“Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it”

I have to say, over the course of this last election, my respect for Camille Paglia has grown considerably. Her candid willingness to call out the nonsense on her own side has been genuinely refreshing, and in the process of listening to her I’ve found myself having more respect for her pro-Obama, pro-choice views, even while disagreeing with them. Here is an excerpt from her latest column (the epic parts are in bold):

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage.As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee — what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago?

For the record, I do not consider myself a feminist. While I agree with most of the ideals and values of basic feminism (and please remember that the original American feminists were pro-life), I currently do not actually lift a finger to better the status of women anywhere. I suspect that a lot of amateur self-proclaimed feminists don’t actually do anything besides act obnoxious on the Internet, but I digress. A feminist I am not, though I could be interested in furthering women’s causes someday.

Paglia goes on to say that she does not think Palin ought to run for Senate to prepare for a Presidential bid, and I could not agree more. People are saying that this election has overturned the old stigma that Senators make poor candidates for President, but I think they’re forgetting that this was the first time in decades where both parties ran a Senator for President. Of course a Senator was going to win; this election does not prove anything about the viability of Senatorial candidates.

Palin ought to stick to the Alaska governorship while looking to beef up her involvement in foreign policy, military leadership and women’s issues. From here on out, Democrats are going to have a hard time critiquing anyone’s experience after handing the keys to the White House to a first-term junior Senator. In 4-8 years, Palin can be ready for a more competetive run if she plays her cards right.

As for Paglia, while I may disagree with her in spades, I’ll continue to listen to what she has to say. She’s definitely earned that much.

Comments

“Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it” — 3 Comments

Rollingforest on March 22, 2011 at 10:03 AM said:

I do think it ironic that people are criticizing how Democrats respond to Sarah Palin while ignoring the blind rage that many Conservatives feel toward Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. There is little to distinguish either woman from the actions of Democratic men, but as strong women they receive the brunt of the hate.

Also, after two years of Tea Partyists screaming about Obama being a Socialist Muslim from Kenya, I think any Conservative who supports them has lost any credibility in criticizing others for extreme rheteric.
Ms. Jack on March 22, 2011 at 2:58 PM said:

Rollingforest, I don’t hang out on the same Republican blogs that I once did, nor am I as much of a fan of Sarah Palin as I was when I wrote this 2.5 years ago, but I’ve never experienced this phenomenon of undue conservative rage directed at Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. In all the time that I spent on conservative Republican blogs in my pre-2008-election years, I honestly can’t recall Pelosi and Clinton receiving any more rage than the likes of Harry Reid, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, or Obama.

I also can’t recall conservatives criticizing them for things like the cost of their wardrobe or questioning their prenatal care decisions or arguing that their children weren’t really theirs. Nor do I recall any conservative women who threatened to kill themselves if Pelosi or Clinton ever moved up in power. Have I missed something?
Rollingforest on March 22, 2011 at 5:02 PM said:

In my personal experience, the rhetoric against Hillary and Palin is always up several notches compared to Obama or Bush. But to prove it, try this test below that I hope you will agree is fairly objective.

Search for “obama” on google, click on the image tab, and then look at the first page of pictures. Then do the same for “Hillary”.

For the Obama page, the images are all fairly positive. Even websites that hate Obama give him at least a lukewarm photo. Compare that to the Hillary page, where a minimum (if I wasn’t sure, I skipped it) of 8 of the 20 photos (40%) were posted to distort her image to make her seem physically unattractive. That’s the unique hatred I’m talking about.

Now, I don’t always agree with the feminist blogs on every accusation of sexism, but I do think they have a point when it comes to politics. If a male politician makes an angry speech, many independents will describe him as “being forceful”. If a female politician made the same speech, she would be described by many of those same people as “bitching”. Many in society view women as nice and polite while they view men as the protectors. Any variation on that theme causes negative emotions for many which hurts women candidates.

I try to vote based on only two things: issues and electability. In a primary, I won’t vote for a candidate that would lose in the general election just because that candidate is from a disadvantaged group (even if I’m a member of that group). All the same, I do try to point out when I think that a person has a double standard based on gender, race, or other identity.

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