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."
Interpretation
Women often feel paralyzed by the need for external validation.
This quote by Eve Ensler highlights the societal pressures that can inhibit women's actions and self-expression, suggesting that many feel immobilized until given permission or affirmation from others. It calls attention to the importance of self-acknowledgment and the empowerment that comes from within rather than relying solely on external approval.
In practice
In a women's empowerment workshop to emphasize the need for self-affirmation.
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.
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.
I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.
People think racist abuse stops on the football pitch, but that's just the beginning. When you go home, you are still confronted with it. Football is just a magnifying glass of the real world.
You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world's problems at once but don't ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.
Every woman who thinks she is the only victim of violence has to know that there are many more.
For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.
I do not identify as a person with a disability. I'm a disabled person. And I'll be a monkey's disabled uncle if I'm going to apologise for that.
The cry of the oppressed has entered not only into my ears, but into my soul, so that while I live, I cannot hold my peace.
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