I don’t remember the first time I felt unsafe. Maybe it was walking home from school and sensing a stranger’s stare from an unfamiliar car. Maybe it was as a teen, learning to hold my keys between my fingers like claws, just in case. Certainly by my 20s, when the phone calls to friends while walking home alone at night were like a ritual of survival. ‘Text me when you get there.’
It’s exhausting, living this way, when your body is a moving target.
That’s why V-Day matters. At dawn on Saturday 14 February – yes, Valentine’s Day – women, non-binary folk, and allies rise up, dressed in red on Main Beach, Byron Bay.
It’s a flashmob that’s part of the global One Billion Rising movement, that turns a day of Hallmark schmaltz and overpriced flowers into one of collective power. Because for many, relationships don’t always mean romance and respect. Or safety.
With the sand beneath our feet and the early sun on our faces, movement becomes language with a collective dance to V-Day anthem Break the Chain.
The dance acknowledges the suffering of the one-in-three women who will be beaten or raped in their lifetime. We dance because our rage needs rhythm. We dance because – unlike the 60-something Australian women who lost their lives to intimate partner violence in 2025 – we are still here. We dance because we’re not willing to let that be our daughters’ inheritance.
To those who think our slice of paradise is immune to abuses, you’re wrong. There are stories here that would make your hair curl, and over the last decade women from around the region have shared their stories as part of The Vagina Conversations, a collaborative show featuring women and people with vaginas. Inspired by Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, Director Zenith Virago felt that our local community had their own stories to tell. So, she pulled together a contemporary re-imagining – not a monologue but a conversation.
This year, the Brunswick Picture House transforms into a space of courage and truth-telling.This show is not your standard theatre. It’s raw, local, real. It’s nurses, teachers, aunties, survivors – women from 17 to 83 – who step up to share their personal stories, often for the first time.
There’s knowing laughter. There’s heavy silence. There are moments when I’ve had to close my eyes, my face leaking, while I breathe through someone’s truth because it’s all too familiar.
“This show is activism in action,” says Mandy Nolan. And it is. All proceeds support frontline services like the Mullumbimby Womens’ Resource Service and Pottsville Neighbourhood Centre. To date, over $158,000 has been raised to support women escaping domestic and family violence.
So, to anyone who has felt that same tight grip of fear walking home, I say: join us. Sit with us at The Vagina Conversations and let someone else’s story make you see red. Then, if you can, on Saturday 14 February, rise early, dress in red, and come dance at the beach.
Because when we stand together, nobody flinches when you say vagina. And we remember: this body is not a battleground. It’s a force.
Sally Schofield
Photo credit: Lyn McCarthy – Niche Pictures