I promised I would try not to do this, but...

I promised I would try to not talk about Sarah Palin anymore, but I recently caught up on some of my emails and finally read a couple articles people had sent me (H/T to my parents and to Few) and feel that they're worth sharing.

The first, Drill Drill Drill, was written by playwright and activist Eve Ensler and published in The Huffington Post on September 8 (Ensler is, of course, the creator of The Vagina Monologues, among other things.) Here's a short excerpt:

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.

She goes on, discussing--as many of us have over the past few weeks--the reasons why McCain-Palin is a scary choice (creationism, overturning Roe v. Wade, abstinence-only sex ed, etc.) and ends up relaying this rather-horrifying analogy:

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.

Personally, I feel her wording is a bit sensationalistic, but she's a writer and creative license and rhetorical flair are part of the job description. That said, it's not lost on me how right she is about the violence--to our earth or otherwise--implied by the RNC "drill" chant or in McCain-Palin's stated policy changes in general.

The other article I wanted to share is Bumping up against the limits of female bonding by Ellen Goodman over at The Boston Globe. What scares me about this article isn't so much the content--it's a pretty short op-ed piece in which Goodman makes some interesting points about voting-for-your-gender versus voting-for-the-issues and the complexities of feminists responses to Palin--but the comments. Here's just a small sample:

Thanks, too, for confirming what we've known for ages: That the feminist movement was really about liberal ideals and NEVER about women. So quit the charade and please refrain from hallucinating that normal women want access to the "sisterhood". Who would want to be in a club that (apparently) only lets in bitter, fat ladies?

and

Oh, please! Get over it, you elitist whiner...you lost women when you ignored the predations of the Philanderer in Chief. You sold out women long ago when you only allowed for one line of thinking - liberal thinking. And now your hypocrisy has come back to haunt you. Sarah Palin is a woman who didn't need you or your daycare mentality. She believes in life, is in love with her husband, and is all the things your "Sisterhood" used to celebrate. She has it all, except for the "D" after her name, so you want to eat her alive.

and

Sarah Palin has more courage than all of you so called feminists put together. she loves her family, her country & is not in your "club" of mean spirited militants who are always fighting no matter how much you have- its never enough.. she is not a woman who hates men but she loves her husband & doesn't belittle him or compete with him. they have a good marriage because they have learned to compromise. which is something pro-choice, anti'life women will never be able to do. As long as someone acts, looks & thinks like you- you say they are acceptable. Not all women think it's ok to kill babies because "it's convenient."

Yes, because feminists think abortion should be a legal choice every woman can make on her own just because it's so damn convenient to kill babies. And we're all fat, bitter, hate men and emasculate them at every opportunity. Because feminist women rule the world and have been making it so hard on everybody else.

Wowza.

That is all.