We are constantly sacrificing our daughters: Playwright Eve Ensler

American playwright-activist Eve Ensler, best known for her seminal feminist play The Vagina Monologues, says the circle of violence against women will stay unbroken in a patriarchal society unless men step up against it. In her latest book The Apology, Ensler examines the sexual abuse she faced at the hands of her father when she was five and the apology that he should have given. Ensler said the abuse she faced as a child could not be prevented because her mother was financially dependent on her father.

"My father had all the power, my mother came from a poor family. By the time my father started manifesting this very frightening behaviour, she had three kids and what was she going to do with three children? "She was economically dependent on my father, she did not have a career or a job," she said while interacting with journalists at the book launch, organised by Royal Opera House, Avid Learning along with Akshara Centre, on Wednesday.

Ensler said years later she confronted her mother, who called up crying a few months later and said, "I realised I had sacrificed you."

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"I was horrified. My mother said, 'I knew the violence, I don't know that I consciously knew if he was sexually abusing you but there was a part of me that actually gave you over to him in a way to keep the economic position'. This was horrifying to me," the writer said in a conversation with journalist Faye D'Souza.

Recalling a similar incident while she was in Afghanistan with a family, Ensler said, "They had sold their daughter so that the family could keep living. This is something that happens across the world. We are constantly sacrificing our daughters and giving them up to make some kind of economic security. This has to be deeply examined and looked at." The playwright said with time, as her mother got older, they began to "unpack all this".

"... She looked at her own life and she could see that she had been sexually abused and she had not examined that. So there is a way we pass this on until it is broken," Ensler added.She said she wondered why "good and decent men" are not standing up when they see other men misbehaving with women.  "To be an apologist is to be a trader to men. Once one man says sorry and knows what he was doing he is wrong the whole story of patriarchy begins to crumble.  "The non-apology is holding patriarchy. What we have to do is invite men to be proud gender traders and to come out, be the ones who are going to lead the way, just like the early feminists did..."

Asked about the resistance faced by women in exposing sexual harassers during the #MeToo movement, Ensler said a lot of it had to do with culture. Her book, she said, was kind of a blueprint for men to support women. 

"How are men joining us in the breaking of the silence, in telling the truth? That's why I wrote this book. It is a tool, it is an offering. We have to have many offerings so that men can find a way to be with us in this struggle," she added. Ensler said what angered her the most about being an abuse survivor is that it sort of becomes an identity, a tag that she did not want for the rest of her life. And that brought her to "The Apology". 

"When I was five years old my father began to sexually abuse me until I was 10 years old. When I turned 10, I began to resist and I became violent and then he turned very violent towards me for many years, almost murdering me twice. "Growing up, I had this fantasy that one day my father will wake up and come to his senses and render an apology to me. But that never happened. Writing this book helped me narrate my story." Ensler said she has spent most of her time working to end the violence against women.

"Because one of the ways we can save ourselves is by reaching out to other people, who are in a worse state and are trying to make their life better." 

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