violence. That Opened A Door To Many Realities That I Would Not Have Experienced Had I Not Survived What I Did.

Well, The Tyranny Of Masculinity And The Tyranny Of Patriarchy I Think Has Been Much More Deadly To Men Than It Has To Women. It Hasn’t Killed Our Hearts. It’s Killed Men’s Hearts. It’s Silenced Them, It’s Cut Them Off.

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