About a dozen students and I watched the last presidential debate here at the guest apartment I’m using at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne. Some had been perturbed by my thesis that McCain is the Republican candidate because the party considers this election a throw-away one, and they intended to use and are using the election to launch an allegedly new generation of right-wing politicians like Sarah Palin into national prominence.
I came to this conclusion at the end of the Republican primary because McCain, whose specialty is national security, did not seem apropos for the times. It was of telling significance to me that Palin knew only one Supreme Court case -- Roe V. Wade – indicating that what stuck the most in the right wing crow was the expansion and deepening of women’s emancipation.
Still I was shocked to see McCain raise his hands and place under virtual quotation marks the phrase “women’s health.”
For a guy whose (partial) medical records run to 1,000 pages, this cavalier dismissal of legitimate concern for womankind, 90% of whom have neither access nor the means to medical care.
The National Center for Health Statistics says that US maternal deaths at childbirth has been rising steadily; it’s now 13 per 100,000 live births; it was 12 per 100,000 in 2003 – the first time maternal death rose above 10 since 1977.
In NY, women are dying at the rate of 2.5 times the national average.
Women, we had better work to eradicate "contentless" feminism because we're sure to meet Palin or her doppelganger somewhere, sometime, down the road. -- ##
2 comments:
It stabbed me right in the heart when I saw McCain nonchalantly dismiss women's health! I couldn't believe it! What woman (or man) in their right mind would still pledge allegiance to such a cold white patriarch and his platform? I wish Kali would just behead him already and add his head to her necklace!
To counter the right wing's aggressive attacks on women's rights women and men need to unite to create a new movement for feminism. The new movement needs to bring a new generation of young women who are full of contempt for what their modern society has to offer them. They need to be able to look at the experience of women as not a singular one but a human one subject to all forms of social stratification including class and race. They will also need a renewed sense of cohesion with their feminist community. Being a participant of a feminist community and feeling that cohesion with their comrades in the struggle is what I find lacking in my generation of young women. The growing sense of cohesion and community has unfortunately renewed the strength and blood of the right wing.
Me being a member of this so called Generation Y I hear too many times from women, "I am not a feminist" with a look of fear in their eyes. The backlash against feminism has gone far enough! Isn't there a saying form The Art of War that the enemy is a great teacher? If my generation is faltering in their courage to fight the hegemony they could take a lesson from their right-winged counterparts and find strength in numbers.
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