I have nothing particularly positive to say about Sarah Palin. In fact, the idea of her as president scares the stuffing out of me. But statements like the following inspire me to say something about what she represents:
I am my mother’s son through and through (for good and bad), and thus a feminist to my very core. And my mother was a feminist in the vain of Sarah Palin – an athlete, a beauty queen, a workingwoman and a mother. Growing up, I heard her cheer deserving women and castigate ‘deserving’ men with a fierceness born of KNOWING that her opinion counted - and that if someone was discounting it, they wouldn't go on doing so. To her credit, mired oftentimes in a swamp of misogyny, she never shy away from calling out every misogynist she met.
Yes, there are many, many ‘feminist’ accomplishments that go far beyond such characteristics. But the strongest thing I’ve ever seen a woman do (or anyone for that matter) was to stand up to the most hard-hearted unfairness – that of biology – and resolve, unflinchingly and without complaint, to wage a battle she knew would never end, against a disease that attacked her in large part because she is a woman; and then to repeat this performance against a cancer that grew in large part from the weakness the disease had caused. It doesn’t get much more unfair than being diagnosed with lupus in your twenties and advanced lymphoma in your forties. But she never stood down – and she beat the hell out of what oppressed her.
No matter how much I dislike Sarah Palin’s politics and worry that she is unqualified to lead the country, I see in her the same kind of feminism that I see in my mother – who, btw, is still very much alive and kicking – a kind of feminism that is just as deserving of praise as the other, better known kind.
Mrs. Palin is everything that liberal feminists loathe: a gun-toting evangelical, a polar bear-hating former beauty queen, a mother of five who opposes abortion right and celebrates the fact that her pregnant teenage daughter has ‘chosen life’ [who] during her campaign for Alaska’s lieutenant-governorship in 2002 [] called herself as ‘pro-life as any candidate can be’.Whether or not her opinions and beliefs are right or wrong, they clearly belong to a woman who has never felt that her gender put anything out of reach. There are scores upon scores of ‘feminists’ who do nothing but nit-pick and complain and thereby give feminism (a very worthy cause) a bad name (n.b., anyone ready to accuse me of stereotyping women here can go to hell – men nit pick and complain just as much if not more than women).
I am my mother’s son through and through (for good and bad), and thus a feminist to my very core. And my mother was a feminist in the vain of Sarah Palin – an athlete, a beauty queen, a workingwoman and a mother. Growing up, I heard her cheer deserving women and castigate ‘deserving’ men with a fierceness born of KNOWING that her opinion counted - and that if someone was discounting it, they wouldn't go on doing so. To her credit, mired oftentimes in a swamp of misogyny, she never shy away from calling out every misogynist she met.
Yes, there are many, many ‘feminist’ accomplishments that go far beyond such characteristics. But the strongest thing I’ve ever seen a woman do (or anyone for that matter) was to stand up to the most hard-hearted unfairness – that of biology – and resolve, unflinchingly and without complaint, to wage a battle she knew would never end, against a disease that attacked her in large part because she is a woman; and then to repeat this performance against a cancer that grew in large part from the weakness the disease had caused. It doesn’t get much more unfair than being diagnosed with lupus in your twenties and advanced lymphoma in your forties. But she never stood down – and she beat the hell out of what oppressed her.
No matter how much I dislike Sarah Palin’s politics and worry that she is unqualified to lead the country, I see in her the same kind of feminism that I see in my mother – who, btw, is still very much alive and kicking – a kind of feminism that is just as deserving of praise as the other, better known kind.
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