Nanaimo Women Unite to Help Stop the Violence
Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues returns to Malaspina University-College

V-DAY, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls returns to Nanaimo on Feb. 10 and 11, with two productions of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues at the Malaspina University-College theatre.

Twelve women will present the Monologues in a café-style format that celebrates the collective voices of women through individual stories. Performers include city councillor Diane Brennan, Malaspina Women’s Studies department chair Kathryn Barnwell and Volunteer Nanaimo executive director Marjorie Driscoll. Proceeds from the event will be donated to the Nanaimo Women’s Centre, which lost its core funding to provincial government cuts in the spring of 2004.

“This college campaign has been effective in raising awareness about violence against women, and the need to support women’s shelters, women’s centres and transition houses,” says Jeannie Martin, president of the Nanaimo Women’s Centre. “The organizers and performers who are putting this event together are doing a tremendous service for women in the Nanaimo area.”

V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. The V in V-Day stands for victory, valentine and vagina.

The Malaspina performance joins the rest of this year’s V-Day campaigns in raising awareness about the plight of comfort women, young females of various ethnic and national backgrounds who were forced to offer sexual services to the Japanese troops during the Asia/Pacific Wars between 1932 and 1945. The aging survivors are dying off without redress from the Japanese government, which still denies legal responsibility. V-Day is working with groups in Asia to plan a major V-Day event in Seoul during summer 2006 to bring maximum attention to this issue. V-Day is also working to raise awareness of human trafficking as we recognize the relationship between the story of the ‘comfort women’ and the system of modern day human trafficking.

The Vagina Monologues begins at 7:30pm Feb. 10 and 11 at the Malaspina University-College Theatre, located in building 310. Tickets are $12, available at Lobelia’s Lair (753-5440) and the Nanaimo Women’s Centre (753-0633). The Women’s Centre is located at 10 Victoria Crescent and is open Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10am to 3pm.

Malaspina University College and the Nanaimo Women’s Centre are presenting the Vagina Monologues on February 10 and 11 at the Malaspina theatre. Tickets are $12 and the show starts at 7:30pm. More details will follow. In the meantime, here is some information about this year’s V-Day/Vagina Monologues campaign against violence against women.

At this time over 860 colleges and communities are confirmed to present V-Day 2006 benefit productions of the Vagina Monologues in 45 countries from February – March. Each community typically stages two-three nights in a row, due to popular demand and totaling 2000 fundraisers in all. Organizers on 547 college campuses have registered, the most in V-Day’s history. To date, V-Day event locations include Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Botswana, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mozambique, Saipan, Suriname, Tanzania, Wales and almost every state in the United States.

V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls founded by Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler, has announced Vagina Warriors: The New Revolution as the theme for the movement’s 2006 campaigns and grassroots events. From Dar es Salaam to Charlotte, from Tokyo to Los Angeles, V-Day will expand on the successful 2005 season, during which over 2500 V-Day benefit events were presented by volunteer activists around the world, educating millions of people about the issue of violence against women and girls, raising nearly $4 million and benefiting over 1000 anti-violence groups.

V-Day’s 2006 theme “Vagina Warriors: The New Revolution” celebrates new activists and leaders who are working to end violence against women in their communities. Vagina Warriors are the women and men who have often experienced violence personally or witnessed it within their communities and dedicated themselves toward ending such violence through effective, grassroots means. V-Day 2005 productions around the world from Ethiopia to China; Indiana to India; Croatia to Finland selected and honoured Vagina Warriors in their communities generating attention, newspaper articles, and raising funds to support their work.

2006 Spotlight: Justice to ‘Comfort Women’ Each year V-Day draws attention to a particular group of women who are experiencing violence, with the goal of raising awareness and funds to put a worldwide media spotlight on this area and to raise funds to aid groups who are addressing it. On the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, V-Day joins women and men around the world in calling for justice to ‘Comfort Women’ survivors. The euphemism ‘comfort women’ was coined by imperial Japan to refer to young females of various ethnic and national backgrounds who were forced to offer sexual services to the Japanese troops during the Asia/Pacific Wars between 1932 and 1945. Some were minors; others were deceptively recruited by middlemen; still more were detained and forcibly abducted. Estimates of the number of ‘comfort women’ range between 50,000 to 200,000.

In the early 1990s, Korean victims of Japan’s military sexual slavery broke their silence and came forward nearly a half century after WWII, followed by other survivors in China, Taiwan, North Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Timor L’Este. Now the aging survivors are dying off one by one without redress from the Japanese government, which still denies legal responsibility. The V-Day 2006 Spotlight joins the ‘comfort women’ survivors and women’s groups from East and Southeast Asia in calling for justice and reparations for the unanswered war crimes.