Editor’s Note: Eve Ensler’s more than just the mastermind behind the moving — and influential — Vagina Monologues . For years, the activist has been traveling the globe to highlight the plight of oppressed women everywhere, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Ensler’s most recent mission takes her to the Congo, and she and her organization, V-Day, just embarked on a five-city speaking tour, the "Turning Pain to Power Tour," during which Ensler and UN-celebrated Dr. Dr. Denis Mukwege discuss the femicide and the sexual torture of women in the war-torn nation. Here Ensler and her old friend Marlo Thomas confer on violence against women, how to sustain change and share their love for one another’s work.

EVE: Hello?

MARLO: Hi, Eve! It’s been ages! How are you, honey?

EVE: I’m good. I miss you. I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.

MARLO: I know. And how strange to not speak to each other all this time and then we do an interview?

EVE: It’s bizarre.

MARLO: I’ve been reading all about you and what you’re doing with the Congo. You are just amazing. When I was reading it all, I thought, "My God, this woman," You never stop. And I remembered something from the ’60s called the "Four Stages of Activism." In the first stage we sing "We Shall Overcome," we make new multicultural friends and we’re seen with them. That’s the first stage. The second stage is the angry stage. Everybody’s a bigot but you. You get it and they don’t.

EVE: Right.

MARLO: The third stage is a very pivotal stage. It’s a sudden, overwhelming recognition of the enormity of the problem, and that you may not solve it and die a happy death. And the fourth one has two options. We either drop out and take guitar lessons, or we keep on going and don’t become discouraged or depressed – and that is where the saints are made. So that’s what you are, my darling.

EVE: That’s beautiful.

MARLO: You are a saint. Really, you are.

EVE: Part of it is that I think one of the big problems in this country, particularly — I think it’s less so in places where people live in a state of struggle — but in this country we haven’t learned how to struggle. There’s a wonderful El Salvadorian expression, which is that struggle is the highest form of song, which I keep over my desk. Because we don’t understand that all the good stuff is borne in the struggle, you know. And people get tired and they give up and they think they’re going to be in it and be done. Do you know what I mean?

MARLO: Yes.

EVE: And it’s for life.

MARLO: It is.

EVE: This is what we’re doing, you know.


MARLO: Now tell me, I’m just overwhelmed about this whole Congo tour you’re doing in America and I want to understand something . How did this come to your attention? There’s violence against women everywhere. Why the Congo, for you?

EVE: Well, about two years ago I was asked by OCHA, a UN organization, to interview Dr. Mukwege. I read his bio and I said, "Of course I’ll interview this man. How could I not?" And then I met him. And we did this interview and it turned out to be an amazing evening where about 500 people came and I sat with this man, whose eyes were literally bloodshot from all the horror he has witnessed. And he just started to talk about what was going on there. The mass rapes and sexual torture of women and girls as young as nine months, as old as 80 years. And I couldn’t believe what he was saying. He asked if V-Day would come and help and I said, "Yes." So we went. The first time I went was about a year and a half ago and I stayed for two weeks and have been back twice since then. What is going on there is so horrific, and if we don’t do something about it, it will give license to it and it will spread.

MARLO: Right.