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For a decade, playwright Eve Ensler has gotten women around the globe to say the word vagina — a lot. Her play "The Vagina Monologues" is an annual institution at theaters worldwide and benefit performances have raised millions for anti-violence causes. Ensler, 53, has now set her sights on the issue of terror. She addresses the subject in "The Treatment," a play which recently opened in New York City, and in her first book, "Insecure at Last," a political memoir, which will be released next week. TIME's Carolina A. Miranda spoke with her about our security-conscious age, Hillary Clinton and, of course, that V-word.

TIME: Your previous works have focused largely on women's views of their bodies. Your new play, The Treatment, however, is about a serviceman tormented by atrocities he may have committed while on duty in the Middle East. What inspired the new topic?

Ensler: I'm generally obsessed with the subject of violence and one person having power over another. I think that's been true in all my plays. After Abu Ghraib happened, I wanted to pose the question: how do good and decent people do terrible deeds? I have a profound hunger to understand that, especially having grown up in a household where I had this very attractive, successful father who was incredibly violent.

Dylan McDermott, your adopted son, stars in the play. How did that come about?

I'd written two different plays for him before this. When I started to write Treatment, I thought it would be a perfect role for him. There are aspects to him that people just haven't seen. He's perceived as very handsome and charming, but people don't know his complexity or how raw he can be. He's a really brave actor.

In your new book,Insecure at Last, you give a highly personal take on our culture's current obsession with security. What led you to this subject?

The airports. I was at an airport about a year and a half ago where in the course of 20 minutes, each place that I went to searched for different things: toothpicks, rubber bands, you name it. It was security madness. Afterwards, I started hearing the word everywhere: security alert, security check, security clearance, security this, security that. I was like, "What's going on?"

Are Americans really more obsessed with security than other cultures?

I think we are. Most of the world lives in dire poverty. They don't really know a lot about security to begin with. Since 9/11, the most important thing to Americans is to be secure. This chip implanted in us causes people to shut down, isolate and think of themselves: "I'm going to take care of me. I'll worry about my group and my identity." Any vision of the world is sacrificed for that. We've seen it with the war in Iraq. The fear button gets pushed and everyone is like, "Let's go after Saddam Hussein."

What personally makes you insecure?

There are a lot of ways in which I feel insecure, but I'm fine with it. I've learned to live with ambiguity and learned to tolerate mystery. I live alone. I don't have a partner. If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd be okay with that insecurity, I don't know that I would have believed you. But being free and independent, as much as it terrifies me, there's such a joy in it.

It sounds like you've chilled out.

I wouldn't say "chilled out." I think I'm more passionate and more driven than ever. But I'm not coming at it from the same place. For so much of my life, I was doing things because my father had implanted in me this profound need to be approved of. But it's crazy to fight for change and then want people to like you. Now that I'm in my 50s, I know who I am. I'm desperately concerned with stopping violence against women, stopping wars and stopping the destruction of the environment. I don't care if people love me for it or not. Speaking of your father, in the book you write that you've come to terms with the sexual and physical abuse you suffered in his hands.

There has been a reckoning. What happened with my father happened — and it's done. I'm done. It's over. I've left my father's house. For the first 50 years of my life, I was in that house. But this is my life now and I feel like I've been able to regain the parts of my father that I loved. He was ferocious about honesty, he had a ferocious integrity around money and he was openminded to all religions. These are good things and I'm grateful for them.

Six years ago, you were part of Hillary Clinton's exploratory committee in her run for the Senate. Have you been satisfied with her track record?

No, I've been very disappointed. It's about the war. I feel very strongly that anybody who represents me has to be fierce in questioning authority. Hillary — and so many people in the Senate — did not look at the grounds for the war in Iraq in an effective or thorough way. As a matter of fact, she supported it. I can't get behind that. Right now I'm looking for younger women at the grassroots level who I can help develop and support as they become leaders, people who are coming from a place where they're fighting for justice, peace and equality, not for political position and power.

The Vagina Monologues is, by far, your most successful play. Do you ever feel that it overshadows your other work?

Everything about The Vagina Monologues has been such a glorious experience. I'm constantly moved by how many girls come up to me and tell me that it was the play that awakened their consciousness.

Why was it so important to you to make the word "vagina" part everyday discourse?

I could have picked the word "vulva," but it seemed much more difficult. (Laughs.) I believe in the power of language. When I was a child, my father called me a slut all the time. I came to believe that and went out in the world and behaved like that. When I started doing The Vagina Monologues, I realized how impossible it was for women to say the word. I would see the disgust, the shame, the embarrassment. The vagina is smack in the center of our bodies, yet it is a place that most women felt ashamed of talking about. What did that say about the center of our beings? There's something in the uttering of the word that reattaches you to it. It's empowering. Now I turn on the television and I see vagina being used everywhere.

Conservative author Christina Hoff Sommer once said that The Vagina Monologues has inspired "an army" of campus feminists who are "very elitist." Care to respond?

I think it's funny when she says that. There are 600 to 800 college campuses involved in The Vagina Monologues. It is in schools like Southern Methodist University, in community colleges in Tennessee and in African-American schools. It has also spread to 81 countries. It has been performed in villages in Africa and backwater towns in the Philippines. I once saw a production at Riker's Island! So, if she wants to call it elitist, okay.

The Vagina Monologues asked the question: "If your vagina could talk, what would it say?" What's your vagina saying these days? Live in the ambiguity. Live in the mystery. Everyone's invited.