feminist blogs in english

First of all, let me apologize for my absence. I have been so busy running the world with the Secret Feminist Cabal® that I actually forgot to update my blog. I know, I feel like Steve Martin saying that—”I forgot to pay my taxes”—but it’s true. I just lost track of time.

I haven’t even been keeping up with the news. Until today, when someone on Facebook mentioned the new Emily’s List anti-Sarah Palin video and ad campaign. I haven’t watched the video yet, but I did read the article in Bloomberg’s, wherein the president of Emily’s List justifies her group’s campaign by saying, “We didn’t want women across the country to think that there’s only one voice for women.”

What?

Okay, Emily’s List? If you don’t want women (or anybody else) to think that there’s only one voice for women, then why are you obsessing over the political opinions of this one woman? In the gender-neutral world we all wish for—a world where women are half the human race and, as Gloria Steinem once said, a mediocre woman can do as well as a mediocre man—obviously women are going to be all over the map with their opinions, politics, and abilities. Just like men are. Yes? And the notion of one woman speaking for all women will be as ludicrous as the notion of one man speaking for all men. Yes? And while we’re not living in a gender-neutral world yet, we are living in a world where women have been active and prominent across the full political spectrum for decades now. Yes? And so your concern that people might think this one woman somehow speaks for all women is rather absurdly misplaced. Yes? And in fact your whole campaign seems to actually undermine the idea that women are simply half the human race and that no one woman speaks for all women. Yes?

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UPDATE: Someone just pointed me to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, where she has a post up today honoring the ratification of the 19th amendment. I have to quote from it, because the reference to the Emily’s List thing actually made me laugh:

On this anniversary of women’s suffrage, let’s take a moment to be grateful for the diversity of the debate. Women don’t walk in lockstep with each other in politics, any more than men do. We should be proud of our ability to engage in a civil discussion and healthy debate. I know I am. Unfortunately, I’ve recently come under attack for speaking up for sisters who seek to serve in public office. The sad part is that the attack comes from other sisters who happen to be on the other side of an issue that has been of great importance to American women from the time of our feminist foremothers, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, down to today. I’m speaking of the issue of life. I feel compelled to offer some advice to our sisters who like to throw stones at those of us who respectfully disagree with them on this issue (and they sometimes refuse to even countenance the fact that some of us can call ourselves feminists and disagree with those who claim the mantle of “real feminists”). First, ladies, it’s hard to take a critic seriously when they lecture you wearing a bear suit. So, it’s difficult for me to drum up much outrage at this latest ad. But, really, lying about a sister while wearing an Ewok outfit is no way to honor our foremothers on the eve of the 90th anniversary of their victory. But, that aside, I’d love to know where you got those get-ups. Halloween is just around the corner, and Piper and Trig would look adorable as little grizzly bears.

They claim to be about "getting the government off of our backs." The problem here is that the Tea Party seems to be salivating at the opportunity to enact on the state level laws that prohibit equal rights for gays, women and even racial minorities. Listen past the opening salvos about big government and you realize that what the tea baggers really want is to replace federal government authority with state government authority. Their central assumption is that states have inherent rights but individuals do not.

Witness their reactions to last week's court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as applied to Massachusetts:

A spokeswoman for one of the biggest Tea Party umbrella organizations, Tea Party Patriots, said that social questions were not part of their mission.

“As far as an assertion of states’ rights goes, I believe it’s a good thing,” said Shelby Blakely, executive director of The New Patriot Journal, the group’s online publication. “The Constitution does not allow federal regulation of gay marriage just as it doesn’t allow for federal regulation of health care.”

“But I don’t want to come off saying I support gay marriage,” she added.

No of course not. In fact, the social gains of the past 50 years seem to be in the crosshairs of tea baggers from Rand Paul to Sarah Palin to Sharron Angle.

And then there's tea bagger heaven: Arizona, where "papers please" is not a line from a Nazi in a World War 2 movie but rather a populist mantra.

This is not libertarian. This is authoritarian.

Let's look at a definition of Libertarianism:

Libertarians believe that individuals should have complete freedom of action, provided their actions do not infringe on the freedom of others.

—Encyclopedia Brittanica

Libertarianism describes a range of political beliefs that advocate the maximization of an individual's ability to think and act with few constraints from large social structures, such as government,[1][2][3] and the minimization or even abolition of the state.

—Wikipedia

An advocate of the doctrine of free will

—Mirriam-Webster ("libertarian")

The Tea Party, with it's stated goal of establishing greater authority to state governments, is not libertarian. In fact, when you look at the code words, off-the-record remarks, and actions of Tea Party leaders and supporters, it becomes clear that the Tea Party is actually about authoritarianism. To the Tea Party, the federal government's oppression is that it prevents them from oppressing gays, oppressing women (especially with regard to healthcare), and oppressing racial minorities.

And yet the Beltway crowd seems to buy into the claim that the Tea Party is libertarian.

E.J. Dione seems to think the Tea Party makes the common mistake:

The rise of the tea party movement is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal as unconstitutional. It typically perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated elitists out of touch with “American values.”

In a fascinating article analyzing the Tea Party — and the prevalence of women tea baggers — Ruth Rosen identifies some disturbing characteristics:

One important difference, however, is race. At Tea Party rallies you don’t see faces with dark complexions. Another important distinction is that men and women are drawn to this sprawling movement for a variety of overlapping but possibly different reasons. Both men and women seem to embrace an incoherent “ideology” which calls for freedom from government, no taxes, and an inchoate desire to “take back America,” which means restoring the nation to some moment when the country was white and “safe.”

She goes on to note how the conservative brand of "feminism" isn't quite the feminism that states that "Feminism is the radical idea that women are people." On the contrary:

Here is a great irony. Since 1980, when the backlash began attacking the women’s movement, young secular American women have resisted calling themselves feminists because the religious right-wing had so successfully created an unattractive image of a feminist as a hairy, man-hating, lesbian who spouted equality, but really wanted to kill babies. Now, Palin is forcing liberal feminists to debate whether these Christian feminists are diluting feminism or legitimizing it by making it possible to say that one is a feminist.

When I read what women write on Christian women’s web sites, I hear an echo from the late nineteenth century when female reformers sought to protect the family from “worldly dangers.” Frances Willard, leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, urged millions of women to enter the public sphere in order to protect their families, to address the decadent consequences and casualties of capitalism, to win suffrage, and to fight for prohibition, all in the name of protecting the purity of their homes and families.

For many contemporary evangelical Christian women, their motivations are similar. They want to enter the public sphere or even run for office to eliminate abortion, protect marriage, contain sexual relations, oppose gay marriage and clean up the mess made by the sexual revolution. [Emphasis added.]

This doesn't sound like liberty. It sounds like vesting greater freedom to state governments so they can oppress entire classes of people with impunity.

Am I wrong? If so, I'd love to see some proof.

OK, I am an American. But when casting about for a suitable pop-song title for a post about Palin’s expressed desire to meet her “political heroine,” the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher, this one just struck me as genius.

For some reason, the mental picture I have of this meeting is a tiny, frail Thatcher being wheeled or led in to a room where an eager Palin sits, and Thatcher looking up at whomever her attendants are (come on, you know she has attendants, she’s Margaret Effing Thatcher) and says “HER?”

Sarah Palin is sort of my doom as a writer. I can’t stand the sound of her voice, but I keep pitching articles about her, writing commentaries and blog posts and returning to the subject again and again. She’s link bait, she refuses to go away, and on one hand I agree with the expressed desire of Katha Pollitt and about half the people I follow on Twitter that we should just stop giving her press. On the other hand, well, she’s Sarah Palin. She won’t go away whether we like her or not, right?

And after the recent primaries, we’ve seen a lot more conservative women coming to prominence, some of whom have political views at least as outlandish–and abhorrent–as Palin. So clearly ignoring them isn’t helping.

Margaret Thatcher was the archetype we had for a conservative woman in power–hell, for a woman in power, period, for a while. And while she stood for pretty much everything I loathe in politics, from union-busting to privatizing, even I have a grudging respect for the woman’s work ethic, intellect, and “iron” control.

But we’ve seen plenty of women leaders in the Thatcher mode now (Nancy Pelosi, for one, though she doesn’t play the self-made woman card like Thatcher did).

Sarah Palin is a different sort, and I maintain still that plenty of the criticism directed at her from the left and the right and even from feminists is sexist and deserved–often at the same time. Palin embodies so many of the cliches about women politicians: frivolous, trading on her looks, winking and smiling, using double entendres like “Drill, baby, drill,” trotting out her family as props, etc.

But I don’t want a world where all women have to emulate Margaret Thatcher to be “serious” either. I dress pretty ridiculously at times, and my sense of humor borders on horribly offensive. I have tattoos and wear red lipstick and generally don’t fit a lot of people’s idea of what a “serious” person looks like. Certainly Thatcher would probably be horrified by me as well, and not just my politics.

So Sarah Palin meeting Margaret Thatcher: probably not a passing of the torch, so to speak. Still, an interesting moment and photo op.

What do you think, Feministers? (And let’s keep it civil–I’ve joked many times that “Sarah Palin kills feminism” because arguments about her tend to get beyond heated.)

Here we go again. The topic is Sarah Palin and her putative feminism, and just typing those words has made my stomach clench up in knots. Jesus. I have no brief for Sarah Palin. I don’t like her, frankly, and I don’t care about her. I do, however, care about feminism. And if we’re going to talk about whether a woman’s beliefs qualify as feminist, shouldn’t we find out what those beliefs actually are?

Much of what was said about Sarah Palin back in 2008 had more to do with stereotypes about evangelicals than with anything Palin herself said or did. For example, the Obama campaign spread the meme that Palin was anti-contraception. She’s not, but people believed it because of the stereotype of the anti-abortion evangelical Christian. Similarly, people assumed Palin was a young earth creationist who thought the dinosaurs were here 6000 years ago — again, not because she herself ever said that, but because of the stereotype. Amanda Marcotte asserted that Palin was one of those Purity Ball anti-sex types — again, based entirely on the stereotype, though as far as I can tell Palin has never endorsed that Purity Ball nonsense or even said anything about premarital sex. And of course Jessica Valenti made the sweeping statement that Palin is against “everything” feminism stands for; but again, this doesn’t seem to track with Palin’s actual statements at all.

Now we have Kate Harding writing this in Jezebel:

But Sarah Palin and her loyal fans are changing all that, by crafting a “feminism” that says we CAN have it all: Gender equality and obedience to men!

Obedience to men? Is that true? Does Sarah Palin believe that women must obey men? Because if she does, then of course she’s not a feminist. Jesus, we don’t ever need to have this conversation again. Game over. Feminism = gender equality. You are not a feminist if you believe that women were put on earth to be inferior or subservient to men. This is basic semantics.

So if Sarah Palin really believes that women must obey men, then please, somebody show me the cite. Please.

By the way, I agree with several of the points in Kate’s article, particularly her observation that “Feminism did not leave conservative Christian women behind. Conservative Christian women rejected feminism.” And her analysis of leftism and religion is spot on.

This, however, is rather strange:

This is what I think of whenever I hear people talk about conservative Christian women “reclaiming” feminism, or blaming those mean and nasty “traditional” (read: “actual”) feminists for keeping them out. You don’t even want the fucking banana. But you’d rather turn it into a lump of mush that nobody wants than let anyone else have it.

Is Kate saying here that conservative Christian women really don’t want feminism or anything it offers, not equality or opportunity or respect; that they just want to ruin it for all the other women? Because if she is (and I may have misread her), I disagree.

Some women trapped in conservative Christianity probably feel that way, yes; some women are self-loathing misogynists. Some women are threatened by feminism and wish to appropriate it. Some women are dishonest opportunists. And of course the male patriarchs on the right want nothing better than to destroy or defang or redefine feminism any way they can.

That’s true on the left as well. I don’t know when the Playboy Bunny suit got a “feminist empowerfulment” label sewn in, but I’m pretty sure that has about as much to do with feminism as the Southern Baptist Convention. And there are plenty of women on the left who seem determined to redefine feminism as some kind of Virginia Slims-smoking Jimmy Choo-wearing labioplasty-seeking exercise in patriarchal compliance.

But I would argue that most of the half-assed feminists (or would-be feminists) on both the left and the right are half-assed not because they’re plotting to destroy feminism, but because feminism is hard. And patriarchy is strong. Feminism is hard for individual women, who have to divest themselves of all kinds of brainwashing and footbinding; and it’s hard for society, which is obviously taking centuries to move from women-as-chattel to women-as-human-beings. Nevertheless, the feminist promise is deeply and genuinely appealing to all kinds of women, even (or perhaps especially) to those trapped in heavily patriarchal subcultures. And so you get all kinds of klugey compromises and weird messes as women try to remake their little worlds.

Put it this way: when the crazy-ass evangelicals start ordaining women as preachers, I don’t see that as a plot to disguise patriarchy as feminism. I see it as progress. Yes, the religion is still a patriarchal crockpot of nonsensical goop, but hey, at least it’s moving in the right direction.