Feminism

Eve Ensler’s piece about Sarah Palin made me cry. I had an email exchange with several dear friends from college about it, and we all resonated with the words. My mother is right, it’s a touch “screamy,” but I really think she hits on the key reason I am so viscerally upset about the Sarah Palin choice with this quotation:

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.

Thinking about the piece has made me thoughtful about feminism and what it means to me. It’s a word so laden with stereotypes, so full of predetermined attributions, it’s almost hard to break it down to what it means to a middle aged woman in 2008. But I’ve been trying. It’s a word that almost comes with a stigma, I think, to my generation, and there is something incredibly sad about that. Perhaps my generation has retreated a bit from the firebreathing of the original feminists, but I think it’s critical to acknowledge that we do that because we can – there is room for retreat because of their very vigilance and determined assertion of themselves.

To me, feminism is being about equality but not about sameness. The dogged focus some people have on feminism being about women and men being the very same has always rankled me. Equality of value does not mandate congruence. In fact, isn’t it in the celebration of our differences that true equality comes about? I aspire to raise a daughter and a son who grow up thinking of their gender as neither liability nor asset; it is simply another part of their identity.

I haven’t quite been able to articulate what it is about Sarah Palin that bothers me so deeply, but the Eve Ensler piece comes closer than anything I’ve read so far. And yes, of course I admire that she has come from humble beginnings, I think she is clearly ambitious and determined, and she obviously stands by her principles (ie her Down syndrome baby). All of those things are true, and it would be irresponsible for me not to mention them. Ultimately, though, many of the things she stands for not only offend me but represent an affont to my aspiration of what the world can be. And her being a woman does not, for me, trump that. No way. It makes it worse.