Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day, February 14, is recast in the book as V-Day: the date of a public movement against violence toward women, not merely a conventional holiday. Its significance lies in the contrast between a day associated with love and a campaign insisting that safety and freedom from violence remain unfinished work. The first V-Day took place on February 14, 1998; the movement subsequently treated the date as an annual call to action, with the hope that it might one day mark victory over the violence it opposes.

From Holiday to Public Campaign

At a 1997 meeting with activist women, many associated with Feminist.com, the idea of forming V-Day took shape. The date gave the new movement a recurring public occasion, while the name connected the existing holiday to its opposition to violence against women. Rather than leave the issue to private concern or a single performance, the organizers envisioned a campaign that could repeatedly gather attention and support.

The book describes the first V-Day as a deliberate beginning. On February 14, 1998, the movement held its inaugural event in New York City at the Hammerstein Ballroom, where a celebrity benefit performance of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues served as its centerpiece. The performance sold out, yet hundreds of people remained outside hoping to enter. That turnout made the holiday’s transformation visible: an observance usually framed around romance had become a crowded public event focused on women’s experiences and the need to stop violence against them.

Annual Work and Wider Reach

The first event was not presented as an endpoint. It launched a movement whose purpose was to raise both money and awareness through repeated events. The book also describes V-Day as a catalyst: broad public attention is meant to strengthen work already underway and help begin further efforts in publicity, education, and law. In this account, the date matters because it returns each year, renewing a public commitment rather than allowing the issue to recede after one benefit.

That continuing work was accompanied by concrete fundraising. In the movement’s first three years, V-Day raised and donated more than a million dollars to grassroots organizations working against violence toward women around the world. The sum gives material form to the campaign’s recurring observance: the day is linked not only to speech and visibility, but also to resources directed toward organizations doing local work.

The Promise of Victory Day

V-Day’s relationship to Valentine’s Day is intentionally provisional. The book says the date will continue to be proclaimed V-Day until violence against women stops; only then will it become Victory Day. The renaming preserves the distinction between a goal and its achievement. Each February 14 is therefore both a public occasion and a reminder that the campaign’s central objective remains unmet.

The movement’s use of the holiday turns its familiar language of love toward a collective demand for safety and freedom from violence. Its annual return offers a means of keeping that demand in public view, while the proposed future name gives the observance a clear measure of success: not simply another year of events, but an end to the violence the movement was formed to challenge.