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I bet you're worried.

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(Laughter)

3
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I was worried.

4
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That's why I began this piece.

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I was worried about vaginas.

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I was worried what we think about vaginas

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and even more worried
that we don't think about them.

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I was worried about my own vagina.

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It needed a context, a culture,
a community of other vaginas.

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There is so much darkness
and secrecy surrounding them.

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Like the Bermuda Triangle,
nobody ever reports back from there.

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(Laughter)

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In the first place, it's not so easy
to even find your vagina.

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Women go days, weeks, months,
without looking at it.

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I interviewed a high-powered
businesswoman;

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she told me she didn't have time.

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"Looking at your vagina,"
she said, "is a full day's work."

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(Laughter)

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"You've got to get down there
on your back, in front of a mirror,

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full-length preferred.

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You've got to get in the perfect position
with the perfect light,

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which then becomes shadowed
by the angle you're at.

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You're twisting your head up,
arching your back, it's exhausting."

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She was busy; she didn't have time.

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So I decided to talk to women
about their vaginas.

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They began as casual vagina interviews,

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and they turned into vagina monologues.

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I talked with over 200 women.

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I talked to older women, younger women,

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married women, lesbians, single women.

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I talked to corporate professionals,
college professors, actors, sex workers.

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I talked to African-American women,
Asian-American women,

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Native-American women,
Caucasian women, Jewish women.

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OK, at first women were a little shy,
a little reluctant to talk.

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Once they got going,
you couldn't stop them.

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Women love to talk
about their vaginas, they do.

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Mainly because no one's ever
asked them before.

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(Laughter)

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Let's just start with the word
"vagina" -- vagina, vagina.

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It sounds like an infection, at best.

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Maybe a medical instrument.

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"Hurry, nurse, bring the vagina!"

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(Laughter)

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Vagina, vagina, vagina.

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It doesn't matter how many times
you say the word,

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it never sounds like a word
you want to say.

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It's a completely ridiculous,
totally un-sexy word.

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If you use it during sex,
trying to be politically correct,

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"Darling, would you stroke my vagina,"

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you kill the act right there.

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(Laughter)

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I'm worried what we call them
and don't call them.

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In Great Neck, New York,
they call it a Pussycat.

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A woman told me there
her mother used to tell her,

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"Don't wear panties, dear,
underneath your pajamas.

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You need to air out your Pussycat."

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(Laughter)

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In Westchester, they call it a Pooki,

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in New Jersey, a twat.

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There's Powderbox, derriere,
a Pooky, a Poochi, a Poopi,

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a Poopelu, a Pooninana,
a Padepachetchki, a Pal, and a Piche.

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(Laughter)

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There's Toadie, Dee Dee, Nishi,
Dignity, Coochi Snorcher,

64
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Cooter, Labbe, Gladys Seagelman, VA,

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Wee wee, Horsespot, Nappy Dugout,

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Mongo, Ghoulie, Powderbox,
a Mimi in Miami,

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a Split Knish in Philadelphia ...

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(Laughter)

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and a Schmende in the Bronx.

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(Laughter)

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I am worried about vaginas.

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This is how the "Vagina
Monologues" begins.

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But it really didn't begin there.

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It began with a conversation with a woman.

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We were having a conversation
about menopause,

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and we got onto the subject of her vagina,

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which you'll do if you're
talking about menopause.

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And she said things that really
shocked me about her vagina --

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that it was dried-up
and finished and dead --

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and I was kind of shocked.

81
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So I said to a friend casually,

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"Well, what do you think
about your vagina?"

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And that woman said
something more amazing,

84
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and then the next woman said
something more amazing,

85
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and before I knew it,
every woman was telling me

86
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I had to talk to somebody
about their vagina

87
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because they had an amazing story,

88
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and I was sucked down the vagina trail.

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(Laughter)

90
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And I really haven't gotten off of it.

91
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I think if you had told me
when I was younger

92
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that I was going to grow up,
and be in shoe stores,

93
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and people would scream out,
"There she is, the Vagina Lady!"

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I don't know that that would have
been my life ambition.

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(Laughter)

96
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But I want to talk a little bit
about happiness,

97
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and the relationship
to this whole vagina journey,

98
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because it has been
an extraordinary journey

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that began eight years ago.

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I think before I did
the "Vagina Monologues,"

101
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I didn't really believe in happiness.

102
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I thought that only idiots
were happy, to be honest.

103
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I remember when I started
practicing Buddhism 14 years ago,

104
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and I was told that the end
of this practice was to be happy,

105
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I said, "How could you be happy
and live in this world of suffering

106
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and live in this world of pain?"

107
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I mistook happiness
for a lot of other things,

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like numbness or decadence or selfishness.

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And what happened through the course
of the "Vagina Monologues"

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and this journey is,
I think I have come to understand

111
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a little bit more about happiness.

112
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There are three qualities
I want to talk about.

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One is seeing what's
right in front of you,

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and talking about it, and stating it.

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I think what I learned
from talking about the vagina

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and speaking about the vagina,
is it was the most obvious thing --

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it was right in the center of my body
and the center of the world --

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and yet it was the one thing
nobody talked about.

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The second thing is that what talking
about the vagina did

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is it opened this door
which allowed me to see

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that there was a way to serve
the world to make it better.

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And that's where the deepest happiness
has actually come from.

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And the third principle of happiness,
which I've realized recently:

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Eight years ago, this momentum
and this energy, this "V-wave" started --

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and I can only describe it
as a "V-wave" because, to be honest,

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I really don't understand it completely;
I feel at the service of it.

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But this wave started,
and if I question the wave,

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or try to stop the wave
or look back at the wave,

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I often have the experience of whiplash

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or the potential of my neck breaking.

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But if I go with the wave,

132
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and I trust the wave
and I move with the wave,

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I go to the next place, and it happens
logically and organically and truthfully.

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And I started this piece, particularly
with stories and narratives,

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and I was talking to one woman
and that led to another woman

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and that led to another woman.

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And then I wrote those stories down,

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and I put them out
in front of other people.

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And every single time
I did the show at the beginning,

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women would literally
line up after the show,

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because they wanted
to tell me their stories.

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And at first I thought, "Oh great,
I'll hear about wonderful orgasms,

143
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and great sex lives, and how women
love their vaginas."

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But in fact, that's not
what women lined up to tell me.

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What women lined up to tell me
was how they were raped,

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and how they were battered,
and how they were beaten,

147
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and how they were gang-raped
in parking lots,

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and how they were incested
by their uncles.

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And I wanted to stop doing
the "Vagina Monologues,"

150
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because it felt too daunting.

151
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I felt like a war photographer
who takes pictures of terrible events,

152
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but doesn't intervene on their behalf.

153
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And so in 1997, I said,
"Let's get women together.

154
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What could we do with this information

155
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that all these women are being violated?"

156
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And it turned out, after thinking
and investigating,

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that I discovered -- and the UN
has actually said this recently --

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that one out of every three
women on this planet

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will be beaten or raped in her lifetime.

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That's essentially a gender;

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that's essentially the resource
of the planet, which is women.

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So in 1997 we got all these incredible
women together and we said,

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"How can we use the play, this energy,
to stop violence against women?"

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And we put on one event
in New York City, in the theater,

165
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and all these great actors
came -- from Susan Sarandon,

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to Glenn Close, to Whoopi Goldberg --

167
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and we did one performance on one evening,

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and that catalyzed this wave, this energy.

169
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And within five years,

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this extraordinary thing began to happen.

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One woman took that energy and she said,
"I want to bring this wave,

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this energy, to college campuses,"

173
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and so she took the play and she said,

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"Let's use the play and have
performances once a year,

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where we can raise money
to stop violence against women

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in local communities
all around the world."

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And in one year, it went to 50 colleges,
and then it expanded.

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And over the course of the last six years,

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it's spread and it's spread
and it's spread around the world.

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What I have learned is two things:

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one, that the epidemic of violence
towards women is shocking; it's global;

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it is so profound
and it is so devastating,

183
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and it is so in every little pocket
of every little crater,

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of every little society
that we don't even recognize it,

185
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because it's become ordinary.

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This journey has taken me to Afghanistan,

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where I had the extraordinary
honor and privilege

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to go into parts of Afghanistan
under the Taliban.

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I was dressed in a burqa and I went in
with an extraordinary group,

190
00:09:00,549 --> 00:09:03,918
called the Revolutionary Association
of the Women of Afghanistan.

191
00:09:03,942 --> 00:09:06,976
And I saw firsthand
how women had been stripped

192
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of every single right that was possible
to strip women of --

193
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from being educated, to being employed,

194
00:09:13,720 --> 00:09:16,346
to being actually allowed
to eat ice cream.

195
00:09:16,723 --> 00:09:18,264
For those of you who don't know,

196
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it was illegal to eat ice cream
under the Taliban.

197
00:09:20,660 --> 00:09:24,436
And I actually saw and met
women who had been flogged

198
00:09:24,460 --> 00:09:26,771
for being caught eating vanilla ice cream.

199
00:09:26,795 --> 00:09:31,197
I was taken to the secret ice cream-eating
place in a little town,

200
00:09:31,221 --> 00:09:34,064
where we went to a back room,
and women were seated

201
00:09:34,088 --> 00:09:37,820
and a curtain was pulled around us,
and they were served vanilla ice cream.

202
00:09:37,844 --> 00:09:41,260
And women lifted their burqas
and ate this ice cream.

203
00:09:41,284 --> 00:09:44,404
And I don't think I ever understood
pleasure until that moment,

204
00:09:44,428 --> 00:09:47,976
and how women have found a way
to keep their pleasure alive.

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It has taken me, this journey,
to Islamabad,

206
00:09:50,572 --> 00:09:54,209
where I have witnessed and met women
with their faces melted off.

207
00:09:54,233 --> 00:09:58,085
It has taken me to Juarez, Mexico,
where I was a week ago,

208
00:09:58,109 --> 00:10:00,730
where I have literally been
there in parking lots,

209
00:10:00,754 --> 00:10:02,603
where bones of women have washed up

210
00:10:02,627 --> 00:10:06,196
and been dumped next to Coca-Cola bottles.

211
00:10:06,672 --> 00:10:09,675
It has taken me to universities
all over this country,

212
00:10:09,699 --> 00:10:12,191
where girls are date-raped and drugged.

213
00:10:12,215 --> 00:10:15,976
I have seen terrible, terrible,
terrible violence.

214
00:10:16,376 --> 00:10:20,279
But I have also recognized,
in the course of seeing that violence,

215
00:10:20,303 --> 00:10:24,921
that being in the face of things
and seeing actually what's in front of us

216
00:10:24,945 --> 00:10:27,781
is the antidote to depression,

217
00:10:27,805 --> 00:10:30,976
and to a feeling that one
is worthless and has no value.

218
00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:32,976
Because before the "Vagina Monologues,"

219
00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:35,976
I will say that 80 percent
of my consciousness was closed off

220
00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:38,834
to what was really going on
in this reality,

221
00:10:38,858 --> 00:10:43,180
and that closing-off closed off
my vitality and my life energy.

222
00:10:43,707 --> 00:10:46,517
What has also happened
is in the course of these travels --

223
00:10:46,541 --> 00:10:49,073
and it's been an extraordinary thing --

224
00:10:49,097 --> 00:10:51,987
is that every single place
that I have gone to in the world,

225
00:10:52,011 --> 00:10:53,423
I have met a new species.

226
00:10:53,447 --> 00:10:57,161
And I really love hearing about all
these species at the bottom of the sea.

227
00:10:57,185 --> 00:11:00,544
And I was thinking about how being
with these extraordinary people

228
00:11:00,568 --> 00:11:02,202
on this particular panel,

229
00:11:02,226 --> 00:11:04,976
that it's beneath, beyond and between,

230
00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:07,976
and the vagina kind of fits
into all those categories.

231
00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:09,462
(Laughter)

232
00:11:09,486 --> 00:11:11,976
But one of the things
I've seen is this species --

233
00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:14,975
and it is a species,
and it is a new paradigm,

234
00:11:14,999 --> 00:11:17,633
and it doesn't get reported
in the press or in the media

235
00:11:17,657 --> 00:11:20,695
because I don't think
good news ever is news,

236
00:11:20,719 --> 00:11:23,362
and I don't think people
who are transforming the planet

237
00:11:23,386 --> 00:11:26,267
are what gets the ratings on TV shows.

238
00:11:26,291 --> 00:11:28,315
But every single country I have been to --

239
00:11:28,339 --> 00:11:31,244
and in the last six years,
I've been to about 45 countries,

240
00:11:31,268 --> 00:11:34,322
and many tiny little villages
and cities and towns --

241
00:11:34,346 --> 00:11:38,094
I have seen something what I've come
to call "vagina warriors."

242
00:11:38,118 --> 00:11:42,293
A "vagina warrior" is a woman,
or a vagina-friendly man,

243
00:11:42,317 --> 00:11:45,911
who has witnessed incredible
violence or suffered it,

244
00:11:45,935 --> 00:11:50,306
and rather than getting an AK-47
or a weapon of mass destruction

245
00:11:50,330 --> 00:11:52,770
or a machete,

246
00:11:52,794 --> 00:11:55,531
they hold the violence in their bodies;

247
00:11:55,555 --> 00:11:59,659
they grieve it; they experience it;
and then they go out

248
00:11:59,683 --> 00:12:03,916
and devote their lives to making sure
it doesn't happen to anybody else.

249
00:12:03,940 --> 00:12:06,660
I have met these women
everywhere on the planet,

250
00:12:06,684 --> 00:12:08,446
and I want to tell a few stories,

251
00:12:08,470 --> 00:12:11,976
because I believe that stories are the way
that we transmit information,

252
00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:14,193
where it goes into our bodies.

253
00:12:14,217 --> 00:12:18,184
And I think one of the things about being
at TED that's been very interesting

254
00:12:18,208 --> 00:12:20,118
is that I live in my body a lot,

255
00:12:20,142 --> 00:12:22,384
and I don't live in my head
very much anymore.

256
00:12:22,408 --> 00:12:24,217
And this is a very heady place.

257
00:12:24,241 --> 00:12:26,687
And it's been really interesting
to be in my head

258
00:12:26,711 --> 00:12:29,429
for the last two days;
I've been very disoriented --

259
00:12:29,453 --> 00:12:30,454
(Laughter)

260
00:12:30,478 --> 00:12:33,976
because I think the world, the V-world,
is very much in your body.

261
00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:37,828
It's a body world, and the species
really exists in the body.

262
00:12:37,852 --> 00:12:42,161
And I think there's a real significance
in us attaching our bodies to our heads,

263
00:12:42,185 --> 00:12:45,291
that that separation has created a divide

264
00:12:45,315 --> 00:12:48,821
that is often separating
purpose from intent.

265
00:12:48,845 --> 00:12:51,991
And the connection between body and head

266
00:12:52,015 --> 00:12:54,259
often brings those things into union.

267
00:12:54,735 --> 00:12:57,782
I want to talk about three
particular people that I've met,

268
00:12:57,806 --> 00:13:01,355
vagina warriors, who really
transformed my understanding

269
00:13:01,379 --> 00:13:03,339
of this whole principle and species,

270
00:13:03,363 --> 00:13:05,703
and one is a woman named Marsha Lopez.

271
00:13:06,251 --> 00:13:09,312
Marsha Lopez was a woman
I met in Guatemala.

272
00:13:09,336 --> 00:13:12,364
She was 14 years old,
and she was in a marriage

273
00:13:12,388 --> 00:13:15,388
and her husband was beating her
on a regular basis.

274
00:13:15,412 --> 00:13:16,881
And she couldn't get out,

275
00:13:16,905 --> 00:13:19,023
because she was addicted
to the relationship,

276
00:13:19,047 --> 00:13:20,325
and she had no money.

277
00:13:20,349 --> 00:13:22,818
Her sister was younger than her,
and she applied --

278
00:13:22,842 --> 00:13:26,976
we had a "Stop Rape" contest
a few years ago in New York --

279
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:29,976
and she applied, hoping
that she would become a finalist

280
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:31,842
and she could bring her sister.

281
00:13:31,866 --> 00:13:35,976
She did become a finalist;
she brought Marsha to New York.

282
00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:37,245
And at that time,

283
00:13:37,269 --> 00:13:39,960
we did this extraordinary V-Day
at Madison Square Garden,

284
00:13:39,984 --> 00:13:43,045
where we sold out the entire
testosterone-filled dome --

285
00:13:43,069 --> 00:13:46,656
18,000 people standing up
to say "Yes" to vaginas,

286
00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:49,414
which was really a pretty
incredible transformation.

287
00:13:49,438 --> 00:13:51,257
And she came, and she witnessed this,

288
00:13:51,281 --> 00:13:54,367
and she decided that she would go back
and leave her husband,

289
00:13:54,391 --> 00:13:56,454
and that she would bring
V-Day to Guatemala.

290
00:13:56,478 --> 00:13:58,051
She was 21 years old.

291
00:13:58,075 --> 00:14:03,269
I went to Guatemala and she had sold out
the National Theater of Guatemala.

292
00:14:03,293 --> 00:14:07,727
And I watched her walk up on stage
in her red short dress and high heels,

293
00:14:07,751 --> 00:14:11,232
and she stood there and said,
"My name is Marsha.

294
00:14:11,256 --> 00:14:15,017
I was beaten by my husband for five years.
He almost murdered me.

295
00:14:15,041 --> 00:14:17,198
I left and you can, too."

296
00:14:17,556 --> 00:14:20,802
And the entire 2,000 people
went absolutely crazy.

297
00:14:21,325 --> 00:14:24,817
There's a woman named Esther Chávez
who I met in Juarez, Mexico.

298
00:14:24,841 --> 00:14:28,076
And Esther Chávez was
a brilliant accountant in Mexico City.

299
00:14:28,100 --> 00:14:31,155
She was 72 years old
and she was planning to retire.

300
00:14:31,527 --> 00:14:35,101
She went to Juarez
to take care of an ailing aunt,

301
00:14:35,125 --> 00:14:38,197
and in the course of it, she began
to discover what was happening

302
00:14:38,221 --> 00:14:41,590
to the murdered and disappeared
women of Juarez.

303
00:14:41,614 --> 00:14:44,336
She gave up her life; she moved to Juarez.

304
00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:48,453
She started to write the stories
which documented the disappeared women.

305
00:14:48,477 --> 00:14:52,092
300 women have disappeared in a border
town because they're brown and poor.

306
00:14:52,116 --> 00:14:54,378
There has been no response
to the disappearance,

307
00:14:54,402 --> 00:14:56,639
and not one person
has been held accountable.

308
00:14:56,663 --> 00:14:58,177
She began to document it.

309
00:14:58,201 --> 00:15:01,780
She opened a center called
Casa Amiga, and in six years,

310
00:15:01,804 --> 00:15:05,164
she has literally brought this
to the consciousness of the world.

311
00:15:05,188 --> 00:15:06,577
We were there a week ago,

312
00:15:06,601 --> 00:15:10,287
when there were 7,000 people
in the street, and it was truly a miracle.

313
00:15:10,311 --> 00:15:12,151
And as we walked through the streets,

314
00:15:12,175 --> 00:15:15,386
the people of Juarez, who normally
don't even come into the streets,

315
00:15:15,410 --> 00:15:17,188
because the streets are so dangerous,

316
00:15:17,212 --> 00:15:18,824
literally stood there and wept,

317
00:15:18,848 --> 00:15:21,389
to see that other people
from the world had showed up

318
00:15:21,413 --> 00:15:23,099
for that particular community.

319
00:15:23,810 --> 00:15:25,533
There's another woman, named Agnes.

320
00:15:25,557 --> 00:15:30,218
And Agnes, for me, epitomizes
what a vagina warrior is.

321
00:15:30,242 --> 00:15:32,992
I met her three years ago in Kenya.

322
00:15:33,016 --> 00:15:35,976
And Agnes was mutilated as a little girl;

323
00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:40,609
she was circumcised against her will
when she was 10 years old,

324
00:15:40,633 --> 00:15:42,133
and she really made a decision

325
00:15:42,157 --> 00:15:45,976
that she didn't want this practice
to continue anymore in her community.

326
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,111
So when she got older,
she created this incredible thing:

327
00:15:49,135 --> 00:15:54,428
it's an anatomical sculpture
of a woman's body, half a woman's body.

328
00:15:54,452 --> 00:15:56,580
And she walked through the Rift Valley,

329
00:15:56,604 --> 00:15:59,976
and she had vagina
and vagina replacement parts,

330
00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:02,829
where she would teach girls
and parents and boys and girls

331
00:16:02,853 --> 00:16:06,309
what a healthy vagina looks like,
and what a mutilated vagina looks like.

332
00:16:06,333 --> 00:16:07,976
And in the course of her travel --

333
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:11,039
she walked literally for eight years
through the Rift Valley,

334
00:16:11,063 --> 00:16:13,324
through dust, through sleeping
on the ground,

335
00:16:13,348 --> 00:16:15,523
because the Maasai are nomads,

336
00:16:15,547 --> 00:16:18,976
and she would have to find them,
and they would move,

337
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:20,638
and she would find them again --

338
00:16:20,662 --> 00:16:23,557
she saved 1,500 girls from being cut.

339
00:16:23,946 --> 00:16:26,527
And in that time, she created
an alternative ritual,

340
00:16:26,551 --> 00:16:29,876
which involved girls
coming of age without the cut.

341
00:16:29,900 --> 00:16:31,976
When we met her three years ago,

342
00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:33,913
we said, "What could V-Day do for you?"

343
00:16:33,937 --> 00:16:37,553
And she said, "Well, if you got me a jeep,
I could get around a lot faster."

344
00:16:37,577 --> 00:16:38,578
(Laughter)

345
00:16:38,602 --> 00:16:39,917
So we bought her a jeep.

346
00:16:39,941 --> 00:16:44,223
And in the year that she had the jeep,
she saved 4,500 girls from being cut.

347
00:16:44,550 --> 00:16:47,012
So we said to her,
"What else could we do for you?"

348
00:16:47,036 --> 00:16:49,298
She said, "Well, Eve,
if you gave me some money,

349
00:16:49,322 --> 00:16:51,472
I could open a house
and girls could run away,

350
00:16:51,496 --> 00:16:52,890
and they could be saved."

351
00:16:53,224 --> 00:16:56,105
And I want to tell this little story
about my own beginnings,

352
00:16:56,129 --> 00:17:00,423
because it's very interrelated
to happiness and Agnes.

353
00:17:00,447 --> 00:17:04,131
When I was a little girl --
I grew up in a wealthy community;

354
00:17:04,155 --> 00:17:07,376
it was an upper-middle class
white community,

355
00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:10,259
and it had all the trappings and the looks

356
00:17:10,283 --> 00:17:13,918
of a perfectly nice,
wonderful, great life.

357
00:17:14,259 --> 00:17:16,886
And everyone was supposed
to be happy in that community,

358
00:17:16,910 --> 00:17:18,491
and, in fact, my life was hell.

359
00:17:18,515 --> 00:17:20,048
I lived with an alcoholic father

360
00:17:20,072 --> 00:17:22,976
who beat me and molested me,
and it was all inside that.

361
00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:27,976
And always as a child I had this fantasy
that somebody would come and rescue me.

362
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:31,620
And I actually made up a little character
whose name was Mr. Alligator.

363
00:17:31,644 --> 00:17:33,976
I would call him up
when things got really bad,

364
00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:36,163
and say it was time
to come and pick me up.

365
00:17:36,187 --> 00:17:39,976
And I would pack a little bag
and wait for Mr. Alligator to come.

366
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:42,182
Now, Mr. Alligator never did come,

367
00:17:42,206 --> 00:17:46,680
but the idea of Mr. Alligator coming
actually saved my sanity

368
00:17:46,704 --> 00:17:48,466
and made it OK for me to keep going,

369
00:17:48,490 --> 00:17:50,221
because I believed, in the distance,

370
00:17:50,245 --> 00:17:52,976
there would be someone
coming to rescue me.

371
00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:55,469
Cut to 40-some odd years later,

372
00:17:55,493 --> 00:17:58,723
we go to Kenya, and we're walking,

373
00:17:58,747 --> 00:18:01,125
we arrive at the opening of this house.

374
00:18:01,490 --> 00:18:03,907
And Agnes hadn't let me come
to the house for days,

375
00:18:03,931 --> 00:18:06,084
because they were preparing
this whole ritual.

376
00:18:06,108 --> 00:18:07,698
I want to tell you a great story.

377
00:18:07,722 --> 00:18:09,344
When Agnes first started fighting

378
00:18:09,368 --> 00:18:11,869
to stop female genital mutilation
in her community,

379
00:18:11,893 --> 00:18:15,432
she had become an outcast,
and she was exiled and slandered,

380
00:18:15,456 --> 00:18:17,487
and the whole community
turned against her.

381
00:18:17,511 --> 00:18:19,869
But being a vagina warrior,
she kept going,

382
00:18:19,893 --> 00:18:23,242
and she kept committing herself
to transforming consciousness.

383
00:18:23,266 --> 00:18:24,874
And in the Maasai community,

384
00:18:24,898 --> 00:18:27,699
goats and cows are the most
valued possession.

385
00:18:27,723 --> 00:18:31,976
They're like the Mercedes-Benz
of the Rift Valley.

386
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,886
And she said two days
before the house opened,

387
00:18:34,910 --> 00:18:37,773
two different people arrived
to give her a goat each,

388
00:18:37,797 --> 00:18:38,948
and she said to me,

389
00:18:38,972 --> 00:18:43,378
"I knew then that female genital
mutilation would end one day in Africa."

390
00:18:43,786 --> 00:18:47,484
Anyway, we arrived, and when we arrived,

391
00:18:47,508 --> 00:18:51,238
there were hundreds of girls
dressed in red homemade dresses --

392
00:18:51,262 --> 00:18:54,172
which is the color of the Maasai
and the color of V-Day --

393
00:18:54,196 --> 00:18:55,538
and they greeted us.

394
00:18:55,562 --> 00:18:58,014
They had made up these songs
that they were singing,

395
00:18:58,038 --> 00:19:00,591
about the end of suffering
and the end of mutilation,

396
00:19:00,615 --> 00:19:02,310
and they walked us down the path.

397
00:19:02,334 --> 00:19:04,699
It was a gorgeous day in the African sun,

398
00:19:04,723 --> 00:19:07,176
and the dust was flying
and the girls were dancing,

399
00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:11,726
and there was this house, and it said,
"V-Day Safe House for the Girls."

400
00:19:11,750 --> 00:19:17,052
And it hit me in that moment
that it had taken 47 years,

401
00:19:17,076 --> 00:19:19,679
but that Mr. Alligator
had finally shown up.

402
00:19:20,219 --> 00:19:22,101
And he had shown up, obviously,

403
00:19:22,125 --> 00:19:25,521
in a form that it took me
a long time to understand,

404
00:19:25,545 --> 00:19:30,651
which is that when we give in the world
what we want the most,

405
00:19:30,675 --> 00:19:33,976
we heal the broken part inside each of us.

406
00:19:34,483 --> 00:19:36,857
And I feel, in the last eight years,

407
00:19:36,881 --> 00:19:39,976
that this journey --
this miraculous vagina journey --

408
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,802
has taught me this really simple thing,

409
00:19:42,826 --> 00:19:47,249
which is that happiness exists in action;

410
00:19:47,273 --> 00:19:51,408
it exists in telling the truth
and saying what your truth is;

411
00:19:51,432 --> 00:19:54,976
and it exists in giving away
what you want the most.

412
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:58,976
And I feel that knowledge and that journey

413
00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:01,453
has been an extraordinary privilege,

414
00:20:01,477 --> 00:20:03,071
and I feel really blessed

415
00:20:03,095 --> 00:20:05,515
to have been here today
to communicate that to you.

416
00:20:05,539 --> 00:20:06,704
Thank you very much.

417
00:20:06,728 --> 00:20:08,904
(Applause)