I was sent an article today by a women for whom I’ve been house-sitting for quite some time. She is most definitely a feminist with a loving and supportive husband (I would also call him a feminist). This article is brutal, shocking, thought provoking and exactly the reason I’m not a feminist.
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Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for “The Vagina Monologues”, wrote the following about Sarah Palin.
(From www.huffingtonpost.com)
Drill, Drill, Drill
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.
I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of
Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately,
this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction.
I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
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Of course this article speaks to me on so many levels. No way in hell do I want this person, woman or not, ground-breaker or not, in a position of leadership. I don’t want her in office because she wants to take away rights to believe in whatever they want and have it equally represented. And didn’t we have the evolution/creation fight like a hundred years ago?? (I didn’t date check, whatever) Didn’t we found this country on the rights to believe in what/who ever the fuck we want??? Hello!?! And don’t even get me started about the abortion thing or the drilling thing or gay marriage is a sin thing or the right wing radical bull shit gun-toting-fuck-up-my-planet crap that follows her like pig-pen’s ball of dust. This would end up a dissertation. I didn’t actually start out writing about Palin and her psycho politics anyhow. I am not that political and certainly not known for my aggressive political activism. And although, I am a conscientious supporter of women’s rights, I am not a feminist, at least by the currently accepted standard. I’ve been known to go as far as to say that feminism is being killed by the women that promote it. Why would I say such a thing? (the horror!!) Okay, okay… it’s a gross generalization of course, not every feminist fits my tangent, so I’ll say most. My biggest bone of contention with today’s feminist movement is that when most feminists write, speak, reach out and look for support, by and large it’s only to “women”. What about the men that support the ideas as well? I have men in my life that are more supportive of true feminism than I could be. How? because they are the ones that have the power, the control of the rights. If men are in power, (no woman in the presidency and please not this one!) they can effect equality. The reality is today’s feminist practice is not really in line with it’s basal definition. Webster defines Feminism as: 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests. This is something I agree with on the same level as I agree with racial equality. But nowhere in this definition does it exclude men. I think that is important. No one else has to agree with me, I’m okay with that. I’m not okay with having this one represent women at the highest level, so I agree with you Eve… Palin is off her fucking rocker. But this is not just a problem for women, it’s a problem for all of us.
