Eve Ensler. (photo: Brigitte Lacombe)
05 November 16
ear women of America and men who love women,
All week I have received emails, texts and calls from
my sisters around the world. They were as diverse as you get – sisters
in Congo fighting an epidemic of rape and brutality, and sisters in
Iceland striking across the country protesting pay inequity. Sisters in
Kenya fighting against genital cutting, and sisters in Iraq building
safe houses as fast as women are being taken and enslaved. Again and
again there was one panicked question: is it possible that Donald Trump could become president of the United States?
They are all trying to make sense of how a man like
this could be on the brink of becoming the most powerful person in the
world. A man who has openly admitted and bragged that he can grab women without consent by their genitalia. A man who has now been accused by numerous women of harassment or assault. A man who is fending off a lawsuit
from a woman who claimed she was raped by him as a 13-year-old. A man
who has an ex-wife who claimed in a divorce deposition that he raped
her. A man who appears to project his own sexual predation on fictional Mexican rapists and innocent African American youth.
My sisters wanted me to remind American women that
this election is our election. Yes, we could have the first woman
president. But more importantly this election will determine whether we
stand against blatant misogyny, or whether we reward it. It is an
election which has unleashed the subculture of sexual violence in
America – and that could be our breakthrough, or our breakdown.
They reminded me that next Tuesday, we have the power
to direct this moment of truth. We as women have such difficulty
believing that how we are seen and treated could be the central criteria
for judging our candidates. Patriarchy has normalized our suffering,
and made us terrified about speaking up. How often do we excuse the most
oppressive, denigrating behavior of male leaders, because we believe
there is something more important? We as woman often put everything else
before ourselves.
But this time it should be different. The truth
despite the differences between us is that we are 50% of the population
of the world. Women do two-thirds of the work of the world but get paid
10% of the income. If we were to start tomorrow refusing to nurse,
serve, clean, teach, nanny, mother, organize, create, lead, support,
sell, arrange, the world would come to a complete halt. Everything would
crumble.
There are an endless list of reasons not to vote for Donald Trump.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton – for all her real flaws – is a woman who
knows what it feels like to be hurt and humiliated by a womanizer. If we
choose Trump and not her, all our years of struggle will be for naught.
The culture under a Trump will be a Doris Lessing-esque nightmare. I
don’t want to spend the next four years using their language, playing in
the cesspool of their degradation. I get to determine my own identity. I
am done being traumatized.
You don’t have to trust Hillary Clinton. You don’t
have to like her. You need to help get her elected and then trust us –
trust this covenant of women and loving men, this new army which will
have the power joined in our newfound numbers. If, once she has settled
in office, Hillary Clinton does not move to implement our collective
vision, we will rise and push her ceaselessly at every front. With
Trump, there is no front. It’s scorched earth. There is only a
hate-filled man and the haters around him, the haters he will grow and
give permission to – who have already let us know in no uncertain terms
that they will assault, degrade, deny, diminish and destroy us and our
rights.
If we send Trump back to his gross phallic tower, we
will be saying we want these horrifying woman-hating days to be over
forever. Defeating him will give us ground to fight the last dirty gasp
of the patriarchy which is built on a conviction that subordinated
people must stay in their assigned place. So much of the fury that Trump
has unleashed is because all too many of us are perceived as breaking
the chains of a society built on gender and race hierarchies. I want
this to be the moment where all of us who identify as women say what
happens to us is the bellwether of the future of life on this planet,
and must be heeded. This is our world. I want us to declare we are
united and will never elect an assaulting, insulting, disgusting
degrading man to lead our nation – and we will ever let another one like
him get this far. Their days are over.
Our sisters, our women leaders, our young daughters everywhere are looking to us. As one character says in the movie Cloud Atlas: “By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
If you only vote for one reason, vote for women, for
your daughters and sons and for all people. Vote in solidarity with
women across the planet. Rise, sisters. Rise.
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