Steinem on Palin

Discussion in 'Politics' started by one_raven, Sep 10, 2008.

  1. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    I thought it was a good article.
    Discuss…

    Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
    Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
    By Gloria Steinem
    September 4, 2008


    Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

    But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

    Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

    This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

    Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

    She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

    So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

    Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

    I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

    So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

    Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

    Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

    And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

    This could be huge.


    Source
     
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  3. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    It's a clear appraisal.
     
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  5. Cazzo Registered Senior Member

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    I love how these radical left-wing women, similar to the ones in NOW, pretend to be "for" women.
    For these radical leftists, a woman isn't a "true woman" unless she's a Socialist that holds abortion as a godly commandment....
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    (Insert title here)

    There is a critical error about your outlook, Cazzo:

    It's not about being a "true woman". It's about the fact that this woman—said by some to be intended to attract female voters—would actually use status and authority to denigrate women in society.

    Some have praised, for instance, Sarah Palin's choice to carry a Down's syndrome fetus to term. Yet, Palin is anti-abortion. The message is clear: "Palin chose life, although she believes women should not have that choice." Of course, don't expect many mothers—especially those in Palin's position—to ever admit that there's no choice about it; she believed there was no choice to be had. It was, by her belief, her obligation to bear the child, and I, for one, am willing to presume that she is dedicated enough to this principle that the prospect of aborting the fetus never seriously entered her mind.

    Consider what Palin would undo for American women:

    Palin is no proper feminist, for sure; but perhaps, Cazzo, you might be so good as to point out to us where Steinem purports that Palin is not a "true woman"?
    ______________________

    Notes:

    Pichler, Susanne and Deborah Golub. "Roe v. Wade: Its History and Impact". PlannedParenthood.org. Updated May 16, 2007. http://www.plannedparenthood.org/newsroom/press-releases/roe-v-wade-6578.htm
     
  8. whitewolf asleep under the juniper bush Registered Senior Member

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    What I don't understand is why a big load of values is associated with having a clitoris.
     
  9. Roman Banned Banned

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    11,560
    It's not the clit; it's the stinking chasm between your legs.
     
  10. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Gloria Steinem, a has been political hack, whos time never was.
     
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    How ... efficient

    Well, that certainly settles the matter.
     
  12. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Gloria Steinem is a dinosaur, a relic from the past that I didn't realize was still alive until seeing this article. She seems to believe that being a feminist means one must be left wing. She is strongly in favor of the freedom of women to agree with her. If they don't, they're puppets of the evil right wing establishment.

    For Stienem and her ilk, feminism is a cause, a part of an entire left wing tapestry. One must struggle and support the other left wing causes since they are her allies in the noble struggle for women's rights.

    But Sarah Palin is what Steinen et al were fighting for. A women who doesn't see women's rights as a cause to fight for, but as a reality. As the norm. She doesn't need to burn her bra or attend meetings to raise her consciousness and explain to her how marriage is slavery. She knows she is free to be whatever she wants to be. She lives her life without a chip on her shoulder, she's not trying to be a man, but a free women. She's free to run a fishing company, free to be the mayor of her town, free to be the governor, and now the vice presidential nominee.

    Steinem and her gang of neaderthals can harp on all they want about how Palin is not in line with women's values, yet the fact remains that she's more popular than Obama, McCain, or Biden. She's closed the traditional Democrat/Republican gender gap, and won over a majority of independent voters.

    Move over feminist 1.0 (Steinem et al), make room for feminist 2.0. Your model is obsolete!
     
  13. hypewaders Save Changes Registered Senior Member

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    12,061
    And we thought the old feminists were bitchy. Sheeesh! Feminazis 2.0 is scaring me- It's gonna take over like, like Windows ME!
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    The "Palin feminism": Equality is a privilege

    And yet she would use her freedom according to a sense of privilege; that is, she would denigrate the freedom of other women in America. Certainly, she doesn't need to burn her bra, and if you do not ever again invoke the image of a braless Sarah Palin, I would thank you kindly. But it seems you're a bit desperate to push the idea of Palin as a feminist when her policies clearly suggest a lower quality of life and constricted "freedom" for women.

    That she should use her sense of sex equality to campaign for inequality against women would be laughable, except that it doesn't seem to be a joke.

    At present, that seems to be because she is "hot" and mysterious. Indeed, if she is truly regarded as an equal despite her sex, we might expect that her popularity will falter some as the veil of mystery burns away in the political spotlight. That decline would be a positive sign for American society. After all, if her policies and views are inconsequential, that would suggest her policy among women is because she's a woman, and, well, men—as a generalization—tend to be forgiving as long as a myth of "hotness" is in place.
     
  15. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    What she is saying that these are the values expressed by the majority (or plurality) of women in this country.

    In other words, she stands for things that most women stand against, so how could she be considered as feminist or someone for womens' rights?
     
  16. Vkothii Banned Banned

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    A reality that must be controlled and brought into line with GOP views.
    But she's married?? You're saying she also willingly accepts slavery?
    A free woman who is free to dictate to all other women in America how to live, how to bear children, how to shoot animals?
    So she can imprison American women reproductively and tell them now she's so free, they aren't anymore, now she's got even more power than she deserves?
     
  17. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Then why have the polls shown a shift to Palin among women?

    Women Impacting Public Policy
    Sep 8, 2008 ... McCain's gains stem from his improved standing against Obama on the .... Palin outpaces the other three among white women, 58 percent of ...

    wipp.illumen.org/newsArticle.jsf?documentId=2c9e... - 13k - Similar pages


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    Sep 9, 2008 ... McCain makes huge gains among women voters. Rick Moran ... John McCain has gained huge support among white women since naming Sarah Palin as ...

    www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/0... - 34k - 12 hours ago - Similar pages

    McCain Gains Momentum in New Poll
    On this topic and other questions, McCain has gained ground among white women, voters the McCain campaign hoped to sway with their pick of Palin as vice ...

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  18. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Because some women don't know what's good for them?
     
  19. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    And you do?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  20. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    If teh polls are correct (and you know you reject them if they disagree with your assesment - so don't go on about their infallibility) then I would think it is pretty plain why her popularity is where it is:
    She is a celebrity during a hot political race and was JUST thrust on the scene. Can you tell me that new celebrity is not appealing?
    She is a woman and women are fed up with being held back in powerful positions by policies and ideals that the likes of Steinem and NOW have been fighting against for years.
     
  21. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    You call it campaigning for inequality, she calls it fighting to the rights of children. A truly free woman can form any opinion she likes regarding when life begins and use that opinion as the basis for her support or opposition to abortion. Why should feminism have anything to do with abortion? You can't murder a child once it's passes thru a vagina, why can you murder it 5 minutes before the passage thru that magical canal?

    While Obama and his wife are icons to affirmative action and left wing elitism, Sarah Palin is a normal, red blooded American. The Obama's went to Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard Law. Sarah Palin went to Ohio State. Michelle Obama, who has never been proud of her country, pulls in 300k a year as a PR directer. Todd Palin is a union steelworker.

    The Palin's family troubles (five kids, down's syndrome baby, pregnant daughter) just seem to make her even more down to earth. More like us. She is Mrs Smith going to Washington. And Obama? He's an old style liberal Chicago machine politician. And, just in case you got the idea that Obama stood for change, he named Joe Biden as his VP.

    Ah, the Democrats, always able to figure out a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory....*





    *I know it's way too early to make pronouncements like that, but, for the first time in this election cycle, I'm actually feeling optimistic.
     
  22. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    Not if Palin has her way, they can't.

    Because feminism is ALL about the rights of women - including the right to "form any opinion she likes regarding when life begins".
     
  23. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Then why is Steinem using those same policy guidelines to attack Palin?

    Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
    Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
    By Gloria Steinem
    September 4, 2008

    Isn't that exactly what NOW has claimed is the message, of the Right wing?, to keep women out of leadership?

    Steinem would sell her soul, to have half as much power as Governor Palin has, and to be in the position of Power, that Governor Palin now holds.

    Steinem after 71 years is still nothing but a minor player, and Governor Palin is what Steinmen can only dream, and will never be, she can't even make it to the stage, and stand at the edge of the limelight.
     

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