You know, Sarah Palin stories never fail to inspire a sense of righteous anger in me. It seems like every day there's a new article in the media about either her or her supporters saying or doing something that is fundamentally offensive to me. Not being able to name a single newspaper she reads? Check. Co-opting feminism to support a radically anti-feminist agenda? Check. Basing her entire campaign on a blatant anti-intellectualism? Check. As for the supporters... well, I'll get to that, but for the moment I'll just remind you of that dude who yelled "Kill him" in reference to Obama at one of Palin's rallies.
And if it's not the McCain/Palin campaign pissing me off, some sexist idiot is marketing a Sarah Palin
action figure or
blow-up doll or porno (no, I'm not linking that one), and then I have to get all worked up about that. Or some second wave feminist is attempting to convince me that Palin's candidacy should be celebrated for advancing the cause of women's rights when the woman
tried to make rape victims pay for their own rape kits. (Honestly. I thought those Palin-lovin' feminists were just a myth, then I listened to two of them speak last week.) In the words of Amy Poehler on SNL's Weekend Update: Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!?!
And that's not even going into the subject of my very real fear that McCain is either going senile or has been replaced by a robot controlled by the religious right.
Frankly, having to be this angry all the time is tiring.
I'm sure that you, my dear readers, are aware of all or most of the things I just mentioned, but sometimes I get started ranting about the Palinator and I just can't stop. All this rage was heading towards a point, however, and that was to direct your attention to an article by Mark Leibovich in today's
New York Times entitled,
"Among Rock-Ribbed Fans of Sarah Palin, Dudes Rule." The gist of this article is that, despite the apparent attempts of the McCain campaign to snag disaffected Hilary Clinton supporters with the Palin pick, she's actually much more popular among men. In fact, one woman interviewed estimates that Palin's rallies are populated by as high as 70% men. Now, of course there's the typical exasperating nonsense about guys screaming "Marry me, Sarah!," claiming that they come to Palin's rallies "just to look at her," and wearing buttons reading "Proud to be voting for a hot chick." But that's expected. What really got me were the following comments:
“They bear us children, they risk their lives to give us birth, so maybe it’s time we let a woman lead us,” said Larry Hawkins, a former truck driver attending a rally late Thursday at Elon University in North Carolina. Mr. Hawkins said he would rather vote for Ms. Palin than for “McCain and Obama combined.”
Men have done plenty to mess up the country, he said. “The sexual drives and big egos of male leaders have gotten in the way of politics in this country.” Mr. Hawkins said he talked to fellow truckers, and a lot of them feel the same way. “They think it’s time for a woman, too,” he said. “This one. Palin is our kind of woman.”
What do we make of this? Can we read this as progress, as a type of "conservative feminism" (as Leibovich calls it)? I would argue no, and here's why. These men aren't saying that it's time for a woman in the White House because this specific woman is more qualified than any of the men running in terms of policy or political experience. What they're saying is that she's more qualified because of an assumption of innate female characterics--passively sexual and willing to take a backseat to others. In addition, there seems to be some sort of implication that women are owed a little slice of the political pie...
because they give birth. Honestly, has that sort of thinking ever helped women?
These Palin supporters aren't ready to acknowledge women's equality--rather, they're willing to make an exception for this one woman, who offers a campaign based on a myth that they can understand without having to shift their paradigms: that of the supermom who can do it all and still be "all woman." Palin isn't making progress for all women who follow her; she's just found a way to work the system without challenging at all the sexist assumptions on which it rests. Can we really say that this is what we want feminism to look like?
