The bravest thing I've done
was to stand in front of an audience
and say,
"I'm a survivor of sexual violence and human trafficking."
And I climb mountains.
I run deserts.
I broke the Guinness record for the longest triathlon.
Swimming 122 miles,
cycling 2,932 miles,
and running 735 miles.
But I have never been more afraid in my life
than that moment, the first time I said it out loud.
I hesitated so much!
As my words were leaving, I wanted to take it back.
Because I was so terrified.
But I got through.
It made me stronger and better.
Because what I wanted was to break the silence.
I do know now that it was through the silence
that all of this was possible.
Violence only thrives in silence.
When we don't talk about it.
People always say the victims have no voice.
We do have a voice! You just don't want to hear us.
You silence us.
I love being a woman.
I've always loved being a woman.
And I was a pretty little girl!
I liked wearing the pretty dresses.
I liked dressing up in my mom's high-heeled shoes,
and sneaking off to put her make-up on.
I love the tenderness,
the sensitivity,
the uniqueness of what it really means
to be a woman.
I am a woman
even if I was not born a woman.
For many women, womanhood is a gift of nature,
but for me, it was a gift I gave myself.
I am in a wheelchair, but I've fulfilled
my dream of dancing,
of feeling happy and free.
I'm a happy, strong, crazy woman.
I am a real woman.
And I think I deserve to be called a real woman.
I feel good.
It would take all day
for me to list half of the qualities I possess.
Women are not weak!
They are very strong.
People think if they're women, they're weak.
But no, women are not weak.
You're tough, because of your biology.
You're tough, because...
every month, you bleed!
You're tough, because you can bear children,
and that is not an easy thing.
You're tough, because emotionally,
you would stand a great deal.
When problems arise,
I think, if I were a man, I could fix this.
Women have to work hard.
When I'm tired, after a long day, seeing men do less,
I think, to be a man, and rest in the shade!
On any given day,
a woman is as busy as a CEO.
You have to remember 20,000 details.
In fact, you can't think of them. It has to be automatic.
"Am I properly groomed for my date tonight?
"If I do an epilation after work, I'll have red marks.
"Should've done it before.
"Last night, I should have washed my hair, too."
When you open your closet to get dressed,
it has to be work-appropriate, but comfortable,
because you're supposed to exude self-confidence.
Then you try to match bra and panties.
You can never find a pair the same color!
In the subway, you have to avoid men's eyes.
"Is he groping my ass? No. I can go out."
In the street, it's the same thing.
You get to work, after a few sexist remarks.
For your date, you have to get dressed up.
Make like you haven't had a hard day.
Like you're freshly bathed and relaxed,
even though you're not.
It's so much work!
The first time I got my period,
I was really happy,
because all my girlfriends got theirs two years before.
I was very late.
I was 15.
And so...
when I saw the toilet bowl filled with red water,
I yelled for joy to my mama:
"Ma mama!
"I finally got my period!"
I remember, I started to bleed, one evening.
I didn't tell anyone.
The next day, I woke up...
Everywhere.
My father said,
"What? Did you kill a cow?"
It looked like I killed an animal.
There was blood everywhere.
The subject was taboo.
You never spoke of it, back then.
We called sanitary napkins "biscuits."
It was simply an honor for my father
to buy me my biscuits.
All of a sudden, I had breasts.
It kind of sucked.
I had a hard time with this sexualization.
It was really unpleasant.
At the time, my sexuality wasn't very developed,
so I felt as though there was
an imbalance.
My body was very sexualized in the eyes of others.
I didn't feel ready.
Today, I still feel
like that was a traumatic experience.
When I was 10, and my body started to develop,
I hated it.
I noticed that my Dad was looking at me more.
And I became more aware that,
as my body was developing,
he was taking more interest in me.
I used to try to flatten my boobs.
And I cut off all my hair. It was very long,
and I got it cut off like Madonna at the time.
My mother cried at the hairdresser's,
but I wanted it all hacked off.
When I look back now, I think it was
to take away any feminine parts of me.
The boobs kept growing. My body kept developing.
By the time I was 13,
my father was treating me like a girlfriend.
And from 13 to 18,
there wasn't a day that passed that he didn't...
sexually abuse me in some way.
At least once a day.
He'd bring me anywhere he was going in the car,
if he was going on a visit anywhere.
When my mother went to work, I was grounded.
My friends wondered what was going on.
He wanted me to be constantly in the house.
I had short hair until...
I was in my 30s before I let it grow.
I tried everything to... just turn him off.
I was 5 years old.
I was a happy little girl.
My parents are against cutting.
They always have been.
So this woman came to excise me
without my parents' knowledge.
We went into the room.
There were little girls on the ground.
They were screaming.
There were elderly women.
Three of them, in the room.
Before I understood what was happening,
they grabbed me.
They threw me onto the ground,
pushed me next to the other girls.
I didn't understand what they were going to do.
They put me in front of a hole
about the size of a coffee cup.
They raised my dress,
and held me firmly on the ground.
They spread my legs.
I told the lady,
"Please don't hurt me.
"Please don't hurt me."
But they didn't listen.
They did not listen.
I remember the shrieking of the other girls.
I also remember
the smell of blood.
The smell of the soil wet with blood.
Then one woman took a blade,
and she cut me.
The worst pain I've ever felt in my life.
I didn't understand what she had cut.
Then it was over.
A lot of blood. A lot of silence.
A lot of taboos.
A great indifference.
They didn't let go. They persisted.
They ripped it out,
what they were supposed to take.
This...
This little bit
of my flesh.
"Why?" I asked the only person who spoke freely,
my uncle.
It was a few days later. He said,
"Because you are a girl."
It seems that a girl is not like a boy.
A girl...
I don't know.
Maybe I think so because I've had two daughters.
But...
Girls have to be well-equipped
to survive all that will happen to them later.
Yes. Being a woman is...
I think you go through phases.
More phases than if you are a boy.
As a woman,
what I've noticed occasionally
is my vulnerability,
this physical weakness I had,
compared to a man.
A man can...
attack me,
follow me in the subway,
talk to me as if I were less than nothing.
Weakness is what scares me.
If I get into a taxi,
I have to count the women in the taxi,
to make sure I balance out.
If there are as many women as men,
then it means I'm safe.
If there are more men than women,
it might potentially mean I'm in danger.
If I'm walking down a street,
I have to walk a certain way,
because if I walk a certain way and I'm too sexy,
then my sexy might bring on somebody
who wants to grab my sexy and make it theirs.
So the difficult moment
for me now is just
having a female body.
I just have one suggestion
for every woman, for their daughters too:
they must learn that they can physically defend themselves.
I remember bringing my granddaughters and my daughter
to one of my boxing practices.
In front of the punching bag, I said,
"Go ahead and hit it.
"Imagine you have to defend yourselves and hit it."
Their first reaction was...
I said, "No!
"Hit it!"
Men are often wrongly judged.
A man is blamed for the behavior he displays to us.
Ask where it comes from.
People forget that behind every man,
there's a woman who raised him,
telling him he's king of the world, and women must serve him.
Even now, children are raised that way.
People forget that behind each man,
there's a father who raised him,
who allowed him to yell at his mother, to speak insolently,
and to treat her disrespectfully.
So he thinks that is how you treat women.
I don't just blame women.
I blame this macho society,
for constantly reminding me I'm a woman.
It won't let me forget I'm a woman.
And it constantly reminds the man he's a man,
and has to prove it to everyone else.
If I were a man, this is what I'd do:
I'd write bibles,
I'd make it so you can't work,
I'd be making it so that you can't read,
can't vote.
Can't get an abortion,
can't have a baby unless I say so.
Can't take care of the baby once you have it.
Can't do a lot of shit.
If I were a man, these are the things that I would do,
to control that which is more powerful than me
and what I can't understand.
I, Anita, was born into a family of 8.
In this family, I am the sixth.
My father told us, he told me,
he could not endow us with an inheritance.
Instead, he endowed us with schooling.
"Don't neglect your schooling, or you'll regret it."
I thought it was a joke.
But if I'm alive today, and here with you,
speaking into your mic,
in front of you people listening to me,
it's because I studied.
That's how I became the woman I am today.
When I learned to write my name,
I was very happy.
I rolled around with joy, I danced, I laughed.
I yelled for joy.
"Lord! Now I, too, can write my name!"
I was so happy that day,
I didn't even eat.
I was full of joy.
In my room, I wrote my name. "Jeanne."
And again. "Jeanne."
And again. "Jeanne." Over and over.
I wrote it again and again on the paper
The second word I learned to write was "Mama."
I was so happy,
I wanted to die of joy.
I was always writing "Jeanne" and "Mama."
I was so happy.
There was no kindergarten in rural areas.
I started primary school when I was 6 or 7.
And I loved school.
When I was in 6th grade, my family was poor,
and the nine years of free education didn't exist yet.
School was hard for my family to afford.
Then, one day, my mother hinted
that if my brother was admitted to secondary school,
I wouldn't be able to continue.
And then...
If I'd wept and protested then,
my mother might have given in.
Actually, I've told this story several times,
but each time, it makes me so sad that I cry.
The happiest day
was when I graduated from Harvard University.
Oh, my gosh! I got that diploma,
I did invite my husband and family on the stage with me.
And the dean allowed it to happen.
And that feeling of getting that diploma,
Harvard Kennedy School of Government,
was the best!
Here I was,
an African-American woman.
There were only five black women in our class.
And that included our sister from Kenya!
There were only five of us.
And we all had kids.
And we all received our diploma.
What a moment!
The thing I said after that was, "And I don't type."
Because when I was 14 years old, at my first job,
and when I went to work
for my husband and my family for graduate school,
the question was, "Can you type?"
When I got that Harvard degree,
I said, "And we don't type."
The first time I got a card with my name on it...
Yeah, I was really happy.
The first time I went to withdraw money,
I didn't believe it.
I had to withdraw everything, look at my money,
and again go inside the bank
and put the money in the bank again!
Can I tell you the first day I went to work?
My husband still lived at home, because he had no place to go.
We were already separated, as a couple.
And the first day of work,
he got up at the same time that I did.
He saw me and said, "Where are you going?"
"First of all, it's none of your business.
"But I'm going to work."
I told him I was going to work.
And my husband was so surprised!
Like, "Who gave you a job?"
Not "Where did you find a job?" No.
"Who gave you a job?"
He thought that nobody would hire me.
I said, "I found a job with Mrs. Sarah,
"and I'm working as a cake decorator."
Just to see that shock in his face...
Just that alone was worth it.
It was good that he was still at home to see that.
When I went to work in Spain,
far from my family, it's incredible...
All month, you hear nothing from your family.
But at the end of the month, the telephone rings.
The husbands call because they need your money.
Even if they say, "Don't send all the money,"
you send it.
You don't want your children to lack anything.
At least, your money makes up for your fault,
your absence.
So you send it.
My daughters ask for yogurts, not sneakers.
Yogurt or a loaf of bread:
that's a strain on our budget.
I remember a touching moment,
a few months ago.
I was in the car with my older daughter.
She saw me shed a tear.
"Mom, what's wrong?"
I told her, "I can't manage.
"I'm fighting every day.
"I've had so many jobs.
"I've worked so hard.
"And now I'm fighting a disease.
"I'm fighting to buy food. I'm overwhelmed."
She hugged me. "Mom, I trust you. You'll make it."
It's her support that keeps me going.
The sacrifices that I made
choosing to be on Wall Street, writing a book,
doing workshops, were significant.
I gave up school plays.
I gave up family picnics.
I gave up doing homework with my sons.
I gave up going to college weekends.
I gave up knowing myself.
I gave up doing things that I liked,
as opposed to what everybody else liked.
I gave up men who wanted long-term relationships
instead of a night or a weekend away.
I gave up
playing in the garden.
I gave up having a dog I wanted desperately.
I gave up taking long baths at night.
And I...
I gave up making memories
with a lot of people that I should have made memories with.
I love everything about sex.
I love kissing.
I love petting.
I love penetrations.
Actually, what I love is the freedom
to make all sorts of different connections,
every time.
So I love the creativity
that sex releases.
And it makes me alive.
When I'm penetrated, for example,
I feel totally fulfilled, in all of my potential.
I feel myself become an animal-woman.
I feel like
a she-wolf, a lioness.
I feel strong and powerful.
What I like best is when we lie together,
and this stuff comes out of his penis
and enters my body.
I feel as though it is the vitamin of my life.
I feel satisfied when it is bombarding the inside of me.
It's as if I were in Paradise.
There are no barriers, because we love each other.
And I am very much in love.
It really is Paradise.
With my co-workers...
Women, of course.
I wouldn't talk to a man about my sexuality,
I've said that, sometimes.
I've said how I feel.
"You don't care.
"You go home, you've got a man."
Not that I'm obsessed with sex.
That's not what I mean.
But it's important to feel your womanhood,
to feel loved.
I'll tell you quite frankly
that the older I get,
the more I miss it.
There was a time... Is it because...
I think it must be that way for all mothers.
We're focused on our children's education.
Training them for life.
Afterwards, when they start to leave the nest,
you begin to realize you're alone.
And that's when you realize you miss it.
When we make love,
he starts.
Always.
He kisses me,
he caresses me,
he kisses my forehead,
sometimes he kisses me more here...
Sometimes he wants to nibble on me,
but I tell him to go easy, that I'm too old
to go around with a hickey on my neck.
I won't tell you.
Oh, God.
Oh, my God.
Okay. The first time I had sex...
I can't remember his name.
I know that's really bad, but I can't.
We were, like, 16 years old.
He was incredibly awkward.
Me, now, would never, ever fuck him.
But back then, I thought,
"You've got to lose your virginity at some point!"
He's, like, "Do you want to watch porn?"
And he opens a beer, and I say, "Not really."
He drank half a beer, and so did I.
He says, "I'm wasted!"
and starts making out with me.
I was, like, "Oh, my God! Is this what sex is?"
So, you know, we start doin' it,
and I really didn't understand
why everyone says it's painful.
I found out later that he had a really small penis.
They tell you...
They describe what it's like to make love.
But when you see
the man's enormous penis, and it's...
perpendicular to his body, it's a little scary.
You wonder, "Is that whole thing going to fit
"inside my organ?"
I think porn has been very bad for us.
It makes men think
that if they touch you,
or if they lick your clitoris like this...
you'll come in a minute, and it's not true.
Sex play has to progress gradually
before you feel good.
They start saying,
"You like that, don't you?"
And I'm, like...
"Please go more slowly?"
But they think they're in a porno film,
so they want sex to be fast and intense.
And really, that doesn't get me off at all.
What I like is when it's slow
and gentle, then gradually, faster and faster,
and then slow again...
It's not "I'll bang you fast and you'll love it."
When they have sex, lots of men imagine
they're in a porn movie.
But those girls are actresses.
It's not real!
Actually,
I was able to really explore my sexuality
with women.
It's true that you can explore it with men too,
but we have to explain it to them.
They don't have the same sensitivities, they're not curious.
Few men want to learn more about women's bodies.
When I'm with a woman,
my body is like an open book.
Only a woman knows how to read it perfectly.
Physically,
at first,
I was surprised that it worked.
I explored things,
like my clitoris.
I figured out how it worked, what excited it.
I didn't always have an orgasm
from a penis.
There's not only the penis,
you can use fingers,
the tongue, the vagina.
Anything's possible.
I began understanding my body better
when I started having sexual relations with women.
One day, he was making love to me.
He touched my clitoris with his penis.
And I screamed.
I said, "I feel things in my mind.
"As if I were in another world."
And he said, "No, you have reached orgasm."
So I was happy.
After that, when we were having sex,
he made sure I reached orgasm.
Even today, if we have sexual intercourse...
He doesn't breathe until I've reached orgasm.
I don't know what it is.
One day, I heard about it on television.
I didn't understand. They were talking about orgasms.
One woman said
she had had kids but didn't know what an orgasm was.
Never had one.
They made love, but without any pleasure.
That's what I understood.
If somebody was to ask me
what was the most beautiful moment in my life...
There were many.
But most of all is the moment
I had my first orgasm.
And I actually thought
my head was going to lift off.
And I didn't know what was happening to me.
I ran to the bathroom
and sat on the side of the bath,
thinking this was a brain hemorrhage,
because it was just, "Whew!"
And now I know,
but it wasn't funny when it was happening,
you know, I didn't realize
what I'd been missing out on!
For all those years!
You know, and...
Such is life. Ignorance is a terrible thing.
But it was wonderful!
I got engaged last evening,
and I'm pretty excited about it!
Because...
I'm 58 years old,
and I had said, a couple years ago, "Never again men."
No. I don't need any man.
I do not need a man.
I don't want a man.
I'm done.
To heck with love. It's not for me.
I'll just be a rancher all my life. Fine.
Well, things changed.
You find somebody who is just perfect for you.
And you fall in love,
And everything flows,
just like I was talking about.
Everything works right. Everything's easy!
Work is easy! Everything happens so wonderfully.
And then he asked me.
First he asked my dad.
And then he asked me to marry him.
And I said yes.
People talk about love at first sight, and I don't know if it was.
But the first time I saw Rachel, I felt like I met
the person that I was supposed to be with for the rest of my life.
And I had never felt that way before.
I really was in love with her.
And what that means is
there was this person
who is passionate and loving,
and a little crazy at times,
and beautiful,
and we just connected and we can talk
about things that I've never been able to talk to anybody before about.
There's just this sense
of being at one with somebody,
but,
also being yourself.
There's not a better feeling in the world than that.
And it took me to 48 years old to find that out.
On my wedding day,
the dress I wore
had ruffles on the skirt.
I wore a pretty blouse, sewn onto a skirt
with ruffles all around it.
I looked pretty as a picture,
with my bosom...
I wasn't really beautiful,
but it was enough for me.
People would say, "What a beauty Gena has found!"
And I was out-of-this-world happy,
with this handsome boy standing next to me.
He had brown hair and arching black eyebrows.
He was so handsome,
I was dazzled, and couldn't see anyone,
not even my parents.
That's how I loved him.
It's impossible for words to express my love.
He died 13 years ago, but I still love him.
I remember him, and live on that.
That's how I loved him.
I don't know if it's a sin to love like that.
I cannot tell you. How I loved him.
So very much.
Married men...
Married men feel entitled.
They typically bring home the bacon,
and they feel like they should get dessert on the side,
without their wife knowing.
And that's what they do.
They pay for it, and that's their justification.
I infer that...
losing something financially
helps pay off the guilt
they feel about cheating on their partner.
But they are cheating, and they don't have the balls to tell.
One married man explained it to me recently.
He said, "I could tell her.
"I think she'd understand.
"But she might also leave with 50%.
"And I don't want to disrupt the unit."
As a sex worker, I'm okay with that.
Treat me with respect. Let's have a good time. No problem.
But I certainly am disillusioned
about the institution of marriage.
I will have no part of it.
I will never get married.
Never!
I found out that he was...
I had strong suspicions that he was...
that my husband at the time was seeing prostitutes.
I found a prostitute's business card in his wallet!
I didn't even know prostitutes had business cards.
So even that was quite a shock.
I confronted him,
and he said it was for a friend.
That was really...
Honestly...
Case closed.
It was hard, I remember...
It was as if my world had collapsed,
as if I'd lost the strength in my legs.
I knew there was prostitution in Thailand.
I knew it was culturally acceptable.
But I never thought it would happen to me. Why us?
Impossible!
But we're not special, after all.
We're just normal.
So it happened to me.
The thing that worries my mother
is that if I don't get married, and have a child,
there won't be anyone to take care of me.
If my parents die, I will be alone.
She's afraid there won't be anyone
to take care of me.
But in the future,
in this society...
Actually, I'm not really worried.
I think Artificial Intelligence will develop.
By the time I am old, a robot will take care of me.
Nonni was a year and 8 months old
when I began caring for her.
At that time, I knew
she was the child
I would never be able to bear myself.
I took care of her and cuddled her and treasured her.
I gave her all the love I had.
All I had.
Because God had given me a child
I could take care of.
I can live without a man.
But not without these children.
Because all I wanted in life
was to become a mother, and it wasn't possible.
But now I have these two kids,
I'll always take care of them.
Even if it's hard.
The vision you have, with your legs up,
is pretty frightening.
And the doctor is facing you,
and can see all your organs,
it's really disgusting, incredibly disgusting.
And they tell you, "Spread your legs, go ahead!"
And you're, like, "How?"
"When you feel a blow, yell and push!"
When I had my first child, Emily,
I said to myself, "Oh, my God!
"I've produced a human being. I am Superwoman!
"I can do anything, now that I've had a baby!"
That didn't last very long.
That was the high of the oxytocin hormones
just after giving birth.
I wish I could keep that Superwoman
forever, but unfortunately,
it fades away with the hormonal boost.
But seriously when she was born,
I could take on the world.
I just could take on the world.
After I had my child,
the attitude of my in-laws and husband changed.
He was our first child, the first grandchild on my side.
My son was the center of all the attention.
They called me "Empty Shell,"
and told me to feed my son.
I began to doubt my purpose in life.
I wondered why I had studied, if all I did was bear a child.
It felt like I was just a channel for DNA.
I went through a period in my life where joy mixed with sorrow.
Having a handicapped child is proof, to me,
of a mother's infinite love.
This child made me understand
how much a mother's love
is something...
That's it.
Usually, when you love someone,
he returns your love,
and that's the reward you want, in a way.
I've loved this child with all my heart since the beginning.
I love someone who doesn't often look at me.
He's not affectionate. He doesn't talk to me.
He doesn't cuddle or hug me.
And I love him.
Around the clock, wherever you are, whatever you do,
you're obsessed by what's up with your children.
And trying to make sure that you keep the connection,
the presence in their life.
Sometimes, they don't want you
to be so present in their lives.
So you have to fight to occupy that space
and to be with them.
You can never be done with a mother's work.
It's one of the jobs you'll have for the rest of your life.
You have to be an ATM, a social worker...
You have to be a lawyer.
A punching bag, sometimes.
Everything, every role
comes with that role of being a mother.
At the same time, you have to be the strong leader
that your job demands of you.
Again, multitasking!
I have friends
whose burning desire from a very young age
is to have a baby of their own, to have children.
And I also have a friend who once said,
"I'd rather die than not have children.
"If I can't be a mother,
"I would probably not have a good life."
I never had such a feeling.
I never felt such a deep desire.
And so I decided early on.
As...
my "ovary expiration date" was catching up,
like mid-30s, late 30s, 40s,
of course I kept thinking about it.
Even when I got married,
of course I kept thinking about it.
To this day, I keep thinking about it.
"What if, what if not?
"How will life change?"
My husband has expressed desire.
Maybe he wants to have one.
You never know.
When I was 15, I got married.
Or I was married off, so to speak.
I had my first daughter when I was 16.
When I was 17, the second was born.
At age 18, I had another girl.
At 18 or 19...
When I was 20, I had my fourth, a boy.
And at 23, my fifth, a girl.
Why did I have so many? In just a few years?
Because my parents never talked to me about birth control.
My mother taught me
that if a man touched me, I'd get pregnant.
My husband never let me use contraception.
He said it was up to him to decide
when I should be pregnant or not.
Have I ever had an abortion? No.
Yes. I had an abortion when I was 24.
And I went to Manchester,
to have the abortion,
because it's illegal.
It's not legal in Ireland.
And our government won't make it legal,
based on religious grounds.
The 8th Amendment was brought in to protect the fetus,
and the female, supposedly,
while taking away her right to choose.
So because of that law (abolished in 2018),
I had to leave my own country
and travel abroad to have an abortion.
I don't regret the abortion.
I made the right decision for me at the time.
And I feel if I had not made that decision,
my life would be different now.
I got pregnant for the fourth time in 1995.
At the time, the family planning law was very strict.
I had to have an abortion.
It hurt, and I was sad.
I had no choice. I had an abortion.
My husband came to the clinic with me.
I was hospitalized
for one month.
Physically, my health was fine.
But inside, I was devastated.
It's terrible for a mother
to have an abortion after 8 months of pregnancy.
The local officials and their superiors
forced me to have an abortion.
It's really weird, losing that value.
of not being a mother, and not being a family.
Fuck! I really think that's tough.
'Cause who are you?
Who are you then?
It's one of the big questions.
If you're not a mother,
if you don't have a family,
then who the fuck are you, as a woman?
I have to find out, now.
I took my first maternity leave with full confidence.
I didn't give a single thought
to the impact it might have on my career.
I was an excellent employee. It was all fine.
No reason to worry.
When I went back to work was when I woke up.
One of my bosses told me explicitly
"You are a good employee, but you don't realize
"how much this baby will change your life. Wait and see."
He was warning me about something I wasn't going through.
"We can't rely on you unless you prove yourself."
At that point,
instead of being brave,
I was just paralyzed.
Paralyzed, flabbergasted.
I was speechless.
To myself, I said,
"So that's how women know it's over for them."
One of my co-workers inspired me to bounce back.
He saw I was upset.
I told him what had been said during the meeting.
And he was the one who got indignant. I was just paralyzed.
He told me he was indignant. He said,
"This is nonsense. It's disgusting."
This man was the one
who stirred up
my anger about the unfairness.
Otherwise...
I'd accepted my verdict.
The challenge I met in my career, when I was younger,
was to see that, very often,
men who were less competent than I, and I say it humbly,
were promoted to higher positions than mine.
At first, I thought it was discouraging,
and unfair.
Finally, I decided
to go on the offensive.
And to observe how they did it.
What did they do, to succeed?
Without adopting masculine behavior,
I made some changes
in the way I acted in relation to a boss
or my co-workers.
I learned to assert myself,
to make my voice and my ideas heard, in meetings.
I wanted to be heard,
and appointed to head projects.
Finally, I wanted my womanhood to be invisible,
to avoid all the vague suspicions about my skills.
Women have to work twice as hard to prove themselves,
before they manage to get the promotion.
I'll tell you my greatest pride
when I left my position as executive VP
of Canada's biggest medical assessment firm.
The CFO resigned at the same time I did.
He revealed my salary to the board. I don't know why.
But the funniest part was
the predominantly male board discovered I had the highest pay.
It caused a big fuss,
whereas someone always has to have the highest pay!
But in this case, it was a woman!
I realized I'd played my cards right.
I hadn't known, before. I was happy to learn it, on leaving.
I was in Casablanca, which is a big city of 3.5 million.
I decided to run in the legislative elections.
There were incredible scenes, when I campaigned.
People looked at me as if I were an extraterrestrial.
They called friends: "Come see!
"A woman candidate! Come see!"
I was really breaking a taboo.
After that, I continued to run.
I was never elected. There were zero women MPs.
I ran once more, and again, and again...
Six more races.
Finally, the 7th time I ran, in 1997,
21 years after the first time,
I was elected to city council.
One of the 0.34% of female city council members.
It took obstinacy. I've got that.
I was appointed minister.
Most of the meetings where major decisions are made
are held at night.
And as a mother,
as a married woman,
it was complicated for me
to arrange to stay late into the night
to express opinions and vote
on the policies to adopt for the country.
But I decided I wanted to prove to everyone,
and to women, in the first place, to encourage them,
that it's not a miracle. Yes, women can.
Alongside men, we can.
Or perhaps, men alongside women,
we can succeed together.
I did it. I succeeded, with the other women.
There were four women cabinet members.
All four of us were there
even if the meeting was held at 1 AM.
We stayed.
To prove our commitment even more,
I served as the spokesperson.
That is, after the meeting,
I had to draft a report on all that was said,
point out key statements,
and broadcast it to the public on radio and TV,
in the name of the government.
I discovered I enjoyed politics.
I feel that, as a woman,
I can do something to change the world, tomorrow.
When I was 18, my parents married me to a 52-year-old man.
Of course, I didn't want to.
So they gave me an ultimatum:
either I married him, or I died.
My parents would kill me, or I'd kill myself, my mother said.
"Drink bleach. That will kill you."
A few days went by.
I ended up accepting,
because my choices were limited.
The choice they gave me.
The first night, I didn't want to sleep with him.
The second night,
I forced myself to sleep with him,
because my mother
came and peeked through the shutters.
And actually...
Actually, I let him do it,
with a pillow over my face.
It was like a rape.
It wasn't "like" a rape. I felt I'd been raped.
I felt...
Besides the fact that this man...
was penetrating me
against my will,
my whole family was raping me at the same time.
Because I had the impression, and I was right,
that everyone conspired against me.
Everyone was conniving. Everyone knew.
In my eyes, everyone was screwing me.
Some girls kill themselves, or drown themselves in the river.
I tried to drown myself.
The river was so deep.
People saved me, swimming,
holding me above the river.
I wanted a change.
I wanted to marry by choice.
I wanted to change forced marriage.
I got married at the age of two.
My life has been destroyed.
Look at my husband.
I didn't choose him. I didn't love him.
I didn't know anything about marriage.
I didn't rejoice at my wedding.
I didn't know the rituals.
I didn't know anything.
Why is getting married so important?
I could have stayed here and lived my life.
I ask the world, why do they force us to marry?
A man who throws acid on his wife?
What country could be so barbaric?
What law is this?
What tradition is this?
To be burned with acid...
In your sleep, even.
To burn someone with acid because of a dowry,
it's evil!
It happens in India all the time, every hour, every day.
Why not put an end to it?
Is an incomplete dowry a reason to burn someone?
Are husbands really that petty-minded?
There was no sign
that warned me
of what was coming next,
which was a huge blow to my face.
He stopped the car and gave me
a huge blow in my face.
And I was so shocked.
It had never happened to me before!
I was so shocked that all I could do
was turn to him and ask, "What?"
And as I turned, and asked "What?"...
"Are you beating me?"
It was just, "What?"
And the next blow comes.
Straight into my right eye.
And the right eye just goes black.
One day, a slap.
The first slap.
Of course, I slapped him back, because...
I may have been a beaten woman for eight years, but...
I hit him, too. I defended myself.
From the first slap, it escalated to two, and then...
a slap and a shove.
Next came the punches.
Once we crossed the line to punches,
there were no limits.
When I told him, "That's enough,
"this has become unlivable,
"never again,"
was when I saw him suffocating my daughter.
That's when I said, "Enough!
"I wasn't born to live this.
"I can't permit it."
I couldn't permit him to destroy my children's lives.
He'd already destroyed mine.
He had destroyed my dream of being a mother,
of being a wife,
of having a family.
I wanted only one family, and he destroyed it.
I could no longer permit it.
When I went to the police station,
the police believed my husband's lies,
that I had lovers,
and confiscated my phone.
The police officer said to me,
"Madam, you have many lovers."
I answered, "Really? Where?"
He pointed to men's numbers.
A carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, a painter.
Some architects... What else?
I am an interior designer.
I run a business.
These aren't my boyfriends!
The officer asked how long we'd been married.
"21 years."
The police officer said:
"Madam, you should try harder.
"You have to make sacrifices."
I told him, "I can't make any sacrifices.
"My children's lives and my own are in danger."
I never had a bruise or broken bone.
But what he would do, like the first time,
he'd punch through the wall, break a window,
smash things, throw things at me,
or push me.
Or if we were in the car, he was the one driving,
he would speed up to 100 mph,
then slam on the brake, to send me flying.
I lived in fear,
with the certainty that he was eventually going to kill me.
And, unfortunately,
when I went to my family, his family, and the rabbis,
and the Orthodox Jewish community to ask for help,
they didn't see it as domestic violence. They asked,
"Where did he hit you?
"He didn't hit you?
"So then, why are you complaining?
"What's the problem?"
Until yesterday, I was known
only to the man who attacked me,
but today, the whole world knows me.
I could never have imagined this,
but in this society
that placed great value on the face,
I have been able to change the attitude about it.
Because I began to love my face.
And I understood
that the face is not that important.
If it was, I wouldn't be here today.
I started to love myself.
I put my life back together all by myself.
I learned how to live with this face.
My mother explained it to me,
and I did it, to be beautiful.
I had my lips pierced.
We do this because we are women.
Men don't need to make themselves beautiful.
We women
pierce the corners of our lips
in order to be beautiful.
I am the way I am. I don't want to be different.
Each person has personal beliefs.
Some people like social appearances and beauty.
I like to be natural.
That's why I don't wear lipstick. Did you notice?
The only make-up I wear is a little bit of kohl.
I'm proud of myself. I look, and say, "But I'm beautiful!
"Why do I have doubts?"
When I dress up, I feel feminine.
I make myself attractive.
I like to be looked at.
I like to be looked at, and told that I'm beautiful.
I like to be reassured.
For example, I had boobs made for myself.
I had threads put in my face,
to make the contours more beautiful.
I had collagen injected
in my cheeks and lips,
and botox in my forehead.
I feel perfectly fine.
And I'm proud
to have obtained this
thanks to my work.
Now I can create myself just as I please.
The appearance I have pleases me, not other people.
Being in harmony with yourself
is the key.
Somehow, at the same time, I show up in rooms
with professional confidence,
wondering is everyone looking at me
and thinking about how unattractive I am.
Or about how fat I am and how my dress is too tight.
And I'm constantly comparing myself physically
to other women,
and thinking, would I be more respected,
would people enjoy seeing me speak more
if I looked differently?
It's a dark part
of how I view myself.
Now that my husband is gone,
though he loved my body, loved me the way I was,
he always desired me, he...
Through our 25-year marriage, he made me aware of his desire,
the love he had for me, as I was.
And what I was physically... All that I was.
Really, all of me.
Now that he's gone, the great difficulty,
and I'm not an exception,
is figuring out how I'll be able to love myself.
That's it. How do you love yourself
if no one admires you?
It's hard to figure out.
Since he died, I feel ugly.
It's crazy!
I had delegated this man,
because I loved him, and we were happy,
I had delegated him....
to be the keeper of my image.
I trusted him with that.
He was the key to my own self-image.
But I didn't know it.
Now that he's gone, I realize it,
but I didn't know.
When I had cancer, last year,
I lost all my hair in two weeks.
They tell you it'll fall out in 16 days, and it does.
All my hair everywhere fell out.
Then I lost my eyebrows and eyelashes.
When you're in the bathroom,
even when they warn you, and you do this...
and then...
Your whole head of hair comes off
in your hands!
You're bald except for three hairs.
It's atrocious.
I rushed to the barber to have the rest shaved off.
The paradoxical thing
is that being bald restored my femininity.
Cancer enabled me to take care of myself,
to moisturize my face,
to spend time in the bathroom
putting on cream and make-up.
I didn't do that much, before.
I was too busy with work, commuting, the kids...
this, that, the activities, and on and on.
I didn't spend any time putting on make-up
or taking care of my skin.
Nothing!
Suddenly, I had entire days to spend on self-care.
Applying creams, trying on wigs - blonde or brunette...
Changing my scarf, putting on mascara -
when I still had eyelashes!
Or putting on false lashes,
or eyebrow pencil and lipstick.
I was beautiful!
Old age is wicked. It sneaks up on you.
You think you're young, you run and jump,
but suddenly your legs won't cooperate.
One day, you wake up and look
at the skin on your arm.
Not that it's sagging.
It's all wrinkled! Like an accordion!
You can do without that kind of music,
and its accordion.
The morning I first noticed the wrinkles,
I cried.
An old lady!
I don't want to get old.
I want to be pretty, not old and ugly.
I wondered, "Am I pretty?"
Youth is beautiful.
My cheeks are all wrinkled,
my vision isn't clear anymore,
and my skin hangs on my bones.
I'm drying up.
My hair is white.
All my teeth have fallen out.
I'm toothless.
I have lost all of my beauty.
Yet everybody calls me pretty grandmother.
God gave me a gift:
to reach this age, and see what it looks like,
to see the physical expression of old age.
And it's good!
I saw myself as a 15-year-old beauty,
as a 30-year-old beauty,
and now as a 60-year-old beauty.
It's fine.
I'm not an old lady.
I'm getting older, but I'm not an old lady yet.
When I remember when it was happening to me,
when I was in the hands of ISIS,
it's terribly painful for me, and I can't believe it.
I always tell myself it was a nightmare,
something that happened, and now it's in the past.
I just can't comprehend that in our times,
in the 21st century, such a thing,
the sale of women and girls, the massacre of men,
happened to me.
At that time, in that year,
it was in 2014,
how could that possibly occur?
How could we have been sold?
I simply cannot make myself believe it.
What happened to humanity,
for that to be done to women,
for that to be done to me?
The first time I was sold,
I had no idea what that meant.
They put us all together,
and separated the virgins from the rest.
Men who wanted a girl took her by the hand and led her away.
We didn't know how much we were sold for.
We were on display in a room, on the outside.
They traded us for 5 dollars,
or a pack of cigarettes,
or we were given away.
It was very difficult to realize.
I didn't know where I was being taken, how they would treat me,
any of that.
I had never heard in my life
that a girl could be bought or sold.
One day,
the guards came.
I mean, one of the ISIS guards.
He took a little 9-year-old girl.
He took her
upstairs with him.
He started raping her.
She was screaming.
How could we stop it?
There we were, 30 women,
listening to the screams of a 9-year-old child,
and we couldn't say a thing.
I was 19 years old.
One evening, coming home from the market
at about 5 PM,
I ran into armed rebels
from the Raia Mutomboki militia.
They captured us and took us into the forest.
They started to kill
the women who refused to lie with them.
I was terrified.
They raped me,
but they didn't stop at that.
They took a knife and put it inside my vagina.
They even thrust the knife inside me.
Then they put grasses in my anus.
I felt horrible!
I was afraid to say I'd been raped.
A month later, I was pregnant.
I was able to get an abortion.
Unfortunately,
the effects of that abortion
are still with me, even four years later.
We are respectable women, but they soiled us.
Now, no one is going to marry us.
Who'd marry a woman who was raped?
So, we remain single.
No one wants to marry us.
People say, "The military raped those women."
Now we are rotten stuff,
and that is my greatest pain.
Do I need to
tickle your empathic sensors for you to realize
the extremity of what I'm going through?
Do I need to cry or kill myself
for you to realize
the madness of what goes through my head?
Do I need to...
be sensitive to your ears
because you can't handle hearing
what I went through?
What we are going through?
What we are continuing to go through?
I have to say it as it is.
It's not...
It's not my reality alone.
It's a reality of many millions of women
everywhere.
And we have to be sensitive about how we talk about this.
Oh, it's a shame. Don't tell anyone.
I'm here to tell all of you
I'm no longer going to wear this coat of shame.
I'm no longer gonna be quiet
because it's embarrassing.
Because it's dangerous.
No.
Maximum respect to all women,
regardless of race color, ethnicity,
kinky hair or straight.
Women deserve respect.
Woman.
Strong.
Always.
I am proud to be a woman.
I am a strong woman.
I am a determined woman.
Decided,
and super simpatica.
I am a resolute woman.
I am a woman who does men's work.
Full of hope.
I'm an ordinary woman.
I am a persistent woman.
I'm a courageous woman.
I'm a clever granny!
I am a powerful woman.
I'm a warrior woman.
I'm a daring woman.
A feminist.
Woman of action.
A fighter.
Fearless.
Demanding.
Life-loving.
Dynamic.
Joyful.
Heroic.
Free.
I can be subversive. I say even God
must have been a woman.
And women must get busy and claim their place.
Why wait until it's given to us?
We beg, "Give us a place!"
I say, "Why are you asking to be given a place?"
Why are you waiting to be given seats in the Parliament?
"Give us, please!"
I say, "Take it!"
I took my place,
and no one will ever take it away from me.