Why TVM Counts

The Vagina Monologues is a movement, a performance, and a discussion. People are drawn to The Vagina Monologues, or TVM, for a variety of reasons. Here, we post articles and ideas about why TVM is significant- in our local, domestic, and international communities.

V-Day Takes Immediate Action In Response To The Earthquake

In response to the earthquake and the violence that broke out in its wake, V-Day mobilized quickly to help, creating the V-Day Haiti Rescue Fund. V-activists from around the world dug deep and donated funds, which provided emergency support to AFASDA to serve displaced women from Port au Prince who were fleeing to the Northern coast in Cap Haitien. We were also able to provide 40 women and their families with shelter through our partner ShelterBox, which provided 10-person tents to each family, along with a range of other essential emergency equipment. Through this support, V-Day estimates that 400 to 500 individuals were provided with emergency relief.

New V-Day Project Launches in Haiti

We are very excited to report that, under the leadership of longtime V-Day activist Elvire Eugene, V-Day has supported a Task Force made up of local Haitian women's leaders, co-run by activists Judie C. Roy and Marie Gislhene Mompremier. The Task Force has engaged in a revolutionary long-term V-Day project to establish three safe houses, each with an office of legal assistance for survivors of violence, in Cap-Haitien, Fort Liberte and Port-de-Paix. The group continues to work on the ground to direct and implement efforts to support earthquake survivors and end violence against women and girls, including providing legal support to women at various locations in Port au Prince, and building grassroots support and awareness for the campaign through advocacy efforts like productions of The Vagina Monologues.

V-Day 2011 Spotlight Campaign on the Women and Girls of Haiti - NEW Spotlight Monologue by Eve Ensler

As V-Day is committed to mobilizing its global network to raise awareness and funds for women in Haiti, we are thrilled to have chosen "The Women and Girls of Haiti" as the 2011 Spotlight Campaign. This year during V-Season, activists in over 1,500 locations around the world will present a new monologue written by Eve Ensler, which will raise awareness about the increased violence against women and girls in post-earthquake Haiti, and will raise funds to support V-Day's efforts on the ground. Opportunities to get involved abound - from holding local V-Day benefits, to sharing a teach-in with your community to raise awareness about the history of Haiti and the needs of women now.

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.