The devil's advocate would say that if we stay in Afghanistan and take control of what's going on there, that we are going to be accused of imperialism.
I don't think we should stay there, I think there should be some U.N. force that goes in there as a transitional government and helps establish women's rights and democracy. I don't think it should be a stability force, as the British are talking about right now, but a world- and U.N.-supported government.
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And what about women in all this? Sixty-five percent of the population of Afghanistan is female, and not one woman has been entrusted with ruling. I haven't seen one woman represented anywhere in Afghanistan.
If I've learned one thing, it would be this: The violation and desecration of women and the undermining of women is an indication of everything. It is the primary symptom of a civilization gone awry. Look at America: We have one of the highest levels of violation of women of any country.
Where is the next Afghanistan? People said years ago that there was trouble brewing in Afghanistan, just by looking at women's problems there. What other countries do you see on the verge of boiling over?
I think Afghanistan is everywhere. I hate to say it, but I think if we do not really address what is going on with women in this planet -- that one out of three women in the world will be raped and battered -- it's basically gender oppression. Fifty-eight girls under the age of 14 are raped in South Africa every day. There is not a country in the world right now where the kind of violation that is going on to women is not out of control. I'm talking epidemic. I can't even talk about it because people can't tolerate hearing it.
To me, we are at the end of something, if we do not understand that patriarchy has done this.
So, what's your solution?
First of all we have to address what's going on, that we are living in a paradigm of escalating violence -- based, in my opinion, on corporate greed and the emerging corporate globalization of the world. Women are commodities within that structure: They are bodies, serving or not serving. I think we have to stop and say, "Is this the paradigm we want to keep living in? Is this the paradigm we want? Do we want to perish as a people?"
James Gilligan has a great book called "Preventing Violence." He basically says that humiliation and shame are at the core of everything: You humiliate people through relative poverty, through racism, through child abuse -- he goes down the list. The restructuring of the world will look at the un-shaming and recovery from humiliation, in all the forms that it takes.
That's what we should be setting out to think about. Thinking how we are going to end violence; in my case, violence towards women. What is violence towards women, the mechanisms of it, the trajectory of it? And then, what are we going to do to stop it?
Considering who's in power in the government right now, do you think this kind of ideology is likely right now?
I don't think this is going to happen during the Bush administration. But you never know, sometimes the strangest people are accidentally leaders.
I have fantasies of an international party, a world party. We start to see ourselves as a world and come up with a global party. I have to say that I think it is the future, that nation-states are over.
I take it that you are opposed to the bombing. Yet it seems to have rid Afghanistan of the Taliban.
I know in my body, more than I know anything, that violence only creates violence. And there may be a momentary, apparent victory in Kabul, but that violence has created in so many other people seeds of things that will come to be, in our lifetime, as deadly as anything we've seen. Having been a person who was beaten into submission, quieted, stunned and made mute by terror, I know that there comes a time when you get people back, because that's survival. It's an organic part of what violence does. So I don't believe in the perpetration of it anymore.
I'm not saying I don't believe in self-defense; if someone comes after you, I will protect you, but I think that's very different. Our terror is better than their terror? I don't believe that.
Do you have any problems with Islam? Some have accused it of being a religion that is problematic for women.
Is there a religion that is not sexist?
I believe that the body is gorgeous and sacred and women should walk the earth in anything they want to wear, any day. If someone is wearing the veil because it makes them feel sexy, exotic, erotic, fabulous, empowered, delicious, protected -- power to them. If one is wearing it to shut oneself off, to not exist, to not be present, to not have a voice, to turn over all their rights, to not be sexual, not be alive -- I have issues with it. That's the bottom line with any piece of clothing in the world. It has nothing to do with veils.
I feel that way about religion, too. If religion liberates us to the desire of our bodies, makes us feel good about our vaginas and makes us believe we have love in our hearts -- genius! If it makes us feel bad or guilty or shameful, I can't get with it.
Do you think that, though this may sound perverse, the recent tragedies have been good for the world in terms of jump-starting a dialogue?
I think there's nothing good ever about thousands of people being killed -- nothing. Nobody deserves it; they weren't asking for it; they didn't sign up for it. I don't buy that at all. I don't believe the way you teach people is by beating them and killing them.
But if those lives were not to be lost in vain, we had better wake up right now. We have to use that as a calling to our deepest selves to come up with a way out of this. I actually believe it could be that. I've been lucky: For five years I have been watching this little seed of an idea, this little idea of a vagina, spread and spread around the world. The play is in 45 countries right now, and 30 languages. V-Day this year will take place in 600 colleges in 200 cities around the world.
For me, it's been a great model of what a global party could be like. I've seen how decentralized community-built organizing could really work. If we could agree with certain basics: That all human beings are entitled to food, shelter and education, and that could be a tenet, we could take that and go with that. Ending violence is the most essential thing, we could work on that. Where do we all come together?
About the writer
Janelle Brown is a senior writer for Salon.
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