Why Do We Allow Abuse to Continue? Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues chronicles the witty, battered, and demeaning experiences of over 200 hundred women. Ensler’s Monologues began as a personal experiment and grew into a national movement to end the violence against women. The book’s format along with its’ subject matter is unique. In some instances, her conversations are written as dark, deeply personal journal entries. In contrast, other interviews are transformed into artistic poetry. Nonetheless, Englers’ Monologues describes the cultural, religious, and taboo factors regarding a woman’s vagina. The purpose of Ensler’s monologues is to create awareness on the topics of abuse, mutilation, and vagina awareness. Without this essential knowledge, women have little power over their bodies. Rape and female mutilation has proliferated this century. “One out of three women in the world will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime” (Ensler 169). Conversely, some of her powerful messages gets lost in the frivolous entries on vagina name calling, vagina clothing, and vagina speaking (Ensler 5-21). The most disturbing fact from Ensler’s book is the data on female mutilation. Ensler indicates, that the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) has been performed on over 80 million young…show more content… Every day women are violated by strangers, husbands, or relatives. The physical and emotional scars of rape never heal. Ensler indicates that with the current political and religious unpredictability the rate of abuse escalates. “In Iraq, there has been a rampant destruction of women’s rights since the US invasion, a rise in honor killings, rapes, and murders of women” (Ensler xviii). She describes rape cases of Native American women, African women, and child and adolescent rape. These chapters are haunting and descriptive which makes you feel each victim’s
