The pushback against women in this moment is terrifying and vast. When we started the global V-Day women’s movement after the publication of The Vagina Monologues, saying the word “vagina” out loud was taboo. It’s not any more, but our work remains as pressing as ever.

Although we may not have ended violence against all women, trans and non-binary people, we have made a mark. We have disrupted the normal, been instrumental in changing laws and traditions, and deepened the understanding that we cannot end the violence without looking at all the intersecting violences: racism, capitalism, climate catastrophe, imperialism.

In the last 25 years, we have opened safe houses and the City of Joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and supported women in telling their stories and coming back into their bodies. We have stood in solidarity with communities struggling for liberation in the aftermath of Black women being murdered by the police in the US, and with women grappling with war, femicide, militarism, forced migration and resource depletion in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Congo, Haiti, Mexico, and in Indigenous communities from Brazil to South Dakota.

Most importantly, we have built a global network of gorgeous solidarity between women. These are some of our stories.

– V (formerly Eve Ensler)