It is both flattering and a little odd that September 1 1, 2001 : Feminist Perspectives has come to be considered a feminist A classic is a pinnacle of artistic achievement, a perfect example, a model to which one aspires. During the ten short months between October 2001 and July 2002, when Susan Hawthorne and I worked to bring the book together, artistic or scholarly achievement was far from my mind. The book was an emergency response to emergency events. There was no time for the luxury of elegance. It seems like have lived in a state of feminist emergency ever since. But then, feminists have surely always lived in a state of emergency. In the wake of 9/1 1 and George Dubbuyas declaration of war on concepts (terror), I remember being more than usually angry and depressed at the more than usual quantities of more than usually masculinist politics. More than usually, the question screamed: Where are the women? My then lover suggested to me that there clearly needed to be a feminist book on the subject and I clearly was the one to write it. Not only did I blanch at the enormity of such a task, but it felt self-indulgent somehow, to have only one feminist voice, and a Western one at that, in such a book. Feminists - and indeed other women who may not have described themselves as such - were blogging, emailing, web -posting, issuing collective statements. The mainstream/malestream media, with few exceptions, featured men, men, and more men, to the extent that even the pacifists started to resemble the warmongers in a muscular and hyperbolic contest of word-wrestling. If transnational feminist analyses of war had ever been needed (and they always have been), then at that moment of masculine one-upmanship, of ridiculously named laws (USA PATRIOT) and comic book villains (Axis of Evil), they were needed even more desperately Yet it is almost impossible, in discussing the aftermath or legacy or long-term impact of 9/1 1, to avoid engaging with hyperbole. There is no end to the list of scary statistics about wars and deaths and violence against women. Even if surely do not cite them enough, know them well enough. We are always, still, living in a feminist state of emergency. We are always, still, screaming and not being heard. The terrible, dramatic, and so on situation of the worlds women did not start with 9/11. But 9/11 changed the way talk about it. It is also difficult, however, not to crack jokes, black as the humor may be. One simply has to spell out the abbreviation in the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) to start falling about laughing, and wonder as one does so whether the men who dream up these things really believe their own bullshit. Then there are the more deliberate jokes. Like the one about what to do with Bin Laden when captured: send him for a sex change operation in Switzerland then back to Afghanistan to live as a woman. It gives a whole new dimension to the politics of transgender. My favorite comment was by Susan Sontag, in her piece in the September 17, 2001, edition of the New Yorker: Let s by all means grieve together. But let s not be stupid together (Sontag 200 1 ) . I had wanted that piece for our book and particularly wanted those two sentences for the back cover. But sadly, for a reason that escapes me, the permission from her agent did not come through. Then she died (in 2004). Which of course had nothing to do with us not getting permission to publish her piece. But I grieved for both. Grieving, along with anger and black humor, had in any case become a default position post-9/11. All these women kept on dying. I mean the ones without famous names. Ten years later, it seems that we are all still being stupid together. Post-9/1 lism has become a way of life, at least in the West (and arguably in many other places). Post-9/1 lism, as I see it, is made up of three related elements, all of which have Manichaeanism at their core. …