I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how individuals can become accustomed to negative environments and behaviors, often accepting them as normal.
Eve Ensler’s quote suggests that people can find a disturbing sense of security within oppressive situations, viewing them as a familiar space where they define their identity and operate. This phenomenon can result in individuals becoming desensitized to violence, cruelty, and oppression, ultimately leading to a cycle in which such conditions become ingrained and accepted as the norm.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the impacts of domestic violence during a seminar on relationships.
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.
Before cancer, I was obviously disconnected. I had a tumor the size of a mango inside me and didn't do anything about it. It wasn't like I didn't know something was wrong.
It's a weird thing about the truth: It protects you. What really makes you vulnerable is when you're lying because you're going to get caught. When you tell the truth, there's a strange relief that comes.
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.
Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, "You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission."
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.
Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.
It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.
I was supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only your Phoenix lot got in the way...” “Yes, they do that,” said Dumbledore.
Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exercised, a space in which to stretch out its arms ... As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick, as long as I know there is a woman who loves reading for reading's sake, I can convince myself that the world continues ... And every evening I, too, abandon myself to reading, like that distant unknown woman.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
We are a dreadful species indeed, and deserve whatever it is our techno-baubles do to us.
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