Tickets on sale!

Tickets likely to sell out, so contact us in advance to reserve a seat. 

Money must be paid in full to reserve a seat.

All checks payable to BAWAR, Bay Area Women Against Rape.

Eight Miles Wide by Storm Large

Do you suppose this is what Village means when one of the women says "all vagina home songs"?

Body-Positive Blog: Curve Appeal

So right now I'm loving the Curve Appeal tumblr. It's a body-positive collection of submitted photos. Fat women, curvy women, big women, average women, smaller women...whatever you want to call them.

Our society often shames people for their size, but this blog celebrates (for the most part) bigger size in all its combinations of height, weight, measurements, and pant/dress size. Check it out!

Amanda Palmer - Map of Tasmania

NSFW. I hope you like merkins.

The Vagina Dialogues

All too often, The Vagina Monologues is labeled a "FEMINIST RANT", a "male-bash", or "a one-sided feminist take on the world as it crumbles".
For those of you who are intrigued by the movement and meaning behind The Vagina Monologues, and are exploring fellow forms of feminist fervor, check out this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

I invite you to watch this clip, not as an insight into The Vagina Monologues, but in comparison and introduction to what one woman imagines it takes to be an activist.

The East Bay 2011 benefit production of The Vagina Monologues is in no way intended as a rant. The Vagina Monologues is an honest compilation of monologues, based around the theme of dispelling the myths and discomfort with the word "Vagina". The script, though a strong statement for human rights, is an emotionally colorful piece, painted with the shadows and highlights of anger, humor, celebration, and empowerment. Our cast, a beautiful group of 24 women, has a full range of emotions: we are happy, we are excited, we are inspired, we are inspiring, we are understanding, and we are proud. And while, at times, we too are angry, outraged, confused, and overwhelmed, we use this show to invoke dialogue and discussion.

But The Vagina Monologues isn't just about the cast, nor about the text. We invite you to share your related clips, opinions, articles, and inspirations- if only to encourage the dialogues. As a director, I refuse to allow our cast to be limited a mere "rant". As an audience member, I refuse to participate in the discussion unless I hear about both sides of the story. And as an activist, I refuse to ignore the voices of the community when inspiring activism.
- Jamie, Director


"Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right"
Jane Goodall

Why "TVM" Counts: IRAN Stoning

Iran Drops Woman’s Stoning Sentence

By WILLIAM YONG for The New York Times,January 17, 2011

TEHRAN — Iranian officials have confirmed that a woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning may now face only a prison sentence for acting as an accessory in the murder of her husband.

Apparently contradicting previous court documents, Zahra Elahian, head of the Majles Human Rights Committee, said that the stoning sentence against the woman, Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, had never been confirmed.

“The stoning sentence has not yet been finalized,” Mr. Elahian wrote in a letter to Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff and published byIran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency. Brazil had offered asylum to Ms. Ashtiani last summer, after her story gained international attention.

Mr. Elahian added that a death sentence on the murder charge had been suspended with the consent of her children. This seems to have been done under the Islamic law of “ghesas,” which permits the family of a murder victim to elect to spare the guilty party from a death sentence.

“This woman faces only a public sentence of 10 years imprisonment,” Mr. Elahian wrote in the letter.

Later on Monday, a top regional judicial official repeated Mr. Elahian’s statement, telling the official IRNA news agency that the stoning sentence still had “not yet been finalized.”

The official, Malek Azhdar-Sharifi, head of the East Azarbaijan provincial judiciary, had said this month that “anything is possible” with regard to the final outcome of Ms. Ashtiani’s case.

After an international outcry arose following widespread publicity of Ms. Ashtiani’s case, Iranian authorities and official state news media mounted a propaganda campaign that emphasized her role as an accessory to the murder of her husband rather than the adultery conviction.

This month, Ms. Ashtiani appeared at a news conference in the presence of foreign journalists and admitted to complicity in the murder of her husband while denying she had been pressured into making a public confession. She also denounced the international outcry over her sentence.

Before that, Ms. Ashtiani appeared in a series of state-produced television programs in which she confessed to her crimes and distanced herself from the international campaign that has arisen around her case.

In December, a documentary broadcast by Iran’s English-language Press TV news channel showed Ms. Ashtiani, apparently on a temporary release, reconstructing, step by step, her part in the murder of her husband in her family home.

Why "TVM" Counts: MEXICO Mother Murdered

Originally published in:

The Wall Street Journal By DAVID LUHNOW

MEXICO CITY--The murder of a mother who spent two years trying to bring to justice the killer of her 16-year-old daughter has struck a nerve in Mexico, casting a harsh light on the country's dysfunctional judicial system.

Marisela Escobedo, 52, was a largely unknown figure until last week, when a man shot her in the head in front of the governor's office building in the capital of Chihuahua, a northern border state known for its drug-related violence. Weeks earlier, Ms. Escobedo had begun a sit-in across the street, refusing to leave until officials arrested her daughter's confessed killer.

The brazen killing of Ms. Escobedo yards away from the governor's office stunned many Mexicans. President Felipe Calderon and the United Nations condemned the murder and called on Chihuahua state officials to clear up the crime. On Wednesday, several hundred protesters held a silent march in Ciudad Juarez, where Ms. Escobedo was from.

"People are angry about this case. It's bringing people together to demand change," said Father Oscar Enriquez, a Catholic priest and the director of a human-rights center in Ciudad Juarez.

Ms. Escobedo's saga stands as a sad indictment of Mexico's law-enforcement system. In August 2008, her daughter, Rubi Marisol, disappeared from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent city. Police suspicion fell on her live-in boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, who had fathered a baby girl with Rubi. Mr. Barraza then fled, police said.

Fed up with waiting for police and prosecutors to solve the case, Ms. Escobedo, a retired nurse, did the detective work herself, tracking down Mr. Barraza and leading police to his capture nearly a year later in nearby Zacatecas state.

Mr. Barraza confessed to killing Rubi and led police to her body, which he had burned and then buried near a pig slaughterhouse.

At Mr. Barraza's trial in April of this year, however, a panel of three judges released him, arguing there wasn't enough evidence against him and blaming prosecutors for putting together a sloppy case. An enraged Ms. Escobedo launched a one-woman crusade to bring Mr. Barraza to justice, holding protests from Ciudad Juarez to Mexico City.

In May, an appeals court overturned the lower-court decision to release him. The appeals court convicted Mr. Barraza in absentia of Rubi's murder, and sentenced him to 50 years in jail. But by then, he had fled again.

Over the summer, Ms. Escobedo again tracked down Mr. Barraza. Local newspaper reports said neighbors saw him running away over a rooftop just as the police arrived.

In a bid to pressure authorities, the grieving mother began her sit-in a few weeks ago. "I'm not leaving until they arrest that killer," she told media at the time. She said she had received death threats from Mr. Barraza's family. The government offered a reward for his capture.

Last week, as the sun set on the state capital, security cameras captured the scene as a gunman approached Ms. Escobedo, who fled across the street toward the governor's office. The man gave chase and fired, and her body crumbled to the sidewalk. Among the witnesses: Rubi's infant girl.

The footage of the killing was repeated on nightly newscasts across Mexico, where the mother's role is seen as sacrosanct and Mother's Day is a major national holiday.

The day after Ms. Escobedo was killed, her brother-in-law, Manuel Monje, was picked up by unidentified men at a lumberyard he runs with his brother, Marisela's husband. His body was dumped from a moving car along a Ciudad Juarez boulevard on Saturday, witnesses and police said.

The chances of identifying and capturing the killers of the three Escobedo family members are slim. Only 2% of those who commit crimes in Mexico are brought to justice, according to several academic and government estimates. That impunity has fanned violence in Ciudad Juarez, where 3,000 people have been killed this year alone--many by drug cartels fighting for lucrative smuggling routes to the U.S. Last year, prosecutors in Juarez won 19 convictions for murder; there were 2,600 murders in the city that year, according to data from the government that were published by the Associated Press.

After Ms. Escobedo's killing, Chihuahua state Gov. Cesar Duarte ordered that the three judges who initially released Mr. Barraza be stripped of their jobs. Activists criticized the governor for ordering the move after Ms. Escobedo was killed and not after the decision to let Mr. Barraza go. The governor hasn't directly responded to the criticism, but has said authorities have tried hard to catch Mr. Barraza, whom the governor said is believed to be a member of the Zetas cartel, one of the country's most violent.

This week, the Sinaloa cartel offered its services in tracking down the killers. In two hand-painted banners displayed in Ciudad Juarez, one in front of a public hospital, the cartel offered its condolences to Ms. Escobedo's family and urged residents to come forward with information, even giving out a webpage.

Wanda Sykes Knows What's Up