philosophies

"in my heart, i think a woman has two choices: either she's a feminist or a masochist" --gloria steinem

"the main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything . . . or nothing." --lady nancy astor

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin's Crazy Ass

Drill, Drill, Drill
September 17, 2008

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist
best known for “The Vagina Monologues”, 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 choose 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

Save Bitch Magazine!!

McCain/Palin: The Next Apocalypse

Photobucket

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Bush calls U.S. "evil"

I was getting ready for school and heard our asshole president speaking on CNN about Times Square and endorsing John McCain. Of course I was annoyed; he tends to do that to me, especially when he's promoting the continuation of the war, using fear tactics, and basically being full of shit. But something he said stood out. He referred to "the terrorists" as evil, then clarified his statement:

"I call them evil because if you kill innocent people to achieve a political objective, you're evil."

Oh really...? What about all those innocent civilians in Iraq? What about the thousands of young American soldiers? What about this:

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

and this:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/iraq-m06.shtml

Who are the terrorists?
Who/what is evil?

And why is it even legal for the current President to endorse a Presidential candidate? It's so inappropriate. Par for the course...

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Happy Thursday

Thanks to Annie for posting this, so I can bring you a kick-ass grrl power "Happy Thursday"! xoxo



Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Robin Morgan on Hillary Clinton (awww shit!)

Goodbye To All That (#2) by Robin Morgan

February 2, 2008

“Goodbye To All That” was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online version, see http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).

During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women’s movements, I’ve avoided writing another specific “Goodbye . . .” But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this country—been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.

Goodbye to the double standard . . .
—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
—She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains?)
—When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html

It was long so I cut it and am sending you to the link (since I've had it up in-full for awhile...)

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

girl votes for woman, feels good

I Voted!

i just voted for the first viable female presidential candidate ever. it was more “wow” than i expected, especially because i’m also thrilled at the prospect of obama. but personally, i had to vote hillary. and it’s not JUST because she’s a woman, because i would never vote for a republican female candidate (as if we’d ever see that anyway), but i support most of her policies and think backlash against her is like backlash against feminism—media constructed and then picked up by the masses without much critical thought or engagement. if you oppose her because of foreign policy issues, i “sort of” understand. if you think she’s a little flip-floppy, whatever. her voting record is relatively consistent (relative to politicians). her health plan makes sense. she has a withdrawal plan for the war. she has experience. she’s pro-choice. she’s feminist. AND she’s a woman.

if she wins, it will be a tougher road for the democrats, because sexism is still socially accepted. if obama wins, it will also be tough, but he generates more excitement and will increase liberal voting. thankfully, all the republicans suck (as usual), but mccain has draw and it looks like he’ll be the one to beat. maybe it’s the activist in me or maybe it’s because i just watched iron-jawed angels for the millionth time (i show it in my Intro to Women’s Studies classes every semester), but i know that if everyone votes, particularly young people, women, and minorities—we will not have to suffer another four years of Republican rule. whether progressive woman or progressive man—we need progress, we need change, and we really, really need a revolution. if you haven’t voted yet—go!! whether you plan to vote obama or clinton, you must vote. and if you plan to vote huckabee, we can't possibly be friends. sorry.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait

A must-see!
"This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on."
Link Here:
current work

Friday, January 11, 2008

Women are Never Front Runners by Gloria Steinem

You'll probably have to copy and paste the link, but it's a great article.

Op-Ed Contributor
Women Are Never Front-Runners
By GLORIA STEINEM
Published: January 8, 2008
Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html?ex=1357534800&en=9f6d8783ff1b15c9&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

new years glitterati

new year’s eve/day was never my favorite holiday. perhaps because of the general chaos, sudden cover charges for free bars, heightened expectations, intensity of endings and beginnings, or that one underage year we gave some guy $40 to buy us booze and he never returned (go figure—what a busted new year’s that was). aside from the most incredible year when alison and dakota married (and liz and i reunited, sorta), it’s always been underwhelming—not worth the hangover or money.

this year i decided to revolve my new year celebration around family instead of madness, and skip the lost phone, wasted money, dangerous travel, and morning-after-“where am i?” confusion. i was with my lover, my family, and my family friends. i drank too much wine, danced it off, then passed out in my gold sequin dress.

my year still started with a hangover, but i was surrounded by people i love and people who love me and woke up at my sister’s to the best bloody marys and breakfast in town, followed by a good-luck dinner and beer. we played Rock Band all day (a la Guitar Hero fame—but with the whole band; i hope you’ve seen the Guitar Hero South Park); i’m a rockstar on guitar, a disgrace on the drums, and a funny joke on mike. but it was awesome.

and i love(d) new year’s.






thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for their stellar hosting skills and hospitality (xoxo).