Posted on 09/08/2008 6:52:18 PM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Note to mainstream media: Sarah Palin is NOT a feminist
The mainstream media seems confused these days. It appears that because Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin is a woman, she is also a feminist. And not just a feminist, but THE feminist - a sign that all is right in the world when it comes to gender equity.
But how could that be, you ask? How could anyone paint Palin - whose policies make it all too clear that she's about as anti-feminist as they come - as feminism's second coming? Well, by pithy misleading headlines - that's how!
The Wall Street Journal: Sarah Palin Feminism
Townhall: Sarah Palin: A Liberated Woman
LA Times: Sarah Palin's 'new feminism' is hailed
NPR: Sarah Palin: New Face Of Feminism?
Adweek: Feminism's Next Wave
The New York Post: A Feminist Dream at the GOP
Even more interesting is that the reporters touting this Palin-as-feminist nonsense are people who pretty much know jack shit about feminism.
Take Wall Street Journal reporter Naomi Schaefer Riley, who writes that progressives should rest easy about Palin's candidacy because "most American evangelicals have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of women in the workplace." A radical feminist sentiment if there ever was one! But perhaps one should take Riley with a grain of salt, considering she's the same reporter who wrote that murdered NY college student Imette St. Guillen should have known better than to be out drinking at 3am. Victim-blamers aren't exactly bastions of feminist thought.
Karin Agness, who wrote the piece for Townhall, calls Palin a "success of feminism" and "truly a liberated woman." Agness is also the President of the Network of Enlightened Women, an anti-feminist college organization that lurves Elizabeth Hasselbeck and even (sigh) mocked a NOW conference attendee in a wheelchair on their blog.
Really, most of the "feminism" talk is coming from conservatives appropriating the language of the movement to push a ridiculously anti-feminist candidate. This, of course, is nothing new (cough, IWF, cough) and fairly transparent.
But what I find even more upsetting is the Palin/feminist talk coming from mainstream outlets who are demonstrating absolutely no knowledge of feminism. Take the Adweek article, for example, which says "Palin is a classic third-wave feminist, benefiting from all that came before her in terms of the women's movement..." So by this definition, any woman who has benefited from feminism is a feminist. So, all women are feminists? Uh, yeah.
So, please, esteemed members of the mainstream media - if you want to write about Palin and feminism, how about you get a feminist to do it? Or at least interview one of us for goodness sake - there's plenty of us around and we'll be happy to talk to you about what the movement is about. (Hint: It's a lot more than thinking any woman is a good choice for all women.)
There certainly are more than one type of Feminist. There's the misanthropes we see on TV, and at Dem conventions; and there's the confident, capable, and competent women we see all around.
Feminists aren’t necessarily anti-religion (WomynPriests, anyone?), anti-motherhood (for gays and lesbians and welfare cases), or anti-feminity (sex workers’ rights). All those traits can fit into their world view. The one litmus test of a feminists in their minds is abortion and if you are opposed to abortion or want to in any way limit it, you are anti-feminist. Just as for blacks, the one litmus test is affirmative action (and maybe reparations). If you don’t follow the anointed on those issues, you are in their minds neither black enough nor woman enough.
Or the "one free grope" rule, created just for him.
All I can think of sometimes, when I hear those words, are dumb, ugly women who hate families and especially heterosexual men.
Which can only lead me to conclude that they have spectacularly failed with both.
Emphatically, no.
I guess that means Camille Paglia is no feminist either because she has voiced similar sentiments: "Sure you have the right to go for a walk in Central Park at 3 am but I would say "Girl what are you thinking?"
Blame the victim my ass. Stupid is as stupid does.
Perhaps we have reached a watershed in liguistic history here. For the longest time these baby murderers have held a word hostage. I have no particular brief for that word, because it has always been my credo that if anything emerging from feminism was true, it was already true when considered within humanism (Christian or not). So it was, technically, redundant.
Now I see a bit differently. I note that there needs to be push-back verbally and that would be to say that a real feminist supports the notion that anyone who can compete to pursue an interest in the open market, without preference or special treatment, should be permitted to pursue that interest. The only possible caveat would be either utter impossibility (Fathering a child or being a Catholic priest) or utter unlikelihood of choice (American football linebacker). Those who also insist on the right to murder preborns and even infants should be titled appropriately as the feminazis they so assiduously aspire to be. It does not matter how they garb themselves, nor in what semiotic colors they try to drape their infamy, they are not philosophically neutral and they are not morally upright. They should never have the veto on language when their very premises argue against any kind of propriety or dignity. None should be accorded them.
Consider it another modest proposal.
Depends on what you mean by “feminist.” I think you can safely say that she’s not a feminazi.
...dumb, ugly women who hate families and especially heterosexual men.
&&&
Sums it up quite well.
Tammy Bruce, Cindy McCain, and Sarah Palin are the only women I recognize as feminists, actually.
All I can think of sometimes, when I hear those words, are dumb, ugly women who hate families and especially heterosexual me
I understand exactly what you mean.
However, the organization, Femininists for Life, is unique for reclaiming the definition of feminism in the early tradition of Susan B. Anthony and others who wanted to vote, have equal access to education, and who were pro-life. Feminists for Life counter NOW and Planned Parenthood using their own terms, namely feminism. There's a reason Planned Parenthood has named them their single biggest threat.
Feminists for Life membership is comprised of the most feminine, heterosexual, man-friendly, intelligent people you'll ever meet including Patricia Heaton, Jane Roberts (wife of S.C. Chief Justice John Roberts, and me.
And I say to them:
“Who died and left you Pope-ette?”
I was listening to the Bill Cunningham radio show last nights and he had Patricia Heaton (of Everyone Love Raymond fame) on and she said she was a member of Feminists For Life and I thought I heard her say that Palin was in that group.
Exactly. Modern pro-life "feminists" seek to reclaim the original, reasonable meaning of the word and, thus, weaken the National Organization of Women and Planned Parenthood. The main purpose of Feminists for Life is to expose abortion as the failure it is and give women a real choice.
There are Feminists and there are Feminists. These are stealth, old fashioned, girly Feminists on the order of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Wallstonecraft, Alice Paul and others who LOVE men, LOVE being women and argue that abortion is bad for everyone. Sarah Palin, Jane Roberts (Chief Justice John’s wife) , actresses Kate Mulgrew and Patricia Heaton are among them.
They don’t sound like Gloria Steinhem or look like Betty Friedan or fit any stereotype whatsoever one may have of “feminism.” The original feminists would spit on the angry hags of the 1960’s and beyond.
http://www.feministsforlife.org/
I agree - Palin is much too open minded, thoughtful and hardy to be a “real” feminist.
“Real” feminism looks to victimhood and a pack mentality to get its points across.
Good point, Beleg. Language is one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of any group. Look at the evolution of terms from those opposing homosexual acts all the way to homophobia—from a moral standpoint to being accused of mental illness. We need not accept the sanitized nomenclature of “pro-choice” when “pro-abortion” is more accurate and incisive. “Feminist” is another term that needs to be countered with something along the lines of “pro-family” or pro-something that indicates a bias towards traditional definitions of a family as husband/father, wife/mother, children and not as the catch-all term “Partner” now in vogue. Orwell was well aware of the power of controlling the terms of the debate and it’s time we took some of it back. Perhaps a movement to adopt specific terms to express conservative values could come together if enough of us worked on it.
BTW, Beleg, give my regards to Beren One-Hand. ;o)
Sarah defines herself. She doesn’t need a sociopolitical movement...
I agree, and note that the other distinction between political Left and Right today is that the latter maintains a reverence for life that the former has twisted out of proper shape. This came about through detaching God's purpose for sex from engagement in sex. The idea was to 'unburden' women from having to concern themselves with consequences, particularly as the consequences would, in leftists minds, lead directly to ultimate overpopulation and destroy the world.
I've never been quite sure how that all was supposed to work, actually. If you morally isolate reproduction from the act of reproducing, you also begin to cancel out moral causation and other activities may come to be considered licit and moral. We know which ones those are. Jann Wenner and V. Gene Robinson, to name only two allegedly moral mavens, are current excrescences of what happens when homosexual behavior is legitimized. It is possibly true that these men represent some kind of warped moral senstivity to the state of our planet, but the cost seems excessive (at least) and the damage to how people can intelligently and morally interact is massive. This feeds back on sexual propriety by making even rampant rutting sexuality look decent, so long as it happens to involve both sexes, which further coarsens the whole social demeanor.
But, you've got to admit, if people abort their children and if moral inverts are encouraged to disport themselves and to spread their personal sexual gospel, then there will be fewer people, overall. That, to me, is a very sad goal to seek. It is so empty of honest human love and affection. I don't know what kind of shell of a life I would have had, without my three children in it. Music (whether fine or rock), shallow social life and alcohol/chemicals go only so far. They give no meaning to life, but only cause the time to pass away. I cannot say I am particularly a serious person, nor one to take seriously, but what little dignity I have stems not from anything proper to my own aspirations, but to the maturing effect my children had on me. In that sense, as in the one the liberals prefer to cite, child really is father to the man. That by itself is to me a powerful argument for life, even before we get to the question of who has dignity in se and who does not and who could possibly have authority to distinguish between the two.
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