On embracing my inner girl
Eve Ensler is best known for writing the play The Vagina Monologues and has for being a long time anti-violence activist. In November of 2009 she gave this talk about embracing our inner girl at TED India. Be sure to watch to the end to see powerful piece from her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World
Eve Ensler states that within each of us, men and women alike, is an inner girl. This inner girl essence is where our compassion, empathy, vulnerability, openness, and intuition reside. She reminds us that:
Compassion informs wisdom and that
Vulnerability is our greatest strength and that
Emotions have inherent logic that lead to radical appropriate saving action.
But, our patriarchal society has systematically annihilated this inner girl, perhaps more harshly in men than in women, denying each of us the willingness to embrace our compassion and empathy. While we’ve been busy embracing our inner men, our competitive, empire building natures, we have allowed great cruelties to happen. Horrific atrocities against girls, against people, in the form of wars, genocides, rapes, beatings and female mutilations continue to happen each and day, despite the fact that there is a little voice in each of us, trying to yell at the top of her lungs, that this pain must stop. If we embrace our inner girls, and listen to their empathetic cries, would these atrocities continue?
I’ll be honest here, I have long been an anti-feminist. It is not that I don’t believe in equality for women. I most certainly do believe in equality. I believe that each person has inherent value that should never be denied, irrespective of sex, race or any other defining characteristic. I have a distaste for the way the feminist movement was executed, and the results that came out of it. Mainly the doubling of the work force, that essentially cut the value of labour in half, and made it so I will most likely not be able to afford to stay home to raise my children.
Ensler’s sort of feminism is quite different from the variety that I find myself resenting. Watching this moving talk made me realize that I have been throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. I have been a very lucky person, my parents supported me, and encouraged my endeavours as ferociously as they would if I had been their son. I never felt the effects of sexism growing up. For this I am grateful. Ensler reminded me that not all girls are as lucky as me. Girls across the globe still need to be stood up for, as do our inner girls! Our compassion and empathy must be valued in order to put a stop to violence against against girls, against people.
Comment Zen*
I would love to hear about your views of feminism, both of feminism of the 1960s whose consequences we live with today, and of modern feminism. How does today’s women, and men, best embrace our inner girls to allow the inner girls of tomorrow to thrive?
hajbaji on 
Susan Hale Whitmore on 
Hi Marilyn,
I’m quite torn about this posting, for a number of reasons. My initial reaction was to consider my own experience – for me, women have been “worthy competitors”, and more importantly, mentors, throughout my career. I remember Jana in high-school… untouchable (I mean that grade-wise!!) – we competed for highest-standing every year, and I would regularly lose :-/ I remember vividly Dana, in my undergraduate programme at U of A, and a far superior student to me… beat me every time! Liz – my best friend, and a biochemist (different field), but nevertheless crucified me at every turn grades-wise…and had found the “women in science” programme that had just started at UofA, so was being mentored by successful women faculty members. I learned from a very early age that women were (and always have been) not just my equals, but my competitors! When I finished my PhD, I moved to Germany *specifically* to work for (and with) a woman, who I considered to be the best in the world at her area of science! I have to admit that I smiled and was a bit taken-aback by the way she “mothered” me through my first year with her (e.g. I was not *allowed* to do an experiment by myself! I simply had to stand beside her and watch her do it… and learn…)… but at the end of the day, I *did* learn! I DID absorb what she had to offer, and I am forever grateful to her! (and I cried my eyes out for a week when she died last year
) I am now UBC faculty of medicine, in a department that is dominated by women… our department head is (as of last week) a woman, and most of the faculty members are women. Frankly, I don’t normally notice this – I don’t care! – but in the context of your posting I do notice it.
All this leads me to say that, in **my** world, women have not only become equals, they have often over-taken men v.v. leadership roles. In **my** world, the battle of the sexes is OVER!
…but… I understand that it is not over in all other domains
However, what concerns me more is that the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction! In the past 5 years I have been listening intently to the numerous reports like the one I am linking below (it isn’t necessarily the BEST one, only the one that I could find off-the-cuff to include in this conversation). Boys are now being *intensively* discriminated-against in our schools! why? Because our entire society has become… feminized! (e.g. http://www.british-ild.com/downloads/articles/Feminisation.pdf) Being “just a normal boy” is now considered to be abhorrent!! Good lord, we don’t want aggression!…but that is un-doing millions of years of evolution!! LOL! We *must* accept that men/women/boys/girls are DIFFERENT, and stop trying to boil them in the same “soup”.
Equally competent, COMPLETELY different in how they get there… and we’re now pandering to the girls, just as we used to pander to the boys… and the result is no better now than it was then.