Marily’s acceptance speech at the KQED Women’s History Month Awards (March 22, 2012)

Thank you, KQED. Thank you Siouxie Oki for the preparation of this beautiful awards program. Thank you Wells Fargo for sponsoring the Women’s History Month Awards. FWN banks at Wells Fargo.

I am humbled and honored to be among this outstanding group of honorees and awesome Sheroes.

I’d like to thank my family—my son Franklin and my sister Genevieve, my exceptional sisters in the Filipina Women’s Network and in the FRIENDS, the Commission and the Department of the Status of Women, Leadership California and my amazing friends—old and new—who are here to celebrate with me tonight.

I share this award with all of you. Your love, support, criticism—helpful criticism!—are what sustain me in my work.

I dedicate this award to my personal Shero, my Mom, who is no longer with us but has guided me for so many years—she was the first feminist I knew.

Like many cultures, Filipinos are a proud people who value family, faith, and tradition. We celebrate with our friends and neighbors when one of us succeeds in school, at the workplace, or in our community.

We laud the accomplishments and efforts of our fellow Filipinos, our kababayans. We feel proud when one of us makes it.

And, like many others, we are also a compassionate people. We help each other in times of need. Despite personal difficulties, we try our very best to help friends and neighbors even if it means personal sacrifice.

We go out of our way when others need our help. When someone dies, we grieve with them. When someone is sick, we comfort them; bring them food. We instinctively know what to do.

But when someone we know is in an abusive relationship, we become tongue-tied and helpless. We avoid. We change the subject. We feel embarrassed. We sympathize but we do not often help. Let me share with you my story of how I became a stronger and more vocal advocate for women and girls suffering abuse.

This award is important to someone who came to San Francisco 25 years ago not knowing anyone to leave an abusive marriage, get a divorce and start a new life with my two young sons. The City and the people I met have been kind to me as I struggled to raise my children and develop a fledgling career and business.

When the Filipina Women’s Network announced the production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues in 2004, FWN came under attack not only from the community at large but also from our own members.

I was personally criticized through emails and phone calls for defaming our organization and the Filipino community, for being a bad role model, of being immoral, for daring to speak the word “vagina” and “puki”. I became known as the “vagina lady. ”

We lost members. Some of our volunteers feared for their safety and questioned the wisdom of FWN’s collaboration with Eve Ensler’s V-Day, her national campaign to end violence against women and girls.

I felt very responsible for what was happening. It was difficult emotionally to separate myself from the backlash. The resistance however challenged me and also provided an opportunity for reflection and dialogue.

I felt there was something deeper to the hostile reaction and that somehow we have struck a chord undefined why were people so threatened by vaginas?

The Vagina Monologues is a play that highlights the tragedy and comedy about women’s sexual lives. While at times funny, the play is graphic in its description and representation of women’s experiences.

So we decided to hold weekly home viewings of Eve’s performance of The Vagina Monologues: to find out where the hostility and anger came from and to alleviate any uneasiness about pukis.

We conducted a discussion after each viewing so that attendees felt safe and felt their opinions were heard. What resulted was unexpected.

These home viewings and weekly rehearsals became community gatherings where women shared their stories, their secrets and their recipes. It became a love fest and a food fest. We called them Vagina Love Brunches.

What we thought were going to be meetings to assuage people about doing a play about vaginas turned into a very significant discovery. A realization that Filipina women needed a place where they can be themselves, where they can share with other Filipinas their experiences and challenges, and where they can feel that someone understands their struggles.

At these community gatherings, we met victims of domestic violence sharing the shame or hiya. They talked about their feelings about bringing this on themselves. About feeling that domestic violence is a private matter, not to be shared outside the family.

At these community gatherings, we also found that many think that domestic violence only affects other communities, that it doesn’t happen to us. That domestic violence happens only to the puti or Caucasians, to poor people, to the uneducated, to the TNTs or “illegals” or “undocumenteds”.

At these community gatherings, we learned the meaning of fear. Victims of domestic violence are so afraid for themselves, for their children. Their aggressors instill such fear and isolation that victims often feel that no one will listen or help.

At these community gatherings, we sensed helplessness. No one knew where to go for help. No one was familiar with what resources were available.

At these community gatherings, we found that community agencies tasked with helping women in abusive situations lack culture- and language-appropriate resources for Filipinas.

At these community gatherings, we found a clear mission. Through the laughter, food and story telling inspired by The Vagina Monologues, the Filipina Women’s Network launched the Filipina Women Against Violence Campaign.

As the president of the Filipina Women’s Network, I made it one of our organization’s top priorities to help end domestic violence.

But the success of our campaign, of any campaign, can be achieved only through coalition building.

We reached out and partnered with many organizations to help us with our education efforts: CORA through Cherie Querol Moreno, the Asian Women’s Shelter through Geene Gonzales, WestBay through Ed Jocson, the API Legal Outreach through the late Kevin Pimentel, the Domestic Violence Consortium through Beverly Upton, and the City’s Dept. on the Status of Women through Emily Murase.

We published the V-Diaries, an anti-violence resource guide that looks and reads like a magazine, and they were distributed to over 35,000 Filipino households through the San Francisco Chronicle, the Examiner and the Bay Area BusinessWoman.

In the ensuing years we heard from our Filipina sisters across the country urging us to bring our campaign to their communities. So we met with women and girls in New York City, Washington, DC and Las Vegas. And helped them put on their own productions of The Vagina Monologues.

Then in 2009 we expanded our campaign to include our Asian Pacific Islander sisters. Our first all-Asian Pacific Islander women cast included Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, School Board president Hydra Mendoza, then-School Board Vice President and my District Supervisor Jane Kim, Emily Murase, the Dept of the the Status of Women Executive Director, Julie Soo Commissioner of the Commission on the Status of Women, Activist Helen Zia, Broadcaster Jan Yanehiro and many more professionals, homemakers and students.

For 8 years now, through over 20 performances in San Francisco, New York City, Washington, DC and Las Vegas, we have produced The Vagina Monologues, each time bringing front and center the issue of violence against women and girls.

Our Vagina Monologues productions have raised over $100,000 and have benefited local community agencies and women’s shelters along with Eve Ensler’s Annual V-Day Spotlight Campaigns.

The money may not seem like a lot but the women we came to know, the stories they shared, the stories that they made public, the men who pledged not to harm the women and girls in their lives – have changed countless lives in small and big ways.

But we need to do more. Much, much more. We need to partner with ALL our sister organizations and community service agencies. We need to rally our workplaces to help eradicate domestic violence.

We need to lobby our elected officials to provide more funding for much-needed resources. We need to engage our friends and neighbors about the roots of domestic violence.

We need to encourage victims of abuse to seek help. We need to talk to our sons and our daughters about the realities of domestic violence.

And, most importantly, we need to listen.

We need to listen to the women who are being abused. We need to listen to the women who themselves don’t think they are in an abusive situation.

We need to listen and we need to help. No matter the personal consequences.

We need to listen and we need to help. And we need to make sure women and children in abusive situations have somewhere to go to and someone to talk to.

In closing, I’d like to ask you to do two things tonight.

Tonight, have a talk with someone you know about love. About respect. About how to be an honorable person.

Talk with your daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances, about violence and abuse having no place in their hearts, in their lives.

And tell your daughters and sons that no matter what, you will listen and you will help.

Tonight, go on the Internet and find out who is running for political office in your community. Then sign up to become a volunteer. Sign up your friends and family to volunteer.

And once there, let your voice be heard and make a difference in someone’s life.

I myself have accepted the challenge to run for office so I can influence the Democratic leadership in San Francisco and continue to be a voice for my community.

My message to you tonight—remember to listen and to help.

Thank you and good evening.