I'm watching the left-wing feminists (as opposed to all the other feminists) get wigged out over Sarah Palin. It's sad for feminism when its earliest adopters, definers and defenders now pitch it over the railing in their haste to crush a powerful woman whom they disagree with on policy issues.
Feminism doesn't win by having the early adopters go further and further away from the middle (as happens today with some other socially progressive trends) -- feminism wins when the middle moves toward the formerly progressive position.
As I tell my Republican friends, you don't win the political and policy contest by just getting someone from your party elected -- you could find yourself electing a sellout who really is pushing the other side's agenda. Then your policies get even further away from adoption.
You truly win when the other side starts adopting or stealing your ideas and they become mainstream.
In this case with Palin, we're seeing both of these things: first, evidence of the wholesale adoption by the Republican base of the basic tenets of old style feminism -- that women should have the same opportunities as men, that workers should be judged on results not on their reproductive organs -- and second, the sellout of the far left from anything to do with that sort of feminism.
For example, Ellen Goodman criticizes Palin for being, in essence, a bad feminist -- because she isn't lobbying for government programs to nationalize motherhood (federal child care, federal handouts to mothers, additional federal entitlements, additional federal mandates on employers, etc.)
At this point it's no longer really feminism that Goodman (and so many others, like Katherine Marsh and Judith Warner) are defending -- it's the old Democratic agenda of ever larger government and ever more citizens, in one form or another, on the dole.
The real test of your belief in your stated position is when you have to defend someone you dislike or disagree with. The ACLU proved itself to me when it defended the American Nazi Party's right to free speech -- clearly the ACLU really does (or did) believe in free speech, even for vile speech. Leftist feminists have proved something very different: they don't care about women's rights; they only care about the big-government agenda of the left.
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A true feminist would not vote for a woman based solely on the fact that she is a woman. To start, men and women should be considered equal. Then you go the issues. There she falls flat. Her nonexistant understanding of foreign policy ("Russia is our neighbor, you can see it from Alaska" ugh)where does she stand on earmarks, global warming is God's will, the economy is perfect, the war is God's will and so on. She doesn't even know what she's talking about with half of those issues, she comes off sounding completely clueless. Maybe they should have got her some public speaking lessons, then at least she could try to use vague terms to try to fool us. And as to welfare, check out the feminists for life website, Mr. Cox. Welfare is only bad unless the mother receiving it was considering abortion. Then we should give it out hand over fist. Whatever.
Not even John McCain himself is as anti-woman as she is, in fact, if he had chosen another running mate, I would have voted for him. But he's old. I don't want Palin that close to the highest office in the country. Sad to say, but despite my reservations, I will be voting democrat this year.
I should say here that it is a good thing that there is a woman in the running for vice president, it says we've come along way. But there were better republican women to choose from. Palin was a praise jesus and keep the conservatives choice. Poor McCain. He really wanted to do something great for this country.
Feminism is a straw man (or should that be straw woman?) argument. Sarah Palin is simply not qualified. If her gender were male, she still wouldn’t be qualified.
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