I Read “The Apology” So You Don’t Have To

Eve Ensler’s new book is horrific and profound

Finishing The Apology this morning felt a little like getting my last chemotherapy treatment years ago. Going through it was important to my survival, but I was tremendously relieved when it was done.

In this slim tome of 112 pages, Ensler brings her dead father to life so he can apologize for destroying her childhood (and poisoning her adulthood) with sexual and physical abuse. She writes the book in his voice, which is the tricky part. He does some explaining, which sounds a bit like justifying. So instead of delivering a simple and satisfying story of retribution, smashing evil forces, the book almost gently uncovers the human flaws and failings and twisted attempts to feel love that promulgate molestation.

This is nauseating.

This needs to be done.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t want to list the statistics you’ve already read a thousand times. Women are constantly being sexually and physically abused by men the world over. It has to stop.

And imagining some superhero swinging in to crush evil is silly and childish and ineffective. The roots of the problem must be examined and understood. Like scientists, we have to look closely to figure out what’s causing the plague to put an end to it. We have to look.

I have secrets I would never write down or whisper, let alone publish in a book. I’m guessing most people are the same. But Ensler tells her shameful secrets bravely. Perhaps that’s why she was named one of the 150 Women Who Changed the World by Newsweek and one of the 100 Most Influential Women by the Guardian.

Ensler’s influence exploded after writing The Vagina Monologues in 1996. The content of that play is ever changing, as diverse women from around the world enlist to talk about “consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, direct and indirect encounters with reproduction, vaginal care, menstrual periods, sex work, and several other topics,” according to the Wikipedia entry on VM.

Ensler has been helping women ever since.

Buffeted by the profits from the play, she founded V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls; One Billion Rising, a non-profit whose goals are the same; and co-founded the City of Joy, a center for women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I first heard about The Apology on this podcast in which she is interviewed by bookseller Mitchell Kaplan and makes the connection between the sexual and physical abuse of women and the toxic patriarchal system which is about to kill our world.

In the podcast, Ensler posits that if men could learn to apologize — learn to value the vulnerable, and emotional, and loving sides of themselves — we could perhaps save the planet and begin to thrive.

In the book, her father speaks from the gray void of limbo, where he’s been spinning since his death 31 years before. “My father, Hyman, is here and his father and his and on and on. Fathers who wreaked their merciless havoc on the world,” he tells his daughter, Eve.

“A chain of generals, conquerors, CEOs, con men, tyrants, thieves, exploiters of every kind and fools. They die and die here again for all eternity. These are my fathers. These are the men. Allegiance our highest calling. Obedience outweighs logic, morality, or sense.”

The historic men try to call Ensler’s father away from his task. They scorn his apology, seeing it as a threat to male dominance in the world.

“Each admission here defies a blood vow determined long before my birth. An apologist is a traitor of the highest order. How many men, how many fathers ever admit to failures or offenses? The act itself is a betrayal of the basic code…Our silence is our bond,” Ensler’s father explains.

Yet the status quo that people fight so hard to preserve scars us all. In training boys to be patriarchs, feckless parents and reckless society rob them of their capacity for joy, love, tenderness, wonder...

“And what, you ask, is a life without wonder? It is drab and dreary. It is one of imposed certainty and compulsory routine. It is devoid of splendor and excitement with a bolted doorway to astonishment,” Ensler’s father tells her in the book.

This book, the #MeToo Movement, and all the women running for president suggest we are in the midst of change. It’s about time — time to stop training boys to be patriarchs. For humanity’s sake and for the sake of our planet, let’s train all children to be human beings instead.

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