women's issues

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.

I posted this on Blue House Diaries, in response to a comment Lorraine made. The original comment has been added to here.

Strega, [aka Lorraine], I'm so pissed off about all of this I haven't found the words yet to fully say what is in my heart and in my head, let's just say, for now, I find others to be equally complicit in this.

John Edwards should have refused to accept Amanda's resignation. She could have gone ahead and resigned, of course, but the fact that Edwards accepted it is so in keeping with the Democratic Party leadership not saying a goddamned, fucking word about this war against women for 6+ fuckingass years. Politics above women, campaigns above women, elections above women, they keep resigning us to the back burner, why, could it possibly be because they view our rights, our issues, as too hot to handle, so afraid they will run into the exact shit that the rightwing brought to bear?

My vote, YES, and if that is indeed true, what the fuck does that say about what kind of president he will be? Where the fuck will women's rights play in an administration that does not, forcefully and relentlessly, state that they will not accept a resignation of a woman that is being forced out of the fold of a political campaign by the fuckingass rightwing that has been doing this for decades?

Edwards could have been the person who stood up to them, he should have yelled and screamed from his bloody pulpit, we will not give into such slander. Edwards, and Elizabeth, should have found their convictions and stood solidly behind them.