Zillah Eisenstein: Distinguished Scholar of Anti-Racist Feminist Political Theory at Ithaca College
Zillah Eisenstein
Zillah Eisenstein has written feminist theory in North America for the past thirty years. She is an internationally renowned writer and activist and Distinguished Scholar of Anti-Racist Feminist Political Theory at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York.
In St Petersburg, the author goes in search of signs of "women revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg, famous for her 1917 statement, 'Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters,'" and finds none [AFP/Getty Images]
We just got back from St Petersburg, Russia where we met with gay activists and feminists of all sorts and ages. My spouse Richard Stumbar was one of the lead attorneys in the attempt to legalise gay marriage in New York State in 2008. I have a long history with Russian feminisms that date back to the early 1990’s in the East/West initiative to have women dialog across these borders.
The day we left for Russia, right wing Republicans held the US hostage to their punishing agenda against “Obamacare”. And we were traveling to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which had recently halted adoptions by gay and lesbian couples, and enacted new laws supposedly “protecting” children from gay indoctrination, and had, in early 2012, imprisoned two of the women of the rock band Pussy Riot for “hooliganism”.
SNIP:
Some gay activists also believe that if they had been more at the ready to stand up against Putin and help women’s rights - especially as it pertains to their bodies and abortion - that they would not have been so unprepared to defend their own rights.
Progressives across this globe need to keep looking for the Rosa Luxemburgs and feminist and gay revolutionaries who seek justice for people regardless of their gender, sexual preference, race, or class. Together we stand. United we win. So we must look across our borders and find each other as One Billion Rising for Justice will do on V-Day, February 14, 2014, in over 200 countries.
Read More: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/10/putin-homophobic-nationalism-2013102985511896261.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
