Email Exchange re:Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Below is an email i sent in to a good friend of mine in response to eve ensler’s article about sarah palin that he had forwarded to me. i copy and pasted the original article (and a link to it) at the end of this post. my response is as follows:

I have some problems with eve ensler’s article, and with her in general.

as the woman who started vday and wrote the vagina monologues, it may seem odd at first to critique her for these things, but many have nonetheless.

first off, she thinks there’s some universal “sisterhood”, like simply because women have vaginas (this is of course also debatable from a queer/pomo-sexual perspective but id rather not get into that right now) that we have some connection. that’s called essentialism- and that is something feminism needs to move past, at least in my opinion and praxis.

but I know you’re into that so we’ll leave that be for now.

here’s my prob with her article:

altho I like the connections she makes below:

“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 like this b/c she is connecting oppressions, however I disagree with the word “tolerance”. have you ever seen people wearing shirts that say “fuck tolerance- I want acceptance”. anywho- maybe that’s semantics, maybe acceptance is what she meant? but I bet not, considering lots of liberals don’t wanna change the actual structures of inequality, they just want “nicer” and “kinder” ones. tolerance represents just that.

moving on tho-

she writes:

“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.”

true enough- but the more fundamental point is that sarah palin doesn’t believe in choice. pro-choice isn’t about pro-abortion- its about choice, as the slogan indicates. my freedom/right to have an abortion is just as valid if I got pregnant during a one-time thing with someone where I had forgotten (or chose not) to use some sort of birth control as it is if im a survivor of incest or rape, etc… drawing lines b/t what is a valid abortion and what is not is definitely going down the wrong path for pro-choicers.

furthermore, soooo many women cant even afford an abortion whether they “have the right” or not. that’s why we say “reproductive freedom” instead of “reproductive rights”. its to highlight the fact that rights aren’t guaranteed in a classist racist etc society. I may have the right, but not the access, and both are important to fight for and included under the rubric of “freedom”.

another thing- ensler says that palin believers in guns. once again, she is not attacking the idea of who has control over guns (the state) and who doesn’t (us), but guns in general. lemme tell you, I will most definitely want a gun as long as the minority who have control and coercion over the majority (a.k.a. the state) have guns. its not guns. its who’s holding the guns and who/what they are pointing them at. we need to critique that. and that’s my main point, is that ensler is attacking things and people, not ideologies that are the cause of our problems. take away guns, fine. the military still has ‘em, the police still do, we can still be put in cages with them pointed in our faces, forcing us.

at the end of her article, ensler urges us to vote for obama, like that will fix everything. she writes:

“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?”

I say, do we want nations at all? we need to be asking these deep-rooted questions, not assuming that the “problem” with america is the personality and policies of a certain individual president or party, but the structures that are based on and create domination, coercion, and control. the state is one of these structures. a few ruling over the rest. how in the hell does ensler think we can have an egalitarian society that is based on the control of the many by the few? it’s futile if it’s anything. lots of radicals abide by the notion of prefigurative politics, which is the idea that we must organize and structure ourselves as close to our desired utopia as we possibly can in the current environment. that what we choose to work with will breed itself. domination will breed domination, and furthermore simply *can’t* breed non-domination.

ensler also wrote:

“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.”

“everything america has ever tried to be”? america is absolutely rooted in genocide, torture, rape, racism, sexism, classism, heteronormativity, ecological destruction, etc… these terrible things are rooted in domination, control, coercion, which is exactly what ensler is rooting for if she is supporting the state and obama. I am being a little over the top and harsh about this to make a point. there is of course room for discussion about some good shit that has gone down in america by people who are fighting against domination, control and coercion.

and just to wrap this up so it doesn’t look like anarchists and other radicals simply want to abolish the state and that’s it, we also struggle for social/cultural/and personal transformation. like what good is a stateless society full of sexists and racists? anyway- I hope you and eleanor can come on nov 8th, I think you 2 could add so much to all the discussions we are having.

much love as always-

abbey

ensler’s article:

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?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/drill-drill-drill_b_124829.html