Vagina Monologues and My Moral Outrage

Earlier this month I took part in the Seoul, Korea 2007 production of the Vagina Monologues. We didn't spend a lot of time rehearsing, both foreigners and Koreans participated, and I think things turned out great. The show was a lot of fun, it raised money for a great cause, and it got some important messages to men and women (both foregn and Korean) in Korea. The more involved part that I did was an introduction to the monologue dedicated to the women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanses Government between 1932 and 1945. I was moved to tears the first few times I read it, and barely managed to say my part without tears during the shows. It talked about the fact that the Japanese Government forced somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 women from different countries into sexual slavery, through coersion, deception, and outright abduction. These women were taken from their homes, their families, and they were destroyed. The Japanese Government actually DENIES any part in what happened, and will not acknowledge it as an assault they committed. Last year, they went so far as to erase the written history and documentation from school texts and history books, meaning that their future generations of youths will not even know what happened. The US Congress has introduced a resolution demanding that the Japanese Government acknowledge what happened, apologize to the surviving women (those that are still alive are between 70 and 94 now I think?), and put the damn information/evidence/history back into the school and history books. Now, yesterday, I read that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has flatly said that regardless of what any country does or says (including the US), it will not be apologizing for anything that happened, with an "I didn't do it!" 6-year old reaction in the media.


I know the world isn't a great place. I also know that the world isn't as bad as it could be. I know that sometime soon, things are going to change, for the better or for the worse still yet to be determined... this needs to change, one person at a time. People often think 'that's too bad, but it had nothing to do with me, so I don't really care'. Problem with that way of thinking: everything is part of everything else - all life in completly interconnected with all other life... "We cannot assume responsibilty for ourselves if we cannot see reality as it truly is." (Song of the Deer, 1999). In my absorption of it, ignoring or denying things doesn't make them go away, doesn't make them smaller in your personal life, and I'm guessing it works the same on a universal scale. I just read something this morning that says "We do not come to understand ourselves, others, or the dymanics of Nature by separating, isolating, or dissecting. Rather, we must look at how we affect and are affected by everything in the Universe in a continuous spiral of existence."

I took this excerpt from the V-Day Program after the show... If the world were summarized as a global village of 1000 people...

Statistics about Violence

If the world was a global village of 1000 people:

• Half the population, 500, would be women. There would have been 510 women, but 10 were either never born through gender selective abortion, or died in infancy from neglect.
• In a number of the village’s various communities, girls are considered to be of lesser value than boys. Traditions and masculine inheritance rights reinforce this discrimination against women.
• The women of the village are increasingly at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Three women in the village already have the disease, education about it is patchy and the use of contraception to prevent its spread is limited.
• 167 women in the village have been beaten or coerced into sex and every woman has a one in three chance of being abused in this way. Women of the village risk being killed by their family members, in fact 70% of all murdered women would have been killed by their male partners.
• Only 60 women in the village have ever disclosed the violence they were subjected to and a further 70 of them have only spoken out when interviewed for a survey.
• 100 of the women have been the victims of rape or attempted rape and every woman faces a high risk of this violation, especially if the village is plunged into war. Across the village, violence against women goes unreported, under-investigated and unchecked. _____________________________________________________

This has got to change. Things need to be different in the world. We need to start treating one another with dignity and respect, regardless of whether they are friends or strangers. We have to stop making stupid jokes with friends about 100-year old women being beaten, or other things that are just really not laughable. One day, one person, one thought and one action at a time, things need to change... So for my part, being part of the Vagina Monologues was important to me: educating people about awful things that have happened in the world that have seemingly gone unnoticed; talking to people about changes that need to be made in the future to make things go down a different road, a higher road.

I'm also going to get off this site and write a letter (a letter, not an email), to the office of the Japanese Prime Minister telling him that I think what he is doing is wrong, and that I will not forget, and when I have children, they will know what happened, and so on and so forth. It's nothing huge, but this is how the world gets changed, one person, one attitude, one small thing at a time... I will be aware of what I do, and how I live my life. I will try to remember that things I do and say are all part of something bigger, a bigger world system, a universal system... I will pay attention to what goes on in the world, even if the leaders would like to sweep their national and international woes under the proverbial carpet. I wait for the day when we see more modelling of honor and truth from our politicians and world leaders... and I wait...