ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Eve Ensler's career and her dramatic production. As a feminist playwright and activist, Ensler concurs with gender violence specialists and asserts that beyond issues of difference among women there is a common trait that unites every female citizen of the world: the threat of sexist aggression. Together with other explicit prohibitions, gender stereotyping, and lines of oppression violence has been one of the main strategies used to keep female bodies under control. The chapter demonstrates how theater can become a weapon for consciousness-raising, denunciation of abuse, and transformation of mentalities and everyday practices, such that can bring real-life benefits to women around the world. As The Vagina Monologues highlights, rape, battering, or sexual harassment happen all the time, and the coercive system that provokes them is maintained through open aggression, and through different types of discourse that sustain the hegemonic position of men over women.
