Feminism Revisted

This post will ultimately be very short, for two reasons. One, the insert I am asking you to read and comment on is pretty long itself. Two, I would like to know what others think before I start to give my own opinions. But let me start off by saying that my first post about Sarah Palin stands corrected: apparently there are some feminists who are choosing to think before voting, and not just playing the gender card as I had originally anticipated. The following is an email I recieved through some friends of a friend.

Esther Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

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. Sh e 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?
>
> Eve Ensler
> September 5, 2008