Salon: Zombie Feminists Of The RNC

[Hissyspit]

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/11/zombie_feminism

Zombie feminists of the RNC

How did Sarah Palin become a symbol of women's empowerment? And how did I, a die-hard feminist, end up terrified at the idea of a woman in the White House?
By Rebecca Traister

salon.com

Sep. 11, 2008 | I have been dreaming about Sarah Palin. (Apparently, I'm not alone.) I wish I could say that I'd been conjuring witty, politically sophisticated nightmares in which she leads troops into Vancouver or kindergartners in the recitation of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But, alas, mine have been nonsensical, kiddie-style doozies in which she kidnaps my cats, or enjoys a meal with my girlfriends while I bang on the restaurant window. There's also a chilling one, in which a scary witch stands on a wind-swept hill and leers at me.

What troubles me most -- aside from the fact that there is suddenly a Republican candidate potent enough to so ensnare my psyche -- is my sense that these are dreams in which it matters very much that Palin is a woman.

I have been writing about feminism for more than five years; I have been covering the gender politics of the 2008 presidential election for more than two. And I am absolutely gobsmacked by the intensity of my feelings about Sarah Palin. I am stunned not only by the way in which her candidacy has changed the rules in the gender debate, or how it is twisting and garbling the fight for women's progress. But I'm also startled by how Palin herself is testing my own beliefs about how I react to women in power.

- snip -

Perhaps it's because the ground has shifted so quickly under my feet, leaving me with only a slippery grasp of what the basic vocabulary of my beat -- feminism, women's rights -- even means anymore. Some days, it feels like I'm watching the civics filmstrip about how much progress women made on the presidential stage in 2008 burst into flames, acutely aware that in the back of the room, a substitute teacher is threading a new reel into the projector. It has the same message and some of the same signifiers -- Glass ceilings broken! Girl Power! -- but its meaning has been distorted. Suddenly it's Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum schooling us about pervasive sexism; Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks have weakened not only the White House's glass ceiling, but the wall protecting Roe v. Wade; the potential first female vice president in America's 200-year history describes her early career as "your average hockey mom" who "never really set out to be involved in public affairs"; and teen pregnancy is no longer an illustrative example for sex educators and contraception distributors but for those who seek to eliminate sex education and contraception.

In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism -- a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin's potential power -- means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children's books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.

In this "Handmaid's Tale"-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we're witnessing "a new creation ... of the feminist ideal," the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it's now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: "put a skirt on." "I want her watching my kids," says Deutsch. "I want her laying next to me in bed."

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party's nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

What Palin so seductively represents, not only to Donny Deutsch but to the general populace, is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It's like some dystopian future ... feminism without any feminists.

Palin's femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She's the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms.

But while the Republicans would have us believe that Palin can simply stand in for Hillary Clinton, there is nothing interchangeable about these politicians. We began this history-making election with one kind of woman and have ended up being asked to accept her polar opposite. Clinton's brand of femininity is the kind that remains slightly unpalatable in America. It is based on competence, political confidence and an assumption of authority that upends comfortable roles for men and women. It's a kind of power that has nothing to do with the flirtatious or the girly, nothing to do with the traditionally feminine. It is authority that is threatening because it so closely and calmly resembles the kind of power that the rest of the guys on a presidential stage never question their right to wield.

The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin's candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.

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[texastoast]

1. She is no feminist

And I would just love to slap her for even using the word.

This is a feminist.





And so is this.

[Cerridwen]

2. Oh, FFS, she's phyllis schlafly with a face lift and a figure...

and NO KNOWLEDGE of political sophistry or subtlety.

I'm not sure, but I think she's even got the same uterine profligacy ol' phyllis had.

If she's a feminist, I'm phyllis schlafly!

This...person, is one of the "I'm not a feminist, but..." "women" who has benefited from what women's rights activists have fought and died for these past decades(?), centuries(?), millenia(?) and have no problem TAKING the benefits without any of the, ya know, hardships or...what's that called? Oh yeah, "werk, it's hard werk."

The ONLY good thing she's done is to point out the freaking idiocy of lumping woman and "feminists" into one hive mind.


edit for word I meant.

[qwlauren35]

3. To me,

Sarah Palin is akin to a Log Cabin Republican. A paradox at best.

A powerful opposition to all feminist progress... in reality.

[intheflow]

4. This deserves a big ol' morning kick for the DU feminists.

Wicked good reading! This woman exactly nail what the new faux Repuke interest in feminism is about: just another way to exploit women. They are indeed all pigs in lipstick. :grr:

[Scout]

5. K & R n/t

[lunatica]

6. Thanks! That's an outstanding article

And it made me realize that Sarah Palin is actually reviving the Feminist movement by being the anti-feminist. Suddenly those of us who have always fought for and lived the Feminist ideals and ideas are sitting up and paying attention. The Republicans and Palin don't know it but they've ignited a fire under us.

I'm not known or famous, but I've battled misogyny and idiocy my entire life and I think most women have too. Palin really is just reaping the benefits that women have fought for without having to do much more than be pretty to look at. She is symbolic of so much that's really putrid about our society. She's the incarnation of the perfect American Woman as seen in the eyes of the world of advertising and Hollywood standards of beauty. She is also what the Right wants in a woman. A gun-toting baby machine who understands the Christian role of women (she copies her hubby on her work related emails, obviously including him in her job, perhaps as the real power?) and who says the things men put in her mouth.