I did a brief search of what came up if you Google “feminism and 9/11” or “a feminist perspective of 9/11.” There are two surprises that should not be surprising:
1) There isn’t much
2) What is available – you gotta pay for it
Now, I’m no fool. I know that writers and thinkers need to make money somehow. I know scores of feminist writers who are scrimping by and need means to live so they can continue to offer their fem perspectives of cultural issues and global conflicts. However, why am I surprised that all the articles you must pay for are all academic? All scholars? All the ones you gotta pay for are housed in the academy.
No $ = No Reading of Feminist Perspectives of 9/11
Maybe I can’t be stimulated cuz I ain’t got the bucks to pay for some words.
I get pissed like that.
I’m a thinker. I’m an initiator, but I’m also a young feminist reactor. I need to read to be further stimulated for deeper reflection. There ain’t much out there about feminism and 9/11. What do I do on this anniversary?
I don’t have much. My skin is stll crawling from 9:03am, 9/1//01. I don’t pretend that I have a conspiracy theory or that I even have a feminist approach to what transpired in my country that tragic day. Over six years, I have gathered questions, documentaries, clips of loud politicians, and have stayed away from anyone who supported the war that 9/11 spurred.
i have a small bag of rocks, my divots, my kickings of 9/11 and what my country has done to the world since that fateful day:
I hate what the government has done post 9/11 and has inflicted a war upon a country that has no ties to 9/11. [Stop your Saddam arguments right now, please.]
I do not believe in justifying violence in the Middle East – or anywhere in the world – to liberate women. Liberation via fallacy? No. We are not liberating anyone, we are killing, starving, squeezing the throats of women and children in the poorest areas of the world. Even before 9/11, our nation has imposed sanctions on nations that have thwarted the livelihood of hospitals and social service agencies that provide basic necessities to the people who most need it – usually women with children.
I can’t stand Ann Coulter for calling the widows of 9/11 “broads” who were milking the system after their husbands were killed in the line of duty as police officers, EMTs, firefighters, and emergency responders.
I have trouble reconciling the fact that so many citizens believe that our billion dollar military makes our communities safer.
I question how so few us define patriotism for ourselves and leave it to bumper stickers and ribbon magnets.
I wonder when we will suffer further attacks.
My eyebrows furrow when people say that 9/11 proved that our country is not safe. WOC and POC communities are born into a reality where safety is never assigned or assumed.
I wish we all better understood the relationship of utilizing fear of the Al-Qeada as a tactic to bring a country to war.
My memories my friends who could not be faithful to their partners who were serving in Afghanistan and Iraq still makes me nauseous because of all the intimate pain of both people.
Blame is easy these days. I don’t blame just one president or one party or one attack or one generation. Violence is rarely a spontaneous act, it is often pre-meditatied, lurking in the minds of the powerful, waiting for the right opportunity to attack.
My Pet Goat became just as symblic as the towers, PA site, and the Pentagon that day.
I still wonder how I was expected to function that day at work.
Osama Bin Laden. Who is this man?
How have so many people forgotten to be one, not as a country, but as a world?
Muslims, religion, radicalism, violence, misunderstanding, violence, misconception, fear, hate, war. Violence, violence.
If I could create a headline tomorrow that signifies what I have seen of my country and many of its citizens since 9/11, it would be: A US-Adopted Mentality: “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”
Remember this: Not Hillary, Michael Moore, Obama, Everybody’s Mayor, nor Edwards can fix this.
The most sacred of things are also the most easily tarnished – unity, remembrance, silence, and Truth.
“They” are “us.”
Stop making movies about 9/11 that do not entirely benefit those who suffer/ed the most.
Why don’t we have flag at half mast during wartimes?
Six years is a scattering of dirt on one of thousands of coffins.
I wish we all better understood the relationship of utilizing fear of the Al-Qeada as a tactic to bring a country to war.
When I was a child, I always dreaded the onslaught of gangs of boys from “over there”; the next street, the next school or the next town… whoever “the other” was in any given situation, be it sports rivalry, nasty barroom brawl, personal grudge, pass made at someone’s girlfriend/wife and countless other thoroughly “patriarchal” events…all they needed was the excuse, and damn, I hated when they gave the other side the excuse.
And so, they would do something, giving OUR boys (or vice versa) the coveted excuse to go over THERE to hurt some of them in retaliation. Tit for tat, back and forth. In short, I learned WAR at an early age.
And so, on 9/11, my feminsit thought all day?: This is war, I thought. Now they can go over to their neighborhood and raise some hell, too. And I just cried and cried over it, as much as I cried over everything else that day.
And they have done exactly that, of course. All they needed was the excuse. All else was in motion and ready to go.
That was as far as my feminist analysis went that day, and since. But as far as analysis goes, it’s still very basic, very accurate.
I don’t have a feminist analysis of 9/11. I don’t really have any sort of analysis of 9/11. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that hasn’t been said already, a billion times. just: I was here. It was bad. Many of us are still here. A lot of really terrible shit has been done in its name, our name, and? for what? for who? not for me, not for the victims.
and i swear the air IS worse all over the city since then.
I heart you.
I shall think on this deeper but for now
that is all