Last year I participated in the Self Expression and Leadership Programme at Landmark Education. My project was to get together 150 women who have been sexually assaulted – I am one of these women – to paint, pray and read the Psalms. The project didn’t actually turn out for a variety of reasons and circumstances but I would still love to do this…but what occurs in this course is that you begin to link up with communities with whom you are committed to making a difference. I linked up with a lot of women’s organisations inside of Australia and beyond. I discovered an amazing organisation called VDay (an organisation set up in the states to stand for ‘Victory Over Violence’ Day). I applied to perform their yearly fundraiser – The Vagina Monologues, a play with a variety of women’s monologues about their experience around sexual abuse and other forms of abuse and then a few monologues about being empowered nomatter the past circumstances. We performed at Sydney Theatre and there were 17 actresses and two guest directors on board. I produced, directed and acted in this performance and we raised $10,000 for Dympna House, a women’s resource and counselling centre for women who have experienced sexual abuse. It was a huge event that would never have happened had I not had the training of the Self Expression and Leadership Programme – although being trained in Theatre, I had never committed myself to something of such importance both personally and politically. I thank Landmark Education for the training, VDay for the opportunity and Dympna House for the awesome work you do with women.

See the following link: http://www.sydneytheatre.org.au/event.asp?pID=114

The following is an from my Director’s note in the programme:
There is no cure for rape. There is no real way to say to young people and teens to do this or do that and you will definitely avoid being raped. The whole act of rape and incest goes against being able to proactively control it. But there is still popular commentary about how we can avoid this ‘problem’. There are organizations that are set up to research breast cancer and AIDS and many other charities and organizations set up to scientifically research the disease that is within many women. To seek a cure. To solve the problem. Why do we do all this? Because innately, we do care about women. We care about half the population on this planet.
But rape. How can one scientifically research this in search of a cure? We cannot.
What will solve this ‘problem’ because it is a problem that permeates not only women, but the men with whom we relate – our brothers, fathers, friends and lovers?
We talk of saving women from diseases, which kill us but do we talk of saving women from the DIS-ease of rape? Recently, in my own community, I called for women who had been raped – who were the survivors of this tragic experience – to get together to paint together. Just to provide a space where one can begin to talk about the experiences in a safe environment of fellow women who have experienced this pain. I was told by people in power – both men and women – that I was attempting to open a Pandora’s Box. That women will be likely to come away, from their conversations and being in the company of other women who have similar experiences, with sadness and further pain. That being around and acknowledging what has happened will encourage the old wounds to open up and may lead to women falling prey to depression and suicide. And who would want to be responsible for the opening up of these wounds? For the consequences?
This response saddened me – I was and I am one of these women and by not talking about it or acknowledging it has left me with the Pandora’s Box on the inside – creating havoc with my whole state of being. I cannot not talk about it. I wrote something recently that reminded me of why we must talk. Particularly, because if we don’t, the perpetrator who originally told me- and probably told you too – that if you do talk about it, you will die. This is not true. If you talk about it you will live. If you don’t talk about it, you are dead already to that little girl who first experienced this pain and someone switched her off. When I really thought about it, I remembered why – initially – it was so difficult to talk about this…
He said he would kill me. He said I was to shut up. Not to tell anyone. He said that I was a whore. He obviously didn’t know me. I was not a whore. I was not one to shut up. I wasn’t afraid of death.
However, what I didn’t count on was the reception of women who had been told exactly the same thing: shut up; don’t talk; die.
When I finally did tell my mother, she laughed and said that it had happened to her too. So what? Go have a drink. Chill out. Don’t bring up the past. It’s just a lot of dead wood. As though there was nothing anyone could do about it. Nothing. Not one thing.
I didn’t know what was worse: being dead physically or playing dead emotionally. Of course there was no comparison; I had only experienced the latter. I became that dead wood.
So I did shut up and I did die but it wasn’t the man who killed me. It was other women who believed that telling other women would strike them down dead with the lightning rod of shame. But like all good old wives tales, it was just a tale.
Recently, lightning did strike me – the spark that set fire to that dead wood and made it burn. It burnt right down and in its place there was a clearing – a clear space to breath.
There is freedom in space, in this clearing. And in this space where once was the dead wood called me, I asked God permission to talk and he said that yes it was okay. And He took my pain away. And then I asked Him if it was okay to talk with other women again – to learn to trust them again. And He said of course. And then I asked Him why the women didn’t want to talk with me. And He said because the women believed in this lie – that they were the dead wood. And dead wood can’t hear.
Or so it thinks.
So think. Am I dead wood or can I hear? Am I a victim or a survivor? There is a choice – to talk or not to talk. At the moment in society it isn’t popular to talk about this subject. People are at a loss to know how to respond. What to say. How to be a good best friend, sibling, mother, father, lover or friend. What is the right thing to say? For so long no one has spoken about the subject that we indeed lack the language; no one really knows what is the right thing to say in response.
Our loved ones, husbands and boyfriends try their best: Go see a counselor. Have you seen a counselor? Are you over this? Well, it happens to most women so get over it. What were you wearing? What did you do to cause this? Are you okay? Will you be able to have orgasms? Do you have hang-ups? Oh, this always happens to me – all my ex-girlfriends have been raped – why me?
There are many sorts of responses to the declaration ‘I have been raped’ as well as much silence. There is this awkwardness surrounding the conversation. Why? We’re not used to talking about this subject. It’s something that we push under the lino. We don’t even want to look at it. Why? Is there guilt around it because all of us not only know women who have been raped, but we know at least someone who has perpetrated this crime. Do the maths – with so many women who have been raped, it only makes sense that we do actually know someone who has perpetrated this crime upon others. I have known at least three men who have perpetrated this crime and I have only been raped once. And I also know men and young men who have been the victims – or survivors? – of this crime. But nobody is talking. The silence in our society can be cut with a knife. Can you hear it? What holds the silence in suspension? Is it our societal guilt that has retained this silence?
We can, however, talk about it and start to create a language around this devoid of shame. Shame is the first thing that we think of when we consider talking about the experience of rape – that we are to be embarrassed or shamed because of what happened. But if this is true, then we are the ones who did something wrong. We did not do something wrong. We are not broken. We are not to blame. Why do we let society and the person who did this keep us locked up in a cage of shame? This is what we are responsible for – whether we talk or not and to whom. We can be the cause in the matter. We can create a language around this or just keep it contained in our own mind where the damage visits us and haunts us and by our own repression, it does nothing productive but hurts us. Whatever we resist persists. The wound that is not healed hurts. We know the clichés. But we don’t stop to look at what happened.
This performance of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ acts like an anchor or a break or an intervention into how society has shaped up to be. This performance of The Vagina Monologues is dedicated to women and men who have been raped. Women and men who were the victims of this crime. Women and men who are the survivors of this crime. In this 2007 V-Day Benefit performance, the money raised goes towards Dympna House, a women’s and girls’ resource center for those who have been sexually abused. The funds go towards forwarding the conversations around which will empower women and girls to be the starting line in a new generation of women who will stand up and say I will talk about this experience because by talking about it, what is created is the understanding that I am not ashamed of what happened to me – there is truth to both statements that “it did not break me but it did break me”. I was broken and forced open which naturally causes me to close up like a shell. But I won’t close up like a shell because by doing so, I am reacting from that pain. By not closing up like a shell, I am announcing loud and clear that I still have a voice.
The V-Day performances, of “The Vagina Monologues”, throughout the world gives women such a voice and provides women with such a space to voice their strength and resilience and discoveries. It will raise much-needed funds for women’s charities. But more than this, it begins the exploration of creating a language around which we can begin to talk about the pain of being raped and violated.