Mommy, What Did You Do During the War?
This is not a question I pose because I have children – or even the inkling of children. No foetal thoughts are crossing my mind, apart from the sick one that the only available form of protest soon may be to get pregnant deliberately and have an abortion. Because I can. Short of taking my leave of academia to take to the high seas as a press officer with Women on Waves, a group of Dutch women doctors performing abortions aboard a ship in international waters (what would I do with all my books?), I’m not sure how else I can parlay my skills into weapons to join the battle.

As regular readers know, I’m not shy about the language of violence: I read sections of "Whatever Happened to Baby Janie and Her Gun" last night at the Coffeehouse "Let’s Get Bush Off the Wagon" party, and my trigger finger was surely itching when Florida fell. If circumstances were different, I could see myself as a suicide bomber, a high-school shooter – but we all know how much change they achieve. History swallows up their bullets and belches.

I wasn’t more than an inkling myself the last time there was abortion tourism from the US to Canada, but growing up in London I met a few young women day-tripping from the Republic of Ireland. Feminism went from being an inkling to a pool of many-coloured ink shading every area of my life as I came to realise that women’s rights did not spring from the ground like, well, bushes. In capitalist society they are, sadly, constructed things, fragile as men used to consider women themselves.

The US election may have looked like it was being fought out of fear of terrorism, but there was an internal terrorism being perpetrated that swung far more of the vote. Rick Perlstein’s Village Voice essay, "It’s Mourning in America"details the insidious campaign on the right suggesting that Kerry’s victory would herald evangelicals’ idea of Apocalypse: gay couples colonising every Ikea from Seattle to San Jose (as Jon Stewart asked, why the hell was there a ballot on banning something that isn’t even currently legal?); persecution of Christians under hate crime legislation (whatever happened to good old throwing ‘em to the lions?); adequate childcare and welfare for single mothers; full access to abortion and fair-minded abortion counselling. Clearly, the end of the world as we know it.

Clearly. Because for the last four years, the world has been all Klingon to me. When GWB went to war in Afghanistan, he did it in my name. He appropriated the arguments of a century of feminist fights for justice, equity and transnational affinities, and turned them into bombs. When he invaded Iraq, he twisted those arguments and wore them like a crown of thorns. When he handed out money like bitter candy to AIDS organisations in Africa, there was a proviso: only the first three letters of the alphabet get cash (the so-called ABC strategy: abstinence, being faithful, condom use as a distant third, which is massively considered to be stupid and indeed homicidal < http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Aids_Focus/0,,2-7-659_1553672,00.html>). Of course, Bush can’t read much past the first three letters, and distrusts anyone who can, hence his cutting of funding to education, research and the arts.

Four more years. In which he has the time – and the popular vote, for fuck’s sake – to institute further restrictions on university research (McCarthyism, much?), start more wars on brown people abroad and at home, and – my favourite, and his – reverse Roe vs. Wade. Because if several million Iraqis can’t be trusted to make decisions about their own country, a woman sure as shit cannot be trusted to make a decision about her own body.

A million women marched on Washington to protest, in anticipation of this moment. I wasn’t among them, just like my mum was not among the students protesting Vietnam in London in the 1960s. She did the Beatles thing, and the pot thing (I haven’t enquired in any detail about the free love thing) – but her politics were all about the pop. And I am my mother’s daughter. Sure, I listened to the broadcasts on Democracy Now!, just like I wore my Axis of Eve panties with pride on election day. And I wrote – columns, letters, emails to friends and listservs, articles, essays, journal entries. The ink of feminism keeps flowing, but it’s like blood on my hands today (Wednesday 3rd Nov). It’s etched into my fingerprints like I’m guilty of some crime.

The charge, officer? Daring to believe in change. Daring to look into history and see possibility, instead of blood and bile. Leaving Kerry and Bush in a dead heat at 9 a.m. this morning and scurrying off to my feminist film class with Trinh T. Minh-Ha in one hand, rooibos chai in the other, grim hope in my heart and really itchy eyes from staring at a computer screen all night. The world was surreal and blurry, like watching CNN over a bad cable connection. But I had plans – and a bag full o’ feminism. No power in the ‘verse could stop me.

Except that word: concede. I was in New York the night Gore conceded in 2000, and it was like Resident Evil. The streets were deserted, the bars were full, and there was no Ben n Jerry’s to be found in any corner store in Flatbush. New Yorkers were hunkering down for four terrible years (eerily prescient, now I think of it). This is what shell shock feels like. Four more years of smug mangling of the English language. Of attempts to drill for oil in Alaska. Of torture and bombing. Of Texan brain-death. Four more years of war. Whoever has the weapons of mass destruction, you can send them to this address.

If you have comments about this article please email us @ comments@shebytches.com.