Women Talking

The movie Women Talking is based on Miriam Toews's 2018 novel of the same name, which was in turn based on a true story of vicious serial rapes in an insular, ultraconservative Mennonite community in Bolivia. From 2005 to 2009, nine men in the Manitoba Colony, using livestock tranquilizers, drugged female victims ranging in age from three to sixty and violently raped them at night. When the girls and women awoke bruised and covered in blood, the men of the colony dismissed their reports as "wild female imagination"--even when they became pregnant from the assaults--or punishments from God or by demons for their supposed sins. According to a May 2019 BBC article by Linda Pressly, when the rapists were finally caught, they were arrested by Bolivian authorities. One fled from justice, but the other eight were tried and convicted. Seven were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for the repeated, multiple rapes, and an eighth was convicted for providing the drug but then released. As of 2019, the elders of the Manitoba Colony were lobbying for the rapists' releases.

Contrary to what the film depicts, Mennonite women ARE literate. Moreover, they teach others as part of their missionary work to read and write. However, it could be argued that in such an isolated community, the men could have decided to make their own rules.

Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Claire Foy/Sarah Michelle Gellar/M. Night Shyamalan/Rob Beckett/Sam Smith (2023)