Friday, September 12, 2008

Professor Wendy Doniger: Palin's biggest hypocrisy is her pretense that she's a woman

Either go after her motherhood or womanhood. You don't get to do both at the same time, professor.
Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.
(Washington Post)

5 comments:

Amy said...

She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

Yeah - because feminists do, right?

Give me a FREAKIN' BREAK. If you don't think, look, or act like the bimbos on "Sex and the City", feminists don't give two sh*ts about you.

Since when have they become the party of pro-abstinence, pro-stay-at-home mothers, pro-family folk?

Jadis said...

She has no sympathy for working class women?!?

Good God - is this idiot smoking crack? Sarah speaks for the average American woman a hell of a lot more than the feminist movement today!

femB4dem said...

Amy, Jadis -- Don't paint all feminists with the same broad brush. Here's one who agrees with you, and there are many others of us who are simply aghast at this misogyny coming from the lips (more accurately, keyboards) of women who purport to be feminists. This Doniger article is jaw-droppingly horrific. I don't know how any professor, much less one of "Divinity," could put her name on this tripe. At least she could have used Factcheck.org or Snopes.com to cut the worst of the internet rumors out of her article. But then again, she's from Chicago, so what do you expect? The Obama Kool-Aid is particularly potent in that neck of the woods.

Almost Paradise said...

The reason she doesn't speak for women is because she acts as if gender equality isn't an issue for her (as seen in the Charlie Gibson interview). She says she does it just like the governors before her did it. The reality is that the governors before her probably had wives who were the leaders of their families; those governors never gave a single thought to how long the baby slept today or if Johnny got on the bus on time. And although the women's movement has done wonderful things for us and men have expanded their roles in the care of our families, the bigger reality is that women still carry the majority of the burden even when they work fulltime. This gender pattern is so entrenched in our society that it has only been nudged forward, not flipped around. We don't have to be satisfied with this, but we don't help anyone by denying it. Are these sexist questions? You bet they are. Show me a first husband at home with the kids so his wife can dedicate her full attention to the intricacies of governing a nation and I won't worry about it. Until then, I'll continue to ponder these sexist questions.

femB4dem said...

Um, almost paradise, meet Todd Palin:

Todd Palin made his living up to last year as an hourly – but well-paid – worker for BP, a London-based oil giant, earning more than $100,000 a year. He left in March 2007, he said, to work part-time for his union, the United Steelworkers Local 4959, to make more time for his family after Sarah was elected governor.

"I always see him around town with his kids taking care of business," says family friend Warren McCorkell. "He gets asked about how he feels about people fawning over his wife and he shrugs his shoulders and says, 'She's being Sarah and I'm being Mr. Mom.' "

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20223589,00.html