Post-election, Still a Feminist

America-hating liberal here.  Anyone up for a terrorist bump?

I’m having post-election musings about feminism post-Palin.  Oh, those conservatives—to borrow a line from Stephen King—hypocrisy so transparent you could read a newspaper through it.   They’ve been rallying round the subjugation of women, discrimination against women, hypocritical double standards in sexual conduct for women, and they’ve been demanding submission from women.  Then, when their female crusader for all of the above was called out not on her clothing, but on her lavish spending on clothing while hard-working, decent Americans are losing all but the clothes on their backs, they screamed sexism.  That is truly rich—the rest of us show outrage at this calloused display of greed, and we turn Republicans into feminists.  Who would have thought, through all these years, that that’s all it would take?  And now that we’ve got them boasting about their feminist hearts and souls, maybe we can convince them to support reproductive rights, pay equity, and all the rest. 

Anyway.  As to their smear of feminists as “man-hating.”  Just some anecdotal insights into this: I’m acquainted with feminists and women who hate feminists.  No doubt, I’m sure there are women calling themselves feminists who hate men.  I’ve never met one.  I’m not one.  Hatred for half the human race based on how they were born, gee, don’t feminists fight that?  I wouldn’t call a woman who hates men a feminist.  But when I hear feminist-hating women let fly, wow. 

This is how it goes: they view feminists as naive in the sense that we give men credit for too much.  As they tell it to me, men are rats, bums, no good, and always will be.  We feminists need to face up to that.  We are foolish to try to appeal to decency and honor in men when we insist on our rights because men aren’t capable of showing decency or honor toward women.  We should resign ourselves to that.   We should face the facts according to feminist-haters.  They say men can’t be trusted not to cheat on us, lie to us, demean and abuse us, so we should be real, tough women.  We should suck it up and deal with it.  Curious, this last part, given that the conservative take on women is that we’re inherently too weak and timid to hold public office. 

This from an ideology that produced a woman brazen enough to parade around in designer duds someone else paid for, when she isn’t shooting moose from a helicopter that isn’t hers.

Palin: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I don’t like Sarah Palin’s politics.  I don’t like Republican politics either.  That’s why I’m not voting Republican in this election.  I find everything the Republican Party stands for deeply immoral, with the behavior of Republicans—and I’m not saying the Democrats are angels—but the behavior of Republicans in recent decades has been so deeply unprincipled, dishonorable, inhumane, outright corrupt, and hypocritical that I’d face public execution before I’d vote Republican.  

I’d like to single out Sarah Palin’s hypocrisy.  Palin denounces feminists, which is curious, given that she lives according to so many feminist principles.  She is a mother and a woman in a position of power in the public sphere with a husband who has been described in the press as a stay-at-home dad.  Assuming this is true, the Palin’s don’t do traditional gender roles or traditional marriage.

But she’s a Republican.  The Republican Party platform calls for traditional family values and imposing on women the traditional nuclear family with the husband and father as the “head” of household and the wife in subjugation.  It calls for women to remain confined to the domestic sphere, and for men to dominate the public sphere.  

Palin the Republican professes to support the Republican Party platform.  She’s profited from enacting public policy consistent with that platform.   But if she truly endorsed that platform, she wouldn’t be anywhere near the public sphere.  According to Republican ideology—the ideology she claims to support—Palin should be a full-time, at-home mother tending to the needs of her brood, and especially the needs of her infant Down Syndrome son.  

I support wholeheartedly the right of women—Sarah Palin or not, mothers or not—to participate fully in enacting public policy that affects all of us.  The trouble is, Sarah Palin doesn’t.  She supports an ideology that subjugates women.  She campaigns to keep in power a political party that will work to keep women down.  She works to ensure that women must be twice as good as men at the same tasks to be considered half as good, and she opposes discrimination legislation aimed at protecting women from such double standards.  She supports a party that calls for women to remain confined to the domestic sphere while she, herself, campaigns to become the nation’s first woman vice-president.  

So I think I have this straight: she denounces the feminists who secured for women the rights we enjoy now; she doesn’t shun those rights, but she takes them and runs with them; she uses them not just to enrich and empower herself, but also to deny the rest of us those rights. 

Apparently Palin never has heard of leading by example.  

I have no patience with women who denounce feminists and who have rained scorn and ridicule on them for decades, but who eagerly help themselves to the rights those feminists fought so hard to secure for women.  But then, I’ve never been fond of ingrates and hypocrites.  If nothing else, Palin serves as an example of one such woman.

Why I will vote Republican

Way too funny not to share. Thanks to Bust.

I Have to Vent: It’s the Conservatives, Stupid!

Okay, that isn’t a very civil title, but the stakes are high and I can’t contain myself.

I’m a 55-year-old white woman. Our greatest matter of urgency is to be sure a Democrat becomes President in November, and to get as many Democrats as possible elected to both houses of Congress. We’ve also got to do that at the local, grassroots levels. When we’re finished doing that, we’ve got to hold the Democrats accountable for what they do or don’t do. We’ve got to demand representation, respect, and results. If they descend to the depths of the Republicans—or even come close—, we need to fire them all and hire new elected officials. We need to repeat the process until they get the message that we mean business. We need to be uppity women and citizens.

I’ve never supported any political candidate enough to campaign or canvass for them. I’ve observed them all, and none of them inspires my impassioned belief in them. And until now I’ve been able to keep a respectful silence while others with very strong feelings for either Democratic Presidential candidate have public melt-downs when their candidate has a political setback.

I can’t keep quiet now. I’ve just been watching a white woman in my age group on CNN going radioactive about how she’s going to vote for John McCain if HIllary Rodham Clinton doesn’t get the Democratic nomination. She gave as her rationale for this chop-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face tactic that the Democratic party has turned on its women supporters.

To this woman, if you and others like you are reading this: Im sure you aren’t in the majority of Clinton supporters. But you’d like the proven record of Republican conservatives for their all-out war on women’s rights? We’re now paying the price for three decades of conservative domination in America—what it’s done to the American character; the fact of American commerce now as morally bankrupt as it is; the abuses of Wall Street; the abuse of the environment; the poisonous cynicism and corruption of this administration; the use of torture, illegal wiretaps—I could go on for pages.

Back to the issue of women’s rights. You, Screaming Woman: you are old enough to remember the pre-Roe v. Wade days in America. Remember coat hangers, Drano, women hurtling themselves down stairs, illegal abortions performed on garage floors without anesthesia? Remember women dying and left unable to bear children from illegal botched abortions? Remember birth control—even birth control information—outlawed? Remember the early 1970s, when a woman could not get a credit card or a bank loan in her own name—when a woman needed an adult male co-signer’s permission for them because we were deemed incompetent to manage our own financial affairs? Remember gender-segregated “Help Wanted” ads, with the best-paying jobs always in the “MALE HELP WANTED” column? Remember when sexual harassment and sex discrimination were legal? Remember when a woman being used as a punching bag by her husband had no recourse—no earning power, no options, and when the police she turned to often were abusers themselves and sympathized with the husband? Remember when we had no rape shield laws and when marital rape was legal? Remember when domestic violence shelters weren’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye?

If I remember all of that—and I do—then you do, too, Screaming Woman. Republicans fought the changes that spare today’s women the horrors and humiliations they endured then, and too often still do. Give the Republican Party platform a close reading. They want to return us to those days, want it so bad they can taste it. And because the Democratic Party enacts a decision you (and maybe I) don’t agree with, you’re really going to show them, aren’t you, and vote for McCain? The same McCain who, in front of a group of people and in a fit of mouth-frothing rage, called his wife a cunt? The same McCain who mocked Chelsea Clinton—a child at the time—as ugly? The same McCain who vows to appoint Supreme Court justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? The same McCain who laughed when a Republican woman asked him, on camera, “How do we beat the bitch?”—referring to Clinton, your candidate of choice? The Democratic Party’s decision is worse than this?

Please. Get things in perspective. I do not consent to watching Republicans—the American Taliban—imposing their misogynistic agenda on my nieces. Grow up. I seldom use language this strong, and I understand your anger. No one wants to see a woman President more than I do. But remember who our adversaries are. Remember what theyr’e made of, remember the damage they’ve done already and the worse damage they will surely do if we vote them back into power. Truly, Screaming Woman, I cannot wrap my brain around any woman willing to hand all American’s women over to these American Taliban if Clinton doesn’t get the nomination.

You implied in your meltdown that the Democratic Party is making a calculated effort to prevent a woman from winning the nomination because she’s a woman. News flash: it’s possible to support Obama and not be a misogynistic goon.

I had to get that out of my system. Now please, calm down and do this. Think critically, interpret accurately what the candidates say and do, reach informed decisions based on their judgment, character, track record, and positions on the issues, and don’t abuse the vote—a precious right—that women fought so courageously to win.