Left-wing feminists have a hard time dealing with strong, successful conservative women in politics such as Margaret Thatcher. Sarah Palin seems to have truly unhinged more than a few, eliciting a stream of vicious, often misogynist invective....I wouldn't have titled this piece "Why feminists hate Sarah Palin." Young never concedes that the feminism that liberals say is the only feminism is, in fact, the only feminism. Nor would I.
I disagree with Sarah Palin on a number of issues, including abortion rights. But when the feminist establishment treats not only pro-life feminism but small-government, individualist feminism as heresy, it writes off multitudes of women.
There was a time -- I was there -- back in the 80s and early 90s, when feminists would speak of "feminisms" and were always promoting some new version of feminism that, we'd argue, was better than the last. We were way out in front of the liberal feminists. So it seemed, and we duly disparaged them -- from the left.
Those were heady times. But in recent years, feminism has been dominated by Democratic Party devotees who act like they own feminism, as if theirs was the only feminism -- as if they could dictate that all women should vote Democratic.
Perversely, this conventional Democratic Party feminism took over after Bill Clinton made it rather obvious that within the Democratic Party, the party's interests would necessarily supervene women's interests. The feminism of the last dozen years has been a dull, uninspired argument for keeping Democratic politicians in power.
But feminism is something that transcends party politics. Women have interests that the parties should have to compete for. I want a vivid debate about what is good for women. Sarah Palin represents one argument, and her feminism will require Democrats to improve their argument and not take women for granted. Sarah Palin brings feminism to a lot of people who've been scorning feminism -- because feminism has seemed like a strand of Democratic party politics.
This is great for feminism.
Posts
267 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 267 of 267I misunderstood. Of course it's not an enumerated right.
You didn't misunderstand. Fen just made up some shit and attributed it to someone else. I see that sort of thing happen all the time here.
Joe said...
How should Obama have handled Sarah Palin better?
Remind people he is running for President. Then refer all Palin questions to Biden.
The parasites of the Imperial City get 5.55 dollars in Federal spending for every dollar they pay in taxes - and 5/8ths of the city is STILL a high-crime 3rd world shithole despite being propped up so much by the nation's taxpayers.
I appreciate your vehemence Cedarford, but I guess I should have been more precise as I was referring to earmarks not federal spending per capita.
And if you will take another look at the numbers for Louisiana, you will find that much of the money you think is being spent on levees in and around N.O. is actually being spent statewide (and there are multiple reasons for the need for flood control and wetlands projects in Louisiana, oil extraction being a major cause of the decline of the coastal wetlands). Also, we also have a lot of subsidized agriculture (e.g., sugarcane) that accounts for another considerable chunk of federal dollars spent in Louisiana. Also, keeping the lower Mississippi open to navigation is something that benefits the entire nation.
I thought cutting taxes causes revenues to increase. At least that's what everyone here keeps telling me.
Cutting income tax rates causes income tax revenue to fall. Cutting capital gains tax rates can cause a short term increase in capital gains tax revenue but it doesn't lead to a long term increase in revenue. What everyone here keeps telling you is bullshit.
Well it has been proven to do so.
Bullshit!
I think the men's rights issue with abortion is that women get post-conception rights while men don't. A woman can decide that she can't afford a child... a man can't... at least not post-conception.
This has always been one of my problems with the whole thing as a male. If two heterosexuals have consensual sex before marriage (or, really even within it), and the woman gets pregnant, the male has no rights. If she choses to have an abortion, he has no say. And if she wants to have the baby, he pays for the next 18 years.
What everyone here keeps telling you is bullshit.
I was being facetious.
As for the feminism question...
I think the problems pre-date Clinton, frankly. I know that my first impression of feminism (then exemplified by NOW) was that I was not invited.
And then, through my life, I've been criticized for not going where I wasn't invited.
Go figure.
When I first encountered feminism it was all about abortion. It was about the oppression of men, and how bad men were. That bothered me. The men in my life didn't act that way. My husband (when I met him) talked about how hostile some aspects of our quite conservative engineering and Ag. college was toward men... all the problems in the world were caused by white men and men were supposed to apologize.
This never seemed fair to me. It's illogical, besides, and doesn't conform to notions of individual responsibility. This was still "iron curtain" time and the question of ought we hold Soviet citizens responsible for their government (after some incident or other) was something discussed (at least around me) and the idea of group guilt was something I'd rejected across the board. The *liberal* attitude was that this wasn't fair.
Unless it had to do with stuff here at home... with the oppression of women in particular.
I never understood why, logically, people argued that abortion was important to stop children from having to grow up in abusive homes. Were the women having abortions admitting to being child abusers? I never understood why, logically, the fact that some women had no control over their reproduction, would be reversed by having an abortion. Certainly the effort ought to be on making darn sure no woman had to have sex she didn't want to have or be trapped in a situation where she couldn't control her reproduction.
I couldn't see how any of the social ills used as arguments on why abortion was so very necessary were solved by allowing it.
When I participated in my local political convention and process when I was 17 there were those handing out fliers and trying to get certain issues on the platform (I got to be on a platform committee) that simply out-and-out equated abortion with birth-control.
And it's continued that way.
"Women's issues" tend to be a very sort list of things with which I disagree.
Pro-life is still presented as a mean-spirited attempt to "take away a woman's right to choose" when the reality is that pro-life is not in conflict what-so-ever with promoting self-determination and reproductive control of women over their own lives... it simply rejects abortion as birth-control.
"John McCain. Out of Tough with Women's Lives."
I get a flier from the NM Democratic party and it's all about abortion. "Every Woman" should know these things about John McCain...
Frankly... what does "Every Woman" have in common? Biologically it's having kids, isn't it. It's getting to be the side of a reproductive strategy that takes two individuals and being the one who ends up with periods and the womb that goes with them. And breasts.
Well, dang. I suppose it is all about abortion isn't it.
Because I can't see any reason at all that all women ought to have the same economic concerns or beliefs, or beliefs about the proper role of government, or military issues, or anything else.
Everything else is human issues.
krylovite: The Democratic Party loves and respects me even though I supported Hillary Clinton. Why wouldn't they?
Thats not what your brethen over at TalkLeft convey. Hence the acronym PUMA [Party Unity My Ass] adopted by Hillary supporters disgruntled at what they view as sexism from Team Obama, the DNC and its media allies [as if they're not the same anyway]
I don't know anything about the "Democrat Party." I've heard low intelligence types on Fox mumble about the "Democrat Party" but I'm good at tuning them out.
I can't speak for FOX, but I prefer to call it the Democrat party for 2 reasons:
1) For some reason, it really gets under the skin of partisan hacks like yourself, and
2) To block your play on words - your party is hardly democratic, which is what you mean to imply. That reminds me, did you enjoy watching your Superdelegate Elites pick your nominee?
Of course, you're free to call your party whatever you want. As am I. [yawn]
I know that my first impression of feminism (then exemplified by NOW) was that I was not invited.
I think thats a big part of Palin's draw amoung non-liberal women, as Ann's thread below touches on.
Non-liberal women have felt marginalzied by a liberal feminism thats more about Leftism than women. Palin's lifestyle examples are resonating with these women. The best thing that could happen to feminism is for women on the right & middle to break the monopoly of thought on the Left that enslaves and damages women in the same way that Democrats enslave blacks.
Really, why would a feminist allow Party ID to trump gender ID? Unless of course they're just posers using women's issues for political traction.
I can't speak for FOX, but I prefer to call it the Democrat party for 2 reasons
Make that 3 reasons. Reason number 3: You're an ass-hat.
krylovite: You didn't misunderstand. Fen just made up some shit and attributed it to someone else. I see that sort of thing happen all the time here.
Nope. Here's the post [11:29 AM]:
"Care to show me anywhere in the Constitution where this right exists?"
AlphaLiberal: See Roe v Wade. But, please keep up with the arugment that women have no right to control their own bodies or their own reproduction. You go.
But thanks for outing yourself "krylovite", I wondered where Micheal had slinked off too after yesterday.
Got any more fake Palin quotes for us today?
Make that 3 reasons. Reason number 3: You're an ass-hat.
Sure, but asshat isn't hypenated, Micheal.
Ay, another thread descending into trollbaggery. Come on guys. Just ignore...
Sarah Palin Crisis Day Whatever: A Nation In Meh
(Can you tell my heart's not into this?)
"No, idiot. They hate her because she didn't have an abortion. She threatens to undermine their entire philosophy."
You are precisely right. A former friend called me other the other to vent about what he felt was the obscene outrageousness of Palin's choosing not to get an abortion. When I told him I thought it was her choice, he got so mad he hung up the phone on me.
Some Obamaphiles hate Plain so much they've become unhinged. In every other area of life they hold themselves out to be the most tolerant and compassionate of souls, but when it comes to Palin all that's out the window. Palin is different, they feel. Hating her is a moral necessity.
"No, idiot. They hate her because she didn't have an abortion. She threatens to undermine their entire philosophy."
You are precisely right. A former friend called me other the other to vent about what he felt was the obscene outrageousness of Palin's choosing not to get an abortion. When I told him I thought it was her choice, he got so mad he hung up the phone on me.
Some Obamaphiles hate Plain so much they've become unhinged. In every other area of life they hold themselves out to be the most tolerant and compassionate of souls, but when it comes to Palin all that's out the window. Palin is different, they feel. Hating her is a moral necessity.
Your first choice from 2000 screwed things up so badly that even the GOP wants "change." Now you seriously want America to let your second choice try to fix the mess that your first choice made?
I wondered about this, too. If Republicans are any judges of character and ability, the next four years will be much worse than the previous eight, because in 2000 Republicans preferred W. to McCain 2:1. And we all know how picking W. turned out.
Has McCain improved over the past eight years? His last major accomplishment was McCain-Feingold, which was six years ago.
Cedarford,
"Then comes Alaska, N Dakota at about 1.70, mainly a function of small population and many military bases."
The fact that the military bases might actually be located there for good reasons kind of makes the whole calculation more complicated. It's sort of the Anti-West-Virginia question: while in the case of federal-government offices that don't need to be in DC it would be far better to spread them around equitably, you can't really make that same claim for all military bases. Washington, for example, has a lot more Naval bases than Oregon does--is that fair? But we do, and we'll continue to have more forever.
George,
"Stop efforts to limit gun use/registration so American women can more easily shoot and kill animals to feed their families."
Even more importantly, so that they will have better means of self-defense. Chicago and DC do everything they can to disarm females and make them relatively defenseless compared to the statistically stronger males.
You know DBQ asks me to list exact lies promulgated by the McCain campaign, which I did even though they apparently weren't "exact" enough to suit her.
Exact means to post (or post a link to) the words that they actually used that you say are lies not what you sumarized as what you interpreted as lies.
I don't trust your interpretations since there have already been many proven distortions of their (McCain and Palin) actual positions by leaving words on the cutting room floor in television interviews or by creative snipping and clipping in news articles.
Exact means exact.
Freder Frederson said...
What is ironic is that all you righties (Ann included) seem to know exactly what the left thinks.
It's really not that hard to figure out what the left thinks, Freder. However, we righties might have missed a secret handshake or two that you've been keeping from us, hmmm? Come on, CONFESS!!!
eric-
To be fair, he did get a house out of it.
Don't forget that Michelle got a 100%+ raise after Obama brought the pork home to her employer...
Alpha Liberal,
If you want to go with who is respecting women, check the campaign staffs. McCain has 3 of his top 5 advisors are women. 13 of his top 20 campaign staff are women. The women on his staff on average make more than the men on his staff.
Bambi has 1 of his top 5 as women. He has 3 of his top 20 are women. The women on his staff on average make $10K less than the men do.
Which candidate puts more value on women?
Don't forget that Michelle got a 100%+ raise after Obama brought the pork home to her employer...
The truth is hard for you folks to remember:
Don't forget
1. That Michelle was promoted to Vice President of the University of Chicago Medical Center
2. The year before
3. Obama tried to get $1 million for a new pavilion to handle the demand for patient care
4. The same year that Obama tried to get $5 million for a competitor of his wife's employer, Northwestern's Prentice Women's Hospital, and
5. Neither hospital ended up with a dime.
My question is, if Obama's requested the earmark to help his wife, who was he shtupping at Northwestern?
I recall a morning talk program talking about career women and the need for equality. There was a disagreement at some point between the guests and someone in the audience about stay at home mothers and respecting that choice. I don't remember who said what, but the gist was that the other person simply had never encountered the animosity that the other was talking about.
I think that there was a feeling in feminism for a while that the only appropriate choice was to throw off the old bindings and enter the work force and have a career... stay at homes were holding that back.
Because for all the "party line" has been that all choices are respected, including deciding to fill that traditional domestic role, the truth is different. Because unless you've been on the receiving end of it, you might not notice the disapproval feminists have for staying home with children.
It's less, now, I think.
As someone pointed out, people in my generation (Palin is a few months older than I am) are sort of post-feminist in some respects.
And the "conservative" outlook has gone quite beyond strict gender roles about who does what while valuing the domestic role for both parents. Not equal shares, but priorities.
The true radicals in this respect take it all the way to having both parents stay at home... because dad being gone is as bad as mom being gone.
Which is why no conservatives are going to gasp at the horror of the First Dude's apparent laid back approach to career and greater availability to his family.
Doyle-
>>Governors are more aware of national politics than junior Senators are.<<
Are you really arguing this? That any governor by definition is better informed on foreign policy than any junior senator?
Do you know the difference between "national" and "foreign"?
Or, are you just so outraged that the talking points are uncontrollably spewed from your fingertips without ever engaging your brain?
I certainly see the right to own a weapon for self-protection as... well... not a woman issue so much as a "if you're not 6 foot 2 and healthy as an ox" issue.
It's important to have training but a 9mm puts the smallest woman or elder or person in a wheel-chair on the same level of ability to project force as any predator.
It's an effective way to remove yourself from the victim class... whatever sort of victim class you might be seen to belong to.
AlphaLiberal said...
See Roe v Wade. But, please keep up with the arugment that women have no right to control their own bodies or their own reproduction. You go.
Roe v. Wade isn't in the Constitution first of all. Nice try. However, the court that did decide on Roe v. Wade, out of whole cloth, determined that there is a "fundamental right" for women to have the ability to use abortion within the first trimester as arbitrarily set by Justice Blackburn. However, many legal scholars including Justice Ginsberg didn't like how Justice Blackmun derived not only his opinion, but his decision to make it a "fundamental right". This is why there is so much distrust of the people with courts. That rights are fabricated to suit the courts decisions. You know it, I know it.
It may be the law of the land, but people know intrinsically that it isn't a right and should never have been. Even Norma McCorvey doesn't believe in it anymore. Even the dissenting opinion clearly stated by Jistices Renquist and White that they found no wording in the Constitution for Justice Blackmun to determine and create a new right. Even the 14th Amendment couldn't be construed to project this language as a new right for the Roe v. Wade. Go read the dissent. It's fairly scathing in it's attack of the proponent Justices in the case.
However to argue your other silly point. Women and men do have a right do with their bodies as they see fit, but women by biology alone are no longer a singular person when they become pregnant, they are now two individuals and she should be obligated to protect that individual, growing human being against all harm. Don't ever forget that.
This has always been one of my problems with the whole thing as a male. If two heterosexuals have consensual sex before marriage (or, really even within it), and the woman gets pregnant, the male has no rights. If she choses to have an abortion, he has no say. And if she wants to have the baby, he pays for the next 18 years.
1. Easiest solution is don't have sex. Masturbation is much cheaper in the long run.
2. The male-female positions are asymmetrical. The man risks only an economic loss by having reproductive sex, while the woman risks her health and even more.
3. The man can recoup his losses by buying anti-fertilization insurance, perhaps tied to a vasectomy. Or he can simply ask himself before each act of intercourse: Is the potential pleasure here worth 18 years of child support? The woman has no way to hedge against damage to her health and her life.
4. Women are much less likely to abandon their kids than are men. Therefore to women, a child represents a minimum eighteen year commitment, while to men a child might mean it's time to move out of state and start over.
5. If a man wants to father a child, he must make sure that the prospective mother agrees, and he must reassure her that he will support her through the pregnancy and beyond.
DBQ:
I don't trust your interpretations since there have already been many proven distortions of their (McCain and Palin) actual positions by leaving words on the cutting room floor in television interviews or by creative snipping and clipping in news articles.
You mean like this:
"Today of all days, John McCain's stubborn insistence that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' shows that he is disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.
What McCain actually said today:
"The fundamentals of our economy are still strong but these are very, very difficult times. I promise you we will never put America in this position again."
1. Easiest solution is don't have sex. Masturbation is much cheaper in the long run.
The thing, fls, is that works for women, too.
As does sterilization.
With the exception of rape or exploitation of some sort... things that would be wrong and prosecutable even if a pregnancy did not result... the solutions for men who do not want to be responsible for a child are entirely available to women.
So why do we so vilify those who suggest that women ought to do what you suggest men ought to do if they really care so much about not having kids?
A woman who doesn't want to have a child can evaluate just how *badly* she wants to make sure she doesn't have a child and chose a method of prevention accordingly.
Or is there some reason that women are not capable of this?
Doyle
Surely some non-brain damaged conservative is willing to explain to Peter V Bella that US senators are part of the federal government, which deals more with foreign policy than any state government.
Obama simply "parroted" Harry Reid 97% of the time- see also Marshall and Brennan.
Change!
How many foreign policy "Committee meetings" did Obama lead as a "chairman"?
Good job, Barry!
"4. Women are much less likely to abandon their kids than are men. Therefore to women, a child represents a minimum eighteen year commitment, while to men a child might mean it's time to move out of state and start over."
And the solution to this is abortion? Because women who would never abandon their children (adoption?) feel just fine aborting them?
The solution is to make clear that parents are responsible, fathers are responsible, for the children they have. We've made good inroads on this and encouraging fathers to attach fully to their offspring.
Unfortunately a direct contradiction to trying to encourage fathers to attach fully to their children is the insistence that having a baby is a woman's business only and a man deserves no say in it... certainly not to ask that he be allowed to have a baby that a woman wants to abort.
The two things are not compatible.
Either fathers matter and ought to be responsible and attached to their children... or they don't.
When it's a woman's choice post-conception and no one else's no matter what... a smart man will stay detached.
garage mahal-
Lewinsky wasn't raped. Look up the word "consensual" and come back and tell us what that means.
"consensual"- not having Vernon Jordon responsible for setting up the "exit interviews" after my internship...
Lewinsky wasn't raped.
By all accounts she was thrilled at the opportunity to blow such a powerful man.
But the power difference involved presents a problem... at least for feminists who fought so hard for so long against the notion of female employees serving as the expected benefit due men of power.
Which is why Barbara Boxer once talked about the college prof who wanted "favors" with such horror. He had power over her. Would he fail her if she said no? If I recall her account... she far too upset to tell anyone about it.
With Clinton it was suddenly not about men-with-power taking advantage of women who didn't know, not for sure, if they could say "no" without repercussion. With Clinton it was suddenly just about sex.
The problem is that increased government spending has outpaced the revenues.
That's exactly it. Even after you factor in inflation, government revenues are above where they were in 2000 (just before the bubble burst), with virtually all of that growth coming from income tax. The problem is that government *spending* has dramatically outpaced inflation.
Some useful charts are here.
TO: All
RE: Truly....
"Young never concedes that the feminism that liberals say is the only feminism is, in fact, the only feminism. Nor would I. -- Ann Althouse
...a dizzying intellect. -- The Dred Pirate Roberts
QuIcK! I need IOCAINE POWDER to stop the pane!
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. When are you bozos going to come up to the 21st Century?
I come from a family of strong willed, independently minded women. They are feminists in the sense that they never sat back and felt themselves inferior to anyone. Even the immigrant generation in my family was that way. My grandmothers took no bs from any man, especially their husbands.
My mother was the toughest woman I ever knew.
The fact that none of them sat back and claimed the mantle of victimhood I guess means that they were not real feminists.
My kind of feminist is represented by Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, two of the vanishingly small number of heads of state, of either sex, who are competent and accomplished in math and science.
You seem to have made the same error that Charlie Gibson made trying to "get" Governor Palin:
Lady Margaret Thatcher was not head of state when she was Prime Minister (and was just a lady, not a Lady), nor is Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. Those positions are respectively filled by Queen Elizabeth II and Bundespräsident Horst Köhler. Thatcher and Merkel were/are Head of Government, which is usually a separate office.
POTUS is a prominent exception. The irony is that the sophisticated, nuanced folk like to put down Murkuns for not being aware of such things in the rest of the world.
If you want to see the two extremes of feminism, look no further than here:
1. Conservative Feminism
2. Unhinged Radical Feminist
Women need to figure out which side they have more affinity with.
Women need to figure out which side they have more affinity with.
Women don't need to do anything of the kind.
The only thing which is propelling the unhinged liberal ("movement") kind of feminism is the Boomer generation of Roe v. Wade.
To be sure, that won't disappear the moment they die, but the effects of that generation (as evidenced by the recent anti-Palin rally in Anchorage -- if you scan the crowd, it is made up of a majority of over-50 year olds) are still strong today. They take the "right" to abort personally, indeed. Never mind that they are way over the age of fecundity. They believe they are safe-guarding the right they earned, as much as for the ones who come after.
Instead, as has been mentioned in this blog by commenters all this past week, modern American feminism is embodied by the Palins of this world. They do not intellectualise, or draw battle lines with feminism.
They just live it.
Cheers,
Victoria
But feminism is something that transcends party politics.
Right ... you keep telling yourself that.
Women need to figure out which side they have more affinity with.
Don't tell me what to do :-)
OR Victoria and I will come and kick your butt.
I used to think I hated feminism. Reading those feminist blogs shot through with running dog (sorry, "running pig") haterade makes me nauseous.
I used to think I hated feminism. Now I know better: I hate Marxism, always and forever, and since the Sixties feminism has been 60% Marxism by weight.
(91% of which is either identical or merely aligned with abort-the-womb-parasite-that-will-destroy-our-Earth-Mother cultism.)
Why would a "feminist" declare herself to be "against privilege?" We have no "private law", and women seem to inherit money just as well as men do (hello, Theresa Heinz Kerry).
Are you against Michael Phelps being a great swimmer? Jobs and Wozniak? Gates and Ballmer? Some businesspeople do commit crimes: Ken Lay and Charles Keating were not elevated to the peerage: they were on their way to prison sentences like any common mugger.
You can be "against gravity" if you wish, but you either buy a Piper Cub or just hate the Earth for being so big. Likewise, you can work to perfect justice or you can hate society. Too many do the latter.
A Real-Life Soap Opera About the Suffragettes
Senator Clinton and Governor Palin are proof that women can and do diverge on important issues.
Even on the question of whether women should vote!
Most people are totally in the dark about HOW the suffragettes won votes for women, and what life was REALLY like for women before they did.
Suffragettes were opposed by many women who were what was known as 'anti.'
The most influential 'anti' lived in the White House -- First Lady Edith Wilson.
I'd like to share a women's history learning opportunity...
"The Privilege of Voting" is a new free e-mail series that follows eight great women from 1912 - 1920 to reveal ALL that happened to set the stage for women to finally win the vote.
It's a real-life soap opera about the suffragettes! And it's ALL true!
Powerful suffragettes Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst are featured, along with TWO gorgeous presidential mistresses, First Lady Edith Wilson, Edith Wharton, Isadora Duncan and Alice Roosevelt.
There are tons of heartache on the rocky road to the ballot box, but in the end, women WIN!
Thanks to the success of the suffragettes, women have voices and choices!
Exciting, sequential episodes with lots of historical photos are great to read on coffeebreaks, or anytime.
Subscribe free at
www.CoffeebreakReaders.com/subscribe.html
It's a real-life soap opera about the suffragettes! And it's ALL true!
That seems unlikely.
feminism is not about left or right. It is about women
Pro-Choicers who hate her because HER CHOICE is different from their choice. Those fake pro-choicers should change their name and call themselves 'pro-abortionists' instead
Palin has said many times over that she respects other opinions on this and other issues and will put public interest above herself. She has vetoed a bill that would have a negative impact for guys and kept pro-lifers ballets of the ballot. Need to say more?
Palin has a jumper and a swing in her office. Her youngest and baby come to work.
This is better then what Hillary could do. May be in 4 or 8 years her grand children but she will never have to deal with them while at work.
Think what example this will be for all those backward companies that currently do not facilitate
Palin can do for women in the workplace what Rosenvelt did for handicapped.
Freder Frederson said, For instance, if Jindal had been selected (who really doesn't have a whole lot more experience than Palin) I wouldn't be as scared.
I'm guessing the reason you wouldn't be as scared is that you know very well there are two things that make him an easier target than Palin: he's a man, and he participated in some kind of exorcism and wrote about it. http://humidcity.com/2008/06/05/the-exorcist-jindal-and-the-oxford-review/
Mother. Moose Hunter. Self-Tanner.
If you value choice, protecting the Constitution, the environment, a commitment to your library, the separation of church and state, the development of alternative energies, then you can't vote for John McCain. McCain is old, battered, and a proven cancer host. Palin has a very real chance of becoming President, and those values, and The Supreme Court for years to come, hang in the balance. This is a serious decision.
Sarah Palin is the most un-pro-woman woman I have seen in awhile. And she actually tried to use Hilllary's statement regarding the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling. This seems interesting as Mrs. Palin would never seem to agree on any other issue with Mrs. Clinton. I voted for Hillary and I currently support Obama. I could never and will never be able to ever support the hypocracy that Sarah Palin engenders. From, firing the boys she doesn't like to lying about it and everything else. I am scared at the thought of her running this country... into the ground, or worse making unilateral decisions to combine church and state. Scary!
the solutions for men who do not want to be responsible for a child are entirely available to women.
The question originally raised is typically asked by men facing an unplanned pregnancy. Contraception fails often enough to produce a large number of pregnancies in women who have active sex lives. Further, though this may surprise you, the decision to have sex is not always well-thought-out or planned much in advance.
And the solution to this is abortion? Because women who would never abandon their children (adoption?) feel just fine aborting them?
No. This merely illustrates once again that birth mothers have more at stake than birth fathers do. The solution is men not complaining when they have to pay child support for the children they sired. The idea that a man could force a woman to abort his child is monstrous.
I am scared at the thought of her running this country... into the ground, or worse making unilateral decisions to combine church and state. Scary!
Hi, Matt Damon. I hate your films, except for Good Will Hunting.
Cheers,
Victoria
OR Victoria and I will come and kick your butt.
Right behind you, DBQ! Loading.
Cheers,
Victoria
Matt Damon was the bomb in "Phantoms".
Never did catch that. I'm willing to give any Hollywood blowhard a chance to impress, so thanks, Blake!
Actually, Victoria, I was joking.
Ben Affleck was in Phantoms, and it's a rather weak movie, not really his best work (which...you know...)
In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the running gag is people saying "Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms."
Matt Damon's pretty good in the Kevin Smith movies.
former law student said...
the decision to have sex is not always well-thought-out or planned much in advance.
Shocking. Even with sex ed programs and contraception on demand you still have the nerve to think this. Stunning in it's complexity. I guess Bristol Palin would have mentored well under your tutelage.
The solution is men not complaining when they have to pay child support for the children they sired. The idea that a man could force a woman to abort his child is monstrous.
So it's a lose/lose for the man. When his partner becomes pregnant he must await with baited breath to the decision she ultimately makes. If she chooses to abort, he has no say so. if she chooses to keep the baby and shun him he has no say so and he pays child support. If he decides he doesn't want it, he has no say so since it's not his body that is carrying the child. Monstrous, yes, but when she wants to abort because it's her decision, then it's just a choice. How beneficent and magnanimous.
It was fun playing pin the tail on the losing argument with you. Let's do it again sometime, shall we?
I wonder why no one has taken the time to analyze how beneficial it would be for the advancement of women in general if we were not the captive vote of a liberal party. Women are not a marginal population and there is no reason except for avoidance of mainstreaming their agenda for "the woman's vote" to be marginalized into one political party.
Those anti-woman agenda items can only be sometimes a part of the Republican platform only because its women permit it. One reason why McCain had difficulty finding a pro-choice woman VP candidate who was more experienced, among those names of prominent Republican women that circulated, is that most of the alternatives were pro-choice!
It's a no-brainer that larger numbers of socially mainstream women entering the Republican base would moderate the party agenda toward women's issues and the more there is a large woman's swing vote the more attention and priority those issues would get. Women's issues would be more moderated and have more deference, in BOTH parties, if women were to break out from being a captive vote of one party.
There are many purely political arguments for a true feminist to support Sarah Palin. There are few arguments that are not, as Althouse suggests, merely cynical partisan exploitation of feminist concerns to serve the party interests against womens' interests overall.
AlphaGlib (one of those folks who posts dozens and dozens and dozens of times on just about any thread) sez:
“But can you point to a policy championed by McCain or Palin that would improve lives of American women?”
Right on cue Bob Herbert at the New York Times writes about “McCain’s Radical Agenda.” It would appear, according to hysterical Herbert, “that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning” “radical changes” “for the nation’s health insurance system” — “nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.”
Hm… beyond the merits or demerits of the proposal, it would seem that just maybe McCain and Palin do have a policy or two to proffer that might have a beneficial effect on people, including women. Moreover, clearly the duo aren't just another “McBush” or “McSame”. Who knew?
It's also apparent that the leftist would-be ravagers of Palin and McCain are getting their talking points in contradictory juxtaposition whilst tripping over those oars.
Talula says:
Perhaps it's not that left-wing feminists can't "deal[] with strong, successful conservative women" but rather that they were offended when it seemed like McCain picked Palin in large part to woo dissatisfied Clinton supporters (as many have pointed out).
To the extent that this is true, it made it seem like he thought all feminisms were the same — as if he figured any woman would do, and this conflated the type of feminist who would support Clinton (typically pro-choice, for one thing) with the sort who would support Palin, which demonstrates that the real failure to distinguish between the multitude of feminisms is McCain's.
Wrong. Of course McCain didn't imagine that the more radical “feminists” would ever respond to a gesture by him. What he did do, however, is to meet with prominent Hillary supporters (the latter of whom also met with Obama, bearing an analogous though not identical proposal — who rejected it). McCain listened to their proposition (which was that he select a woman V.P. among other things) respectfully, and acted on it.
As a result, many Hillary supporters — in accordance with the venerable tradition of “throw the bastards out” (the “bastards” in this case being not the Republicans but the horribly misogynistic Dem base a la Kos and the MSM that's taken up the hue and cry) — those Hillary supporters are now throwing their support (at least for this election cycle) behind McCain-Palin.
As just such a Clinton supporter, Lynette Long (who herself met with McCain, and relates the story I've told above) wrote in a piece titled “In this election, putting gender first” two days ago in the Baltimore Sun:
“Yes, policy is important, but who decides and delivers that policy is even more important. Children incorporate many of their perceptions about gender by age 5. Little girls won't understand if Sarah Palin is pro-life or pro-choice, believes in gun control or is a member of the NRA, but they will know the vice president of the United States is a girl — and that alone will alter their perceptions of themselves.
“I have given my loyalty to the Democratic Party for decades. My party, which is comprised primarily of women, has not put a woman on a presidential ticket for 24 years. My party stood silently by as Hillary Clinton was eviscerated by the mainstream media. My party and its candidate gave their tacit approval for the attacks on Mrs. Clinton (and, consequently, women in general).
“I can vote for my party and its candidates, which have demonstrated a blatant disrespect for women and a fundamental lack of integrity. Or I can vote for the Republican ticket, which has heard our concerns and put a woman on the ticket, but with which I fundamentally don't agree on most issues.
“Right now, for me, gender trumps everything else. If Democratic women wait for the perfect woman to come along, we will never elect a woman. I will vote for McCain-Palin. I urge other women to do the same. I promise to be the first person knocking on her door if Roe v. Wade or any other legislation that goes against the rights of women is threatened. But in Governor Palin, I find a woman of integrity, who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. I can work with that. I will work with that.”
As with Lynette Long, thousands and thousands of women in America are doing likewise, as one can easily see at sites such as HillaryClintonForum.net. Haven't folks noticed the 20 point break towards McCain-Palin by white women during the last few weeks?
So it's a lose/lose for the man.
Hey, if you hate women, don't try to have sex with them. Stick with your RealDoll(TM). Or seriously, buy child support insurance.
It was fun playing pin the tail on the losing argument with you.
Wah! Life is unfair!
I'll try to explain the degree of difference in roles between the sperm donor and the pregnant woman in terms even methadras can understand.
“The difference between the man's role and the woman's role is like bacon and eggs. The chicken was involved; the pig is committed.”
"Wah! Life is unfair!"
So true.
And sure, being pregnant sucks a whole lot for most women... certainly the pregnancy itself impacts a far man less.
But you really *really* can't have it both ways... that men aren't supposed to care what a woman does with her "choice" but they ARE supposed to emotionally attach to and support the child that just two or three or five months earlier meant nothing at all to them and over which they had no say whatsoever.
It doesn't work that way.
There are two competing and contradictory ideologies involved.
We *want* to encourage men to leave off the detached or even absentee father model. There's even big old billboards all over town, particularly in the less affluent areas, about "Take time to be a Dad today."
But we concurrently preach that having children has nothing to do with men and only has to do with a woman's choice. It's not about Dad at all.
Maybe the billboards down central avenue should say something like, "Dude, if Planned Parenthood didn't talk your slut of a girlfriend into aborting your trog... pay your freaking child support."
You people have entertained, educated, and excited me all afternoon. Your conversation is like a creative writing class crossed with a political forum and a comedy club. Here's a "combo" sentence of it: "Enforced orthodoxy by an unhinged misogynist needs some re-tinkering because a rudimentary understanding by anyone deranged creates a hair pie caught flat-footed in identity politics that would trump most non-brain, damaged conservatives or non brain-damaged conservative if it weren't for leftist bullshit windbags!
Some of us rural Southern women like Sarah Palin's frontier spirit because our experiences do not entirely revolve around urban life and issues. Being white mothers, Republican, non-feminist, and religious women who may not skin a moose but can work ourselves to death at a pig killing so American children can blithely eat away at a hot dog should not "brand" Sarah Palin or any other woman as being outside of or blind to the interests of women. Eating/Cooking is a viable topic, not that many people rate it very high ... unless they're hungry! As I can recall, my energy has always advanced the cause of women -- it may be modified from the old school of feminism, though. Whoever said a new word might define this category better is right, but not humanism -- that's old, too. My daughter stands as an example in this conversation about Sarah Palin and feminism. Maria graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point; she's a beautiful green-eyed blonde, heterosexual, and working-class, unmarried, childless American woman. What are we going to tell her she's doing WRONG? I thought feminists said Career, Career, Career COUNTS. I thought liberals said Education, Education, Education COUNTS. I followed that advice, and NOW it sounds like my daughter can do the hard things like years of education and a career in the Army -- but not marry a great guy and have babies? Must she also memorize an inarticulated doctrine glued together with Super Glue by the liberal media? 30-year-old women see Palin as a role model, and for good reason. As well, McCain put the subject back on the map for redefinition by all of us when he courageously chose a woman, which the Dems said they wanted but were afraid to do. Now, they're having a SlobberFest causing they choked, as we say Down South. Real men as viewed by real women make the hard calls -- McCain put his money where his mouth was. I feel sorry for Hillary cause her guys -- the big-talking Dems -- did you-know-what to her.
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