Healing Through “One Billion Rising” Campaign

CT NOW is honored to share these personal thoughts about the One Billion Rising Campaign.  Thank you, Kylie, for your courage and advocacy.  You are the change we wish to see in the world.

Healing Through “One Billion Rising” Campaign
by Kylie Nilan Angell, UConn Nursing student

What does Valentine's Day mean to you? To me and many other feminists, it means a movement called V-Day. Founded by Eve Ensler, playwright of The Vagina Monologues, this movement competes with the chocolate-infused fog that envelops the calendar day of February 14 by encouraging the world to raise its voice in a synchronized and honest manner to say that there must be a definitive end to violence against women.

In the present day, the campaign has grown to include another meaningful component to its arsenal of activist campaigns: One Billion Rising (OBR). With its adage “Strike/Dance/Rise,” OBR transcends geography as its calls for one billion women across the globe to unite and summon attention to the senseless pandemic that prevents women from living in safety.

Many ask what the number “one billion” references. This atrocious UN statistic illustrates the number of women on this earth who will be raped or beaten in their lifetime. In an interview with the British newspaper, The Guardian, Eve Ensler declared, “...with this dancing we express our outrage and joy and our firm global call for a world where women are free and safe and cherished and equal. Dance with your body, for your body, for the bodies of women and the earth.”

Why did I rise this Valentine's Day? Having been the victim of multiple acts of sexual violence as a University of Connecticut student, the past three years have without a doubt been tumultuous and anxiety-ridden, but transformative nonetheless. My transition into an ardent feminist has been seamless, as feminism is the only arena of life where I feel that my rights and views are supported and valued. Feminism told me that I could regain control of my body, and that there was no need to live in shame on the account of someone else's violence. When women come together through movements like OBR, we are empowered and free to shed the societal shackles that suffocate our spirits, the voices around us that say we are sexual objects and nothing more. With the support of other feminists in the V-Day movement as well as my therapist and advocates at the Women's Center, I have recovered my inherent womanly strength and passion. I've slowly sucked out the poison that had built up inside my veins. While I rose up and danced during OBR, the bondage of anger that had weighed me down for nearly three years released into the air. Temporarily I felt free from the heavy and constant fear of sexual violence.

Though this was only the first OBR, the movement is monumental to me because it advocates for spreading love and awareness through the expressive medium of dance. For a few moments on Valentine's Day women were able to envision a world where we are free to dance, and that we do have domain over our bodies, our vaginas, our womanhood. The V-Day and OBR movements weren't asking for chocolates or roses this Valentine's Day. They were demanding an end to rape and abuse against women like me and the other 999,999,999 that are also at the mercy of violence. The assault on women must be stopped and replaced with the love emanating from OBR.