Many "traditional" feminists would argue that Sarah Palin is no feminist. She simply doesn't fit the liberal, bra-burning mold. She is too wholesome, too monogamous, and too Republican. Yet, she is reaching political heights not many members of the feminist movement have reached, thus opening many, many doors for women and girls for years to come. Overnight, she accomplished what more extreme, self-interested feminists could not accomplish in 50 years.
So, is Sarah Palin a feminist?
What does "feminist" really mean? Is there more than one type of feminist? What does history say about it? What did it take to get women's suffrage?
What would the stereotypical feminist say about Sarah Palin? What would the average American woman say about her? Who is the average American woman?
Why is she so popular? Why do people love her so much? Why was she the best thing that happened to the McCain ticket?
If McCain wins, why will she be the best thing that will have happened to women in almost 100 years?
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The dictionary definition of feminism is the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Also the organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.
I don't see Palin out there talking about women's rights but she also seems to believe that there is no need to talk about it because it has never been an issue for her. She seems to have accomplished the things she's wanted to do and not let the fact that she's a woman hold her back. I think if I met her in a small town in Alaska I would like her as a person and as a woman and we could possibly be friends. She seems strong willed, determined, intelligent and very capable of articulating herself while speaking.
However, I would not feel comfortable with her running the country if something were to happen to McCain. While watching and listening to her answer interview questions on international relations- she seems very unequipped and unprepared to handle that part of the job.
I see myself as an average American woman and that definitely doesn't mean that I would vote for McCain just because he has a female in there with him. I feel it is an insult to think that women would vote for another woman just because she is a woman. This is sexist! IF women are aware of the issues and intelligent- they will vote for the best candidate- male or female. I just happen to believe that she is not the best choice McCain made. I think he should have chosen Romney but that all of the publicity about Palin will blow over and it won't get the votes- it just got them some publicity for a short while.
There are many ways to describe a feminist, but I don't think any of them involve forcing female rape victims to pay for the police to collect physical evidence a.k.a. "rape kits", which are key in gathering evidence to press charges.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-health-and-money/2008/9/10/sarah-palin-and-the-rape-kit-question.html
On the "too monogamous" bit, I've never heard that as an issue with "feminists", but even still, there are rumblings of an affair...
http://gawker.com/5045218/palin-had-affair-says-enquirer
I also don't quite get the "could not accomplish in 50 years" remark. She isn't the first woman to be mayor, governor, or even the first to be picked by a male candidate for the VP slot as a cynical political ploy...Walter Mondale already did that with Geraldine Ferraro 24 years ago!
Unless you're saying McCain's already won and Palin's already the first female VP...do you know something we don't, Matt??
I don't believe McCain would have picked Sarah Palin as his VP if Senator Hillary Clinton was elected as the Democratic Presidential candidate. The nomination of Palin is an obvious tactic to pander towards Hillary's disgruntled supporters.
I believe that the definition of a feminist is a women who is willing to stand up for political, social, & economic equality between the sexes. So far I have not seen her bring up any topics regarding women's rights. Palin is not "the best thing that will have happened to women in almost 100 years"
What about suffrage?? Did we forget about the other several countries that have had female heads of state?
Palin is a likable women but this is not necessarily enough to prove that she is ready to run the country..
I believe very strongly in womens rights and equality. I do not see Palin in any way as someone the average American woman can look up to. She doesn't support pro-choice which to me is a huge anti-feminist point of view!
If you are all about women's rights then you would understand that the decision to have or to not have a kid should be yours and no one elses. I don't really find her too amusing at all and don't see what all the fuss is about. She was chosen to get Hillarys' supporter's votes and nothing more. The sad thing is that there are women out there who think, "Oh she's cute and she's a girl! I'm going to vote for her!" This is so sad to hear people say these kind of things and if that'show the republicans want to win than so be it.
First, an apology: this got long. But at least it wasn't posted 20 minutes before class!
I wanted to address the whole “liberal bra-burning” sentence. Matt, could you have picked any more scary buzzwords? Besides, bra-burning, at least on a notable scale, never happened:
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/burnbra.asp
and for those that don’t like snopes…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94240375
In fact, NOW’s own website says the following:
In September 1968, New York NOW members and other women's liberation activists picketed the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and *though no bras were actually burned* that day (some were thrown into a trash can), this is the event from which the myth of the bra burners evolved.
http://www.now.org/history/protests.html
So, I’m not sure that we should even talk about this “classification” of feminists who seem to exist mostly in the minds of people who want an extreme example to point at when they say, “well, THOSE kinds of feminists.” To be sure, there are some very violent women who identify as feminists, but they are in the minority. Yes, some feminists can be angry, but why is it that anyone who is angry who is not male (and, well, white, but we’re talking gender here) is suddenly bad? Anger has gotten many a movement started and caused a fair bit of change in our world. Do you think the founding fathers were totally complacent with the idea of English rule?
To answer the question of, “Is Sarah Palin a feminist?”, I think we need to answer “what is a feminist?” There have been a lot of different answers on the blog and in class, and I think that there are also different types of “academic” answers versus “societal” answers- as in, those that society at large believes the term means. Much like racism, it seems like those in the academics describe it differently than someone on the street.
But to muddy the waters even further, there are numerous kinds of feminism, including those that go further than “Soccer Mom Feminism” and “Act Like A Man” feminism. As I tried to find the most common types of feminism, I got tons of different answers. Here are a couple of links that describe some popular types of feminism:
http://www.sou.edu/english/IDTC/issues/Gender/Resources/femtax1.htm
http://www.redletterpress.org/feminism101.html
Another interesting article can be found at the blog thefword.org.uk (http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2001/05/pick_n_mix_feminism) where the author describes other types of feminism, including what she calls “pick-and-mix feminism”, where I think most of us would lie in *any* type of group. Like Matt said on his first day of class, he considers himself “purple”- not red or blue, and I think that most women fit somewhere on the spectrum between radical feminism and what the author calls a “Pop-Feminist”, who revere the Spice Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (hey! The girl can kick butt!) as their heroes.
What was the point of all that? That women, much like any group that claims to believe in some diverse (and somewhat nebulous) concept as “feminism” come in all different types and flavors, and that distilling a movement that helped allow women to vote and has allowed us to enter the workplace as (mostly) equals as a choice between “mommy” and “acts like a man” vastly oversimplifies the issue and is bound to offend someone.
To get back to the original question- is Sarah Palin a feminist? She belongs to a group called “Feminists for Life”, who boasts that Susan B. Anthony was also pro-life, so I would guess she considers herself some sort of feminist (reading the descriptions from the fword blog, she appears to fit in with the “New/Power” feminists), which is okay for me. I don’t agree with many of Palin’s viewpoints, but based on what I’ve read she fits on the spectrum somewhere, so her classification is valid for her. Does that mean that she’s “my kind” of feminist, or that because we both consider ourselves feminists, that we will automatically agree? Of course not. That is-again-over simplifying the argument.
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