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.
I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother... Revolution must mean life also; every aspect of life.
I used to drink, I did, I had to quit. Man, I was an embarrassing drunk. I'd get pulled over by the cops, I'd be so drunk I'd be out dancing to their lights thinking I'd made it to another club.
I was paralyzed from the chest down when I was 19, so I kind of put my head together about dying, and I think I've come to terms with it.
Once every seven days, do something that frightens you. Every time we do something that we resist and is frightening, we actually grow in our power.
We have got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage.
We must not believe the Evil One when he tells us that there is nothing we can do in the face of violence, injustice and sin.
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