A feminist's view of Sarah Palin

[Generic Other]

My sister sent me this and I thought I would pass it on. It reflects the feelings of a lot of women.


Drill, Drill, Drill by Eve Ensler

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 t o 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 tak e 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 t he 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 e scalate 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?

[blondie58]

1. great post, Generic Other

I also gave an affection for polar bears and this world would be a sad place if they disappeared. Thank you for this eloquent post on such an evil woman.

[eshfemme]

2. This claim by the MSM and the GOP that Palin is such an accurate representation of women

is also demeaning. It suggests a casual misogyny that will put us back 50 years if we continue to let it occur unchallenged.

[luv_mykatz]

3. A Feminist's view of Sarah Palin

I am in complete agreement with your post. Unfortunately, I can't recommend' I am a newbie and don't have enough posts/replies to recommend. Will someone else please recommend this post? Pretty please?:kick:

P.S. We cannot afford "more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life". Repairing, protecting and preserving the life-support systems of our planet is NOT a frippery (sp?)!!

[Generic Other]

4. I was in tears reading this!

We feminist women have worked so hard and someone like Palin who has opposed us every step of the way is now bent on destroying everything women of my generation worked our asses off to achieve!

We must fight this faux feminist with all our might! Welcome to DU!

[BlooInBloo]

5. To the Greatest.

[Hissyspit]

6. Welcome to DU, kat person!

:patriot:

:toast:

[chknltl]

8. A warm welcome to the DU luv_mykatz

We've gotten a lot of suspicious newbies in the DU lately. You just now DID NOT get added to my buddy list! (Inside joke, actually a compliment, my way of saying that I know that you are here to stay and I am glad for this! :pals: ) There will be more than a few here who will recommend this for ya, your PS btw, is especially welcome. I see you were concerned about the spelling of 'frippery'.... please take note of our 'Check Spelling' feature at the bottom of each post you are about to add. This feature is invisible to trolls which helps to alert everyone when they are near!

[Windy]

7. This was written by Eve Ensler....

the woman that wrote the Vagina Monologues.

Glad to see its going viral.

[Generic Other]

9. Thanks I accidently dropped the name

Put it back in! Thanks. I didn't know she wrote the Monologues.

[Solly Mack]

10. K&R. I grew up in a family of women. I had 9 mothers.

Raised by women. Inspired by women. Kept together by women.


I was told at an early age that the hardest, most painful thing a woman - a feminist - would ever learn is that some women are an enemy to themselves and to other women.

Palin is such a woman.

She's no feminist. She's not my sister. She's not my friend.

[dazzlerazzle]

11. She's no feminist

she's an opportunist. Just like her running mate who is also an opportunist, per Ross Perot.

[Aeval]

12. I have been trying to express my feelings, as a feminist, about Sarah Palin,

but it is such an emotionally charged thing for me, I find it difficult to do. These words completely captured my own feelings about this woman and why I am so angry, so insulted at the suggestion that her nomination has anything to do with feminism! I too align feminism with a certain set of beliefs and actions, and the simple fact that a female is potentially in a position of power is not enough to tie her to the long-held, hard-won principles of the feminist movement, and it in no way advances the cause! In fact, in this case, it sets it back!

Thanks for sharing this!!!

[Generic Other]

13. I guess if we believe Palin is a feminist

then we have to believe that Bush was a great president, that Reagan was an Oscar caliber actor, that voting machines can't be tampered with, that Cheney is not a criminal, that Paris Hilton is talented, that abstinence programs prevent teen pregnancies, that only Christians are moral, that Santa and the tooth fairy exist, that FOX is a true news organization, that Rush Limbaugh cares about America, that Lieberman is a Democrat, that hunting animals from an airplane is sporting, that eating mad cow is good for you, that Monsanto will end world hunger, that Walmart cares about their customers, that insurance companies want us to have decent health care.

If we can swallow that dreck, then we can all agree that putting lipstick on a pig makes her a feminist! She's no more a feminist than OJ Simpson!