Well, thank God James Dobson and his friends at Focus on the Family are considerate enough to mail out state voter guides. Now I can know how all the candidates really feel about the really pressing issues: human cloning, abstinence only education, English as a national language, and undermining hate-crimes legislation.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Sarah Palin.
Being a WS major, I feel that I get asked about Sarah Palin every single day. It’s usually asked with a smirk as if to say,” this is what you feminists wanted, right?” And often I try to respond with the appropriate annoyance and intellect but so many times the words don’t come out of my mouth as eloquently or as intelligently as I would prefer.
And i think this is the case because Sarah Palin is absolutely baffling.
I remember voting for Hillary in the primaries and nearly crying. The thought of having a woman in the most powerful office in the world is so inspiring and in an interesting way, rewarding, especially for those people who have spent their lives fighting and marching and praying for women.
A dismissal of Sarah Palin’s competence and ability is not sexist because it is a thoroughly appropriate dismissal rooted in evidence and inexperience and has nothing to do with her gender whatsoever.
Sarah Palin is so insulting to those women who work everyday to thwart gender stereotypes, to women who are fighting to be seen as an equals in their homes, workplaces, and churches, and to women who feel their success has been rendered to mere tokenism.
Sarah Palin dons the feminist label while simultaneously promising to undermine any feminist achievement of the last 75 years.
“But having a woman, no matter what her party affiliation, is a step in the right direction, right?” I hear this a lot. How could a woman who makes rape victims pay $1200 for their rape kits so their rapists can be convicted, a step in the right direction?
How could a woman who denies that bodily autonomy and integrity are rights for all women, and who proudly touts that “I’d oppose (abortion) even if my own daughter was raped” be a step in the right direction?
How could a woman who parades her special needs child around as a trophy against choice and then refers to her child as an “opportunity to be walking the walk, and not just talking the talk” be a step in the right direction?
How could a woman who called Title IX, legislation that illegalized discriminatory practice in the public school system, “empty rhetoric” be a step in the right direction?
This woman candidate is by no mean a women’s candidate.
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