Problem Chylde: Learning & Writing

This article from Kimberle Crenshaw and Eve Ensler on The Huffington Post is electric.

The collaboration of these two women made me smile this morning.  It’s a small glimpse of nexus.  Kimberle Crenshaw is a prominent African-American legal analyst on the subject of race (in other words, she does a lot of work with Critical Race Theory), and she also has written extensively on race, gender, and anti-essentialism.  Eve Ensler is a white Jewish playwright and artist (a controversial one), well-known for her work The Vagina Monologues and the theater event V-Day:

V-Day raises funds and awareness through annual benefit productions of “The Vagina Monologues.” In 2007, more than 3,000 V-Day events took place in 1,150 locations in the U.S. and around the world. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $40 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns, launched the Karama program in the Middle East, reopened shelters, and funded over 5,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. The ‘V’ in V-Day stands for Vagina, Victory and Valentine.

In this article’s current political and social context, it is perhaps the most embracing of intersection, the most respectful of the politics of young women, and the most reflective and hopeful treatise to the evolution and growth of the feminist movement in relation to the Clinton/Obama fracas I’ve seen in the past month.

Some key portions that speak to me:

Because we believe that feminism can be expressed by a broader range of choices than this “either/or” proposition entails, we again find ourselves compelled to say “no”–this time to a brand of feminism that betrays its inclusive and global commitments. We believe we stand in unity with many feminists who will say, “Not in Our Name” will this feminism be deployed.

Can I get a “Amen,” people?  We can no longer afford pretending the actions of the feminist movement do not have important and deadly ramifications for women who cannot reach the top of the privilege pyramid.  The effect that U.S. war policies has on women in Iraq, the effect that border control and reproductive health has on poor women and women of color — lives are at stake.

While paying respect to those women who carried the banner for so many years, these young women have reminded us that feminism is not static but evolutionary, changing in content, scope and tenor as new generations elevate their concerns and aspirations. And while we agree that this “either/or” brand of feminism fails to capture the imagination and hopes of countless numbers of women who refuse to entrust this capital into the hands of a candidate just because she is a woman, we think it important to add that this is not simply an intergenerational difference at work here.  At issue is a profound difference in seeing feminism as intersectional and global rather than essentialist and insular.

In layman’s terms: young women are not stupid.  A lot of young women don’t need kitschy reminders about why feminism is cool because we don’t have the luxury to sit down and reflect on our overall popularity if we want to eat, if we want to care for loved ones, if we want to live, and if we want to work.  To say that living our lives and weighing how movements centering choice affect women in radically different ways — to say that is an affront to the feminist movement is selling short the prospect of living as an autonomous human being, a prospect that runs part and parcel with the dreams of the feminist movement.

Therefore, the solution to facing this disparity is not telling certain types of women to shut up or to grin and bear it.  Silencing is no longer a viable technique for solving tough problems and for building coalitions.

From here, the groundings of the article’s position get stronger.

For us, the choice at hand is actually quite simple. It is not about the woman candidate vs. the Black male candidate. It is about the candidate who works to dismantle the bomb, rather than drop it; the candidate who works to abolish the old paradigm of power, rather than covet and rise to its highest point; the candidate who seeks solutions and dialogue rather than retaliation and punishment.

There are problematic aspects with both Clinton and Obama on foreign policy issues, on health care issues, on fostering unity within the United States, and on creating a content and productive country over the next four years.

But you know what?  Those are the stakes involved, not Hillary’s vagina or Obama’s brown skin.  (Or his middle name, for that matter.)  We are not selecting a person to star in a national fashion contest; we should not concern ourselves with the best historical maps to draw for our children — unless the details of that map include a country no longer embroiled in war campaigns, a country that strives to bring people basic needs and listens to their interests regardless of their political or social leanings, and a country that sets aside surface gleanings of discomfort to dig into the grit of forming a more perfect Union.  Damn the rest.  I don’t care how revolutionary the next presidency can be on the surface if these discussions about the revolution take a backseat.