WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:03.000 I bet you're worried. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:09.000 I was worried. That's why I began this piece. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:15.000 I was worried about vaginas. I was worried what we think about vaginas, 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000 and even more worried that we don't think about them. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:21.000 I was worried about my own vagina. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.000 It needed a context, a culture, a community of other vaginas. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.000 There is so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them. 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:35.000 Like the Bermuda Triangle, nobody ever reports back from there. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:36.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:40.000 In the first place, it's not so easy to even find your vagina. 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:43.000 Women go days, weeks, months, without looking at it. 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:45.000 I interviewed a high-powered businesswoman; 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:48.000 she told me she didn't have time. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.000 "Looking at your vagina," she said, "is a full day's work." NOTE Paragraph 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:52.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:55.000 "You've got to get down there on your back, in front of a mirror, 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:58.000 full-length preferred. You've got to get in the perfect position, 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:02.000 with the perfect light, which then becomes shadowed by the angle you're at. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:05.000 You're twisting your head up, arching your back, it's exhausting." 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:08.000 She was busy; she didn't have time. 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.000 So I decided to talk to women about their vaginas. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:14.000 They began as casual vagina interviews, 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.000 and they turned into vagina monologues. 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:21.000 I talked with over 200 women. I talked to older women, 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.000 younger women, married women, lesbians, single women; 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:29.000 I talked to corporate professionals, college professors, actors, sex workers; 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:33.000 I talked to African-American women, Asian-American women, 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:37.000 Native-American women, Caucasian women, Jewish women. 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:42.000 OK, at first women were a little shy, a little reluctant to talk. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:45.000 Once they got going, you couldn't stop them. 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:49.000 Women love to talk about their vaginas -- they do. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.000 Mainly because no one's ever asked them before. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:53.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:58.000 Let's just start with the word "vagina" -- vagina, vagina. 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:03.000 It sounds like an infection at best. Maybe a medical instrument. 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:05.000 "Hurry, nurse, bring the vagina." NOTE Paragraph 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:06.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:09.000 Vagina, vagina, vagina. It doesn't matter how many times 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.000 you say the word, it never sounds like a word you want to say. 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:17.000 It's a completely ridiculous, totally un-sexy word. 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:20.000 If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct, 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:26.000 "Darling, would you stroke my vagina," you kill the act right there. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:27.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:31.000 I'm worried what we call them and don't call them. 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:34.000 In Great Neck, New York, they call it a "pussy-cat." 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.000 A woman told me there, her mother used to tell her, 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.000 "Don't wear panties, dear, underneath your pajamas. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:40.000 You need to air out your pussy-cat." NOTE Paragraph 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:44.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:49.000 In Westchester they call it a "pooky," in New Jersey a "twat." 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:54.000 There's powder-box, derriere, a pooky, a poochy, a poopy, 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:58.000 a poopaloo, a pooninana, a padepachetchki, a pow, and a peach. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:05.000 There's toadie, dee dee, nishi, dignity, coochie snorcher, cooter, 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:14.000 labi, gladis siegelman, va, wee-wee, whore-spot, nappy dugout, 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:20.000 mungo, ghoulie, powder-box, a "mimi" in Miami, 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:26.000 a "split knish" in Philadelphia, and a "schmende" in the Bronx. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:27.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000 I am worried about vaginas. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.000 This is how the "Vagina Monologues" begins. 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:38.000 But it really didn't begin there; it began with a conversation with a woman. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000 We were having a conversation about menopause, 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.000 and we got onto the subject of her vagina -- 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:45.000 which you'll do if you're talking about menopause. 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:48.000 And she said things that really shocked me about her vagina -- 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:52.000 that it was dried-up and finished and dead -- and I was kind of shocked. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:55.000 And so I said to a friend casually, "Well, what do you think about your vagina?" 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.000 And that woman said something more amazing, 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:00.000 and then the next woman said something more amazing, 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:02.000 and before I knew it, every woman was telling me 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:05.000 I had to talk to somebody about their vagina because they had an amazing story, 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:08.000 and I was sucked down the vagina trail. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:10.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:13.000 And I really haven't gotten off it. I think if you had told me 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:16.000 when I was younger that I was going to grow up, and be in shoe stores, 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.000 and people were going to scream out, "There she is, the Vagina Lady!" 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.000 I don't know that that would have been my life ambition. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:23.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:26.000 But I want to talk a little bit about happiness and the relationship 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.000 to this whole vagina journey because 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:31.000 it has been an extraordinary journey that began eight years ago. 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:34.000 I think before I did the "Vagina Monologues" 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000 I didn't really believe in happiness. 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:40.000 I thought that only idiots were happy, to be honest. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:44.000 I remember when I started practicing Buddhism 14 years ago, 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:47.000 and I was told that the end of this practice was to be happy, 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.000 I said, "How could you be happy and live in this world of suffering 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:56.000 and live in this world of pain?" I mistook happiness for a lot of other things, 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:00.000 like numbness or decadence or selfishness. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:02.000 And what happened through the course of the "Vagina Monologues" 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000 and this journey is I think I have come to understand 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.000 a little bit more about happiness. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:10.000 There're three qualities I want to talk about. 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:15.000 One is seeing what's right in front of you, and talking about it, 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.000 and stating it. I think what I learned from talking about the vagina, 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:22.000 and speaking about the vagina, is it was the most obvious thing -- 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 it was right in the center of my body and the center of the world -- 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:28.000 and yet it was the one thing nobody talked about. 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:32.000 The second thing is that what talking about the vagina did 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.000 is it opened this door which allowed me to see 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:38.000 that there was a way to serve the world to make it better. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:42.000 And that's where the deepest happiness has actually come from. 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:46.000 And the third principle of happiness, which I've realized recently. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:50.000 Eight years ago, this momentum and this energy, this "V-wave" started -- 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.000 and I can only describe it as a "V-wave" because, to be honest, 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:57.000 I really don't understand it completely; I feel at the service of it. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.000 But this wave started, and if I question the wave, 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:03.000 or try to stop the wave or look back at the wave, 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:06.000 I often have the experience of whiplash 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.000 or the potential of my neck breaking. But if I go with the wave, 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000 and I trust the wave and I move with the wave, I go to the next place, 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:16.000 and it happens logically and organically and truthfully. 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:22.000 And I started this piece, particularly with stories and narratives, 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.000 and I was talking to one woman and that led to another woman 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:29.000 and that led to another woman, and then I wrote those stories down 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:31.000 and I put them out in front of other people. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:33.000 And every single time I did the show at the beginning, 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:36.000 women would literally line up after the show 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:39.000 because they wanted to tell me their stories. 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:41.000 And at first I thought, "Oh great, I'll hear about wonderful orgasms, 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:45.000 and great sex lives, and how women love their vaginas." 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.000 But in fact, that's not what women lined up to tell me. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:51.000 What women lined up to tell me was how they were raped, 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:54.000 and how they were battered, and how they were beaten, 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.000 and how they were gang-raped in parking lots, 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 and how they were incested by their uncles. 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:01.000 And I wanted to stop doing the "Vagina Monologues" 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:04.000 because it felt too daunting. I felt like a war photographer 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:08.000 who takes pictures of terrible events, but doesn't intervene on their behalf. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:12.000 And so in 1997, I said, "Let's get women together. 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:17.000 What could we do with this information that all these women are being violated?" 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:21.000 And it turned out, after thinking and investigating, 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:24.000 that I discovered -- and the UN has actually said this recently -- 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:27.000 that one out of every three women on this planet 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:30.000 will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:35.000 That's essentially a gender; that's essentially a resource of the planet, which is women. 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:38.000 So in 1997 we got all these incredible women together and we said, 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:43.000 "How can we use the play, this energy, to stop violence against women?" 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.000 And we put on one event in New York City, in the theater, 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000 and all these great actors came -- from Susan Sarandon, 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:51.000 to Glenn Close, to Whoopi Goldberg -- and we did one performance 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:57.000 on one evening, and that catalyzed this wave, this energy. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:01.000 And within five years, this extraordinary thing began to happen. 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:05.000 One woman took that energy and she said, "I want to bring this wave, 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:09.000 this energy, to college campuses," and so she took the play 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:12.000 and she said, "Let's use the play and have performances of the play 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.000 once a year, where we can raise money to stop violence against women 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:18.000 in local communities all around the world." 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.000 And in one year, it went to 50 colleges, and then it expanded. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:24.000 And over the course of the last six years, it's spread 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:27.000 and it's spread and it's spread and it's spread around the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:33.000 What I have learned is two things. One: that the epidemic 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:37.000 of violence towards women is shocking; it's global; 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:39.000 it is so profound and it is so devastating, 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:42.000 and it is so in every little pocket of every little crater, 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.000 of every little society, that we don't even recognize it 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:50.000 because it's become ordinary. This journey has taken me to Afghanistan, 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:55.000 where I had the extraordinary honor and privilege to go into 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:58.000 parts of Afghanistan under the Taliban -- I was dressed in a burqa -- 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:01.000 and I went in with an extraordinary group called the 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:04.000 Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:07.000 and I saw firsthand how women had been stripped 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:11.000 of every single right that was possible to strip women of -- 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:15.000 from being educated, to being employed, to being 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.000 actually allowed to eat ice cream. 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:20.000 For those of you who don't know it, it was illegal to eat ice cream under the Taliban. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:24.000 And I actually saw and met women who had been flogged 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:27.000 by being caught eating vanilla ice cream. 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:31.000 And I was taken to the secret ice cream-eating place in a little town, 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:34.000 where we went to a back room, and women were seated 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:38.000 and a curtain was pulled around us, and they were served vanilla ice cream. 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.000 And women lifted their burqas and ate this ice cream, 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:44.000 and I don't think I ever understood pleasure until that moment, 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:48.000 and how women have found a way to keep their pleasure alive. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:51.000 It has taken me, this journey, to Islamabad, where I have 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:54.000 witnessed and met women with their faces melted off. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:58.000 It has taken me to Juarez, Mexico, where I was a week ago, 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:01.000 where I have literally been there in parking lots 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.000 where bones of women have washed up and been dumped 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.000 next to Coca-Cola bottles. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000 It has taken me to universities 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:12.000 all over this country where girls are date-raped and drugged. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:16.000 I have seen terrible, terrible, terrible violence. 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:20.000 But I have also recognized, in the course of seeing that violence, 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:23.000 that being in the face of things and seeing actually 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:29.000 what's in front of us is the antidote to depression and to a feeling 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:31.000 that one is worthless and has no value. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:33.000 Because before the "Vagina Monologues," 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:36.000 I will say that 80 percent of my consciousness was closed off 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:39.000 to what was really going on in this reality. 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:44.000 And that closing-off closed off my vitality and my life energy. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:46.000 What has also happened is in the course of these travels -- 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:50.000 and it's been an extraordinary thing -- is that every single place 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:53.000 that I have gone to in the world, I have met a new species. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:57.000 And I really love hearing about all these species at the bottom of the sea. 00:10:57.000 --> 00:10:59.000 And I was thinking about how being with these 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:02.000 extraordinary people on this particular panel 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:05.000 that it's beneath, beyond, and between, 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:08.000 and the vagina kind of fits into all those categories. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:09.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:12.000 But one of the things I've seen is this species -- 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:15.000 and it is a species, and it is a new paradigm, 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:17.000 and it doesn't get reported in the press or in the media 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:21.000 because I don't think good news ever is news, 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:23.000 and I don't think people who are transforming the planet 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:26.000 are what gets the ratings on TV shows. 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:29.000 But every single country I have been to -- and in the last six years 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:34.000 I've been to about 45 countries, and many tiny little villages and cities and towns -- 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:38.000 I have seen something what I've come to call "vagina warriors." 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:42.000 A "vagina warrior" is a woman, or a vagina-friendly man, 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:46.000 who has witnessed incredible violence or suffered it, 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.000 and rather than getting an AK-47 or a weapon of mass destruction 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:55.000 or a machete, they hold the violence in their bodies; 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:00.000 they grieve it; they experience it; and then they go out and devote 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.000 their lives to making sure it doesn't happen to anybody else. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:07.000 I have met these women everywhere on the planet. 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.000 And I want to tell a few stories because I believe that 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:12.000 stories are the way that we transmit information, 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 where it goes into our bodies. And I think that one of the things 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:18.000 about being at TED that's been very interesting 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:22.000 is that I live in my body a lot, and I don't live in my head very much anymore. 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:24.000 And this is a very heady place. 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:27.000 And it's been really interesting to be in my head 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.000 for the last two days; I've been very disoriented -- 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:30.000 (Laughter) 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:34.000 because I think the world, the V-world, is very much in your body. 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:38.000 It's a body world, and the species really exists in the body, 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.000 and I think there's a real significance in us 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:43.000 attaching our bodies to our heads -- that that separation 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:49.000 has created a divide that is often separating purpose from intent. 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:55.000 And the connection between body and head often brings those things into union. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.000 I want to talk about three particular people 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:01.000 that I've met, vagina warriors, who really transformed my understanding 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:03.000 of this whole principle and species, 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:06.000 and one is a woman named Marsha Lopez. 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:09.000 Marsha Lopez was a woman I met in Guatemala. 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:12.000 She was 14 years old, and she was in a marriage 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:15.000 and her husband was beating her on a regular basis, 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.000 and she couldn't get out because she was addicted to the relationship 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:22.000 and she had no money. Her sister was younger than her 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:27.000 and she applied -- we had a "stop rape" contest a few years ago in New York -- 00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:30.000 and she applied, hoping that she would become a finalist 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.000 and she could bring her sister. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:36.000 She did become a finalist; she brought Marsha to New York. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000 And at that time we did this extraordinary V-Day 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:43.000 at Madison Square Garden where we sold out the entire testosterone-filled dome, 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.000 18,000 people standing up to say 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:49.000 "yes" to vaginas, which was really a pretty incredible transformation. 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:52.000 And she came, and she witnessed this, and she decided 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:54.000 that she would go back and leave her husband, 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000 and that she would bring V-Day to Guatemala. 00:13:56.000 --> 00:14:00.000 She was 21 years old. I went to Guatemala and she had sold out 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:03.000 the National Theater of Guatemala. 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:08.000 And I watched her walk up on stage in her red short dress, and high heels, 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.000 and she stood there and she said, "My name is Marsha. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:14.000 I was beaten by my husband for five years. 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:17.000 He almost murdered me. I left and you can too." 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:21.000 And the entire 2,000 people went absolutely crazy. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:23.000 There's a woman named Esther Chavez 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:26.000 who I met in Juarez, Mexico. And Esther Chavez 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:29.000 was a brilliant accountant in Mexico City; she was 72 years old; 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:31.000 and she was planning to retire. 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:36.000 She went to Juarez to take care of an ailing aunt, and over the course of it, 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:38.000 she began to discover what was happening to the murdered 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:41.000 and disappeared women of Juarez. 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:44.000 She gave up her life; she moved to Juarez; 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:48.000 she started to write the stories which documented the disappeared women. 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:50.000 300 women have disappeared 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:52.000 in a border town because they're brown and poor. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.000 There has been no response to the disappearance, 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:56.000 and not one person has been held accountable. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:01.000 She began to document it; she opened a center called Casa Amiga; 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:03.000 and in six years, she has literally brought this 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:05.000 to the consciousness of the world. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:08.000 We were there a week ago, when there were 7,000 people on the street, 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:12.000 and it was truly a miracle. And as we walked through the streets, 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:15.000 the people of Juarez, who normally don't even come into the streets 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:18.000 because the streets are so dangerous, literally stood there and wept 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:21.000 to see that other people from the world had showed up 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.000 for that particular community. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:28.000 There's another woman named Agnes. And Agnes, for me, 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:30.000 epitomizes what a vagina warrior is. 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:36.000 I met her three years ago in Kenya. And Agnes was mutilated as a little girl, 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:38.000 she was circumcised against her will 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:42.000 when she was 10 years old, and she really made a decision 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:46.000 that she didn't want this practice to continue anymore in her community. 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:49.000 So when she got older she created this incredible thing: 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:54.000 it's an anatomical sculpture of a woman's body; it's half a woman's body. 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:57.000 And she walked through the Rift Valley, and she had 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:00.000 vagina and vagina replacement parts where she would teach 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:04.000 girls and parents and boys and girls what a healthy vagina looks like, 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:08.000 and what a mutilated vagina looks like. And in the course of her travel 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:11.000 she walked literally for eight years through the Rift Valley, 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:15.000 through dust, through sleeping on the ground -- because the Masais are nomads, 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:19.000 and she would literally have to find them, and they would move, 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:24.000 and she would find them again. She saved 1,500 girls from being cut. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.000 And in that time she created an alternative ritual which involved 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:30.000 girls coming of age without the cut. 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:32.000 When we met her three years ago, 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:34.000 we said, "What could V-Day do for you?" 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:37.000 And she said, "Well, if you got me a Jeep, I could get around a lot faster." NOTE Paragraph 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:38.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:41.000 So we bought her a Jeep. And in the year that she had the Jeep, 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:45.000 she saved 4,500 girls from being cut. So then we said to her, 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.000 "Agnes, well, what else could we do for you?" And she said, 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:49.000 "Well, Eve, you know, if you gave me some money, 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:53.000 I could open a house and girls could run away and they could be saved." 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:56.000 And I want to tell this little story about my own beginnings 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.000 because it's very interrelated to happiness and Agnes. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:03.000 When I was a little girl -- and I grew up 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:07.000 in a wealthy community; it was an upper-middle class white community, 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:09.000 and it had all the trappings 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:14.000 and the looks of a perfectly nice, wonderful, great life. 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:17.000 And everyone was supposed to be happy in that community 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:20.000 and, in fact, my life was hell. I lived with an alcoholic father 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:23.000 who beat me and molested me, and it was all inside that. 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:28.000 And always as a child I had this fantasy that somebody would come and rescue me. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:31.000 And I actually made up a little character whose name was Mr. Alligator, 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:34.000 and I would call him up when things got really bad, 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:36.000 and I would say it was time to come and pick me up. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:40.000 And I would go and pack a little bag and I would wait for Mr. Alligator to come. 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:42.000 Now, Mr. Alligator never did come, 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:47.000 but the idea of Mr. Alligator coming actually saved my sanity 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:49.000 and made it OK for me to keep going because I believed, 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:53.000 in the distance, there would be someone coming to rescue me. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:57.000 Cut to 40-some-odd years later, we go to Kenya, 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:01.000 and we're walking, we arrive at the opening of this house -- 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:03.000 and Agnes hadn't let me come to the house for days 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:05.000 because they were preparing this whole ritual. 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:08.000 And I want to tell you a great story. When Agnes first started 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:12.000 fighting to stop female genital mutilation in her community, 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:15.000 she had become an outcast, and she was exiled and she was slandered, 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:17.000 and the whole community turned against her. 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.000 But, being a vagina warrior, she kept going, 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:23.000 and she kept committing herself to transforming consciousness. 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:28.000 And in the Masai community, goats and cows are the most valued possession. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:32.000 They're like the Mercedes-Benz of the Rift Valley. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:36.000 And she said, two days before the house opened, two different people 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:39.000 arrived to give her a goat each, and she said to me, 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:44.000 "I knew then that female genital mutilation would end one day in Africa." NOTE Paragraph 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.000 Anyway, we arrived, and when we arrived, 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:51.000 there were hundreds of girls dressed in red, homemade dresses -- 00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:54.000 which is the color of the Masai and the color of V-Day -- 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.000 and they greeted us, and they had made up these songs 00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:59.000 that they were singing about the end of suffering, 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:02.000 and the end of mutilation, and they walked us down the path. 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:04.000 And it was a gorgeous day in the African sun, 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:07.000 and the dust was flying and the girls were dancing, 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:12.000 and there was this house, and it said, "V-Day Safe House for the Girls." NOTE Paragraph 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:17.000 And it hit me in that moment that it had taken 47 years, 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:20.000 but that Mr. Alligator had finally shown up. 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:25.000 And he'd show up obviously in a form that it took me a long time to understand, 00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:28.000 which is that when we give 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:34.000 in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us. 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:37.000 And I feel, in the last eight years, 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:40.000 that this journey, this miraculous vagina journey, 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:47.000 has taught me this really simple thing, which is that happiness exists in action; 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:51.000 it exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is; 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:55.000 and it exists in giving away what you want the most. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.000 And I feel that knowledge and that journey 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:01.000 has been an extraordinary privilege, 00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:05.000 and I feel really blessed to have been here today to communicate that to you. 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:07.000 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:10.000 (Applause)