I wrote the apology that I wanted to hear from my father, says Eve Ensler

Your father died 31 years ago, and this book is the apology he never deigned to make. Did you find catharsis/closure in his imagined confession? Were you expiating some of his guilt? Is there also an element of payback? Your bare-knuckled account has dragged diabolical Shadow Man into the harsh, unshuttered light of day.
For so many years I had been waiting for my father to apologise to me, acknowledge, own, take responsibility for sexually abusing and then physically battering and violating me as a child.To say it happened. It was real and he knew it was wrong. I think that is true for many survivors, this yearning for an apology is an ongoing occupation. Making the decision to write my father’s apology to me, to say the words, to express the feelings I needed to hear was birthed in the desire to get free of this yearning. For this I knew he needed to write a detailed accounting of what he had done to me because liberation is in the details. Saying “I am sorry if you feel bad” or “I’m sorry if I hurt you” doesn’t cut it. He needed to say exactly what he had done and he needed to feel what his terrible abuse had done to my body, spirit and heart. He needed to look at his childhood and the culture that produced him, and do a deep self-interrogation as to what made him the kind of monster he became. This was critical for my healing — and for his.
This book is also a proxy exercise on behalf of ‘every woman still waiting for an apology’. Like Tolstoy’s ‘unhappy families’, each abused woman has a trauma uniquely her own. Did you actively write to force women to stand up, end the guilty gaslighting?
This book is an offering not a prescription. I know there are probably many survivors who have no desire to hear or receive an apology from their perpetrator. For me, I had been living as my father’s victim for most of my life. I had this ongoing anger. The motor of my life was not waiting for an apology, but proving my father wrong about me being stupid or bad. I wanted to be free of this. I didn’t want to carry guilt about his terrible behavior or rage at him. I wanted to be in my own story. I thought that maybe by writing the apology I needed to hear, this book could become a possible template for men in making much-needed apologies, as well as learning the architecture of a true apology.
You stopped your father dead in his tracks by saying ‘Thank You. I Enjoyed It,’ after he’d once again bloodied your bottom. What epiphany prompted this?
Sadly, sadists feed off the pain of their victims. Earlier, whenever my father beat me with that ping pong paddle, I wept. As much as he pretended that he wanted me to stop, I knew somewhere it turned him on, gave him a sense of power. When I thanked him that day, I shocked him as it was now clear I was no longer this weak, broken girl, but a viable adversary. He couldn’t permeate or get to me. That is why he stopped the ping pong treatment. Sadly though, to get to that state, I had to cut off my feelings and separate from by body. It took years to become whole again.
But how can disenfranchised women reach that same near-orgasmic liberation?
It’s almost impossible to rise up against our perpetrators alone. That is why women need to speak out what is happening to them as soon as it begins to happen. Why women need movements and communities supporting them and believing them. Why we need to become activists. It gives us strength, sisterhood and meaning. The more of us who tell the truth, the detailed truth, the more of us who share our stories, the easier it becomes for other women.
Vagina Monologues, One Billion Rising — you’ve created inspired weapons against the taboos. What are the major firewalls?
Everywhere I have been in the world, women are still shamed, gaslit, humiliated, attacked for speaking out. Because we do not see men owning their behavior, going through a deep process of apology and amends, working on themselves to change who they are, it’s hard to believe that speaking out will have an impact. The personal costs are still so high.
How would you rank #MeToo. What are its fault-lines?
The movement to end this gender violence began nearly 70 years ago with African American women fighting off their white supremacist rapists. I have been honoured to be in this movement for the last 23 years. #MeToo is the recent iteration. More and more women telling their stories, calling out their perpetrators has rattled the cage. But if men do not change, if they do not join us in this struggle to end violence — which has always really been a men’s issue — what will really change? My friend Tony Porter says, “We’ve called men out, now we need to call them in.” I wrote The Apology because in all the years of working in this movement, in all the recent cases of #MeToo, perhaps in 16,000 years of patriarchy, I had never heard a man make a public, thorough, authentic apology for sexual or physical abuse towards girls, boys or women. My father says in The Apology that ‘to be an apologist is to be a traitor to men. Once one man admits he knows it was wrong, the whole story of patriarchy begins to collapse.’ Now is the time for men to become gender traitors, and begin the apology process.
Early feminism argued that ‘the personal is political’. It’s now literally so with the growing band of ‘strong-man’ leaders. What does this portend?
This world-wide rise of fascist, macho misogynists from our Predator in Chief in the US, to Modi here to Putin, Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Duterte, is in some way a huge push back for women rights and peoples’ movements. It’s as if they are all playing from a similar playbook. They are otherising and creating genocide towards minorities and migrants; ignoring climate crises and plundering the earth for corporate gain; destroying democracy through eviscerating constitutions; arresting journalists, activists and intellectuals to silence dissent; escalating violence against women and pushing back against reproductive rights. The list goes on.
So, Eve, give us hope.
We must constantly remember that we are the many. What I learned in my family is that fascists control by creating divisions between us. They induce fear so we stop speaking out for the most marginalized and oppressed. Whether it’s Kashmir or the southern borders in the US, we have to stand with those who are facing the worst oppression and violence, put ourselves on the line for justice and freedom, and tell the truth about who we are, what we have done, so we can free our victims and ourselves. I look at this new extraordinary movement of young people, mainly female, leading the fight for the Mother Earth. I look at One Billion Rising and the millions who are rising around the world. I believe, as I have always believed, that people have the power and the imagination to rewrite this world. We just have to come out of our comforts, our fear, our isolation and join each other with deepest solidarity and fierce love for the fight of our lives.