I think violence against women in America has become ordinary - it's been made absolutely acceptable.
Interpretation
The normalization of violence against women in America diminishes its perceived severity and urgency for action.
Eve Ensler's quote highlights a troubling reality where violence against women has been desensitized in American society. This 'ordinary' perception allows individuals and institutions to overlook the issue, thus making it seem acceptable, and underscores the urgent need for change to combat this violence and reshape societal attitudes.
In practice
During a panel discussing women's rights, this quote can be used to emphasize the urgency of addressing domestic violence.
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.
To resolve the climate crisis, good will, statements of intent are not enough. We are at breaking point.
For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change.
In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: ‘Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life’.
But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.
In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.
Spring, which germinated in the earth, moved also with a strange restlessness, in the hearts of... women. As the weeks passed, inextinguishable hope, which mounts with the rising sap, looked from their faces.
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