Please Make Palin a Contender in 2012. Feminism Could Depend On It.

I know.  I can't believe I just wrote that either.  The current Palin candidacy has me very worried, and not for the reasons you may think.  I'm worried that no matter how the election cuts her status as the beauty queen of the religious right political movement just Barbi-fied the very real gains in politics made by all sorts of women, including Palin.  Gains made thanks to feminism.  

Palin calls herself a feminist, and for some reason, I believe that she really does identify as one. I understand that the difference in Hegemommy's feminism and Palin feminism stems from a difference in, oh, everything, but I absolutely respect the fact that she's scrapped her way up the food chain from broadcast reporter to vice-presidential candidate.  She's one of a handful of female governors, she's clearly comfortable on the national political stage, and fierce at riling the darkest corners of America's heart.  All notable feats to be sure. 

Yes, Sarah Palin is a pretty darn good politician, but the big questions around her candidacy- Is she qualified?  Can she do the job?  What did she just say???- those pose the biggest problem for any gains women have made from the likes of Libby Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Hillary Clinton, Olympia Snow.  

This is how it cuts.  If McCain wins the election and Palin becomes Vice President, that is in itself a victory for feminism.  Less than one hundred years after being granted from the male political establishment the right to vote and an ability to have the voice of a citizen, a woman would hold the second highest political position in the nation.  That's a big deal and there will be a lot of talk of  history making.  Put ideology aside and ignore political platforms, do we want Palin as the Exhibit A to the gains made by feminism on the political landscape?   Should she be our history maker?

It's absurd to think that a Palin Vice Presidency would be the culmination of a race to the top by the brightest, most capable female politicians of the right.  She just is not in the leagues of Dole, Hutchinson, Snow, Whitman, O'Connor, Noonan.  On Sarah Palin, even Peggy Noonan and I agree.  My god that hurts to type, and this is gonna hurt even more - -bravo for having the tits to call out the shallowness of the Palin candidacy, Noonan.  

I think more condemning than Noonan's remarks (she is a paid commentator, so, well, she makes money saying stuff) is the stark silence from the leadership, or even the rank-and-file, of the feminist right coming out in praise of Palin.  Her candidacy is an exercise in vulgarity and they know it.  How insulting it must be to all those qualified women to be overlooked and instead have the cheerleader of the far-right male political establishment on the ticket.  

If Sarah Palin is sworn in as Vice-President that is a victory for style not substance.  Women will remain relegated to the image of supporter rather than equal.  Young girls will be given the image of the beauty queen who grinned her way to political prominence.  A leader that was so darn cute it didn't matter if she wasn't that smart.  We didn't expect her to be.  In fact, sometimes being too smart is a liability, so when in doubt, avoid it.  Try to be pretty instead.  It will get you further.  If only that was simply my tinfoil hat paranoia talking again.  I was actually given that advice by some wealthy women when I was 12.  I have no doubt those who gave me that advice years ago today plan to vote McCain.  And they'll call Palin a feminist too.  

If Palin loses, it cuts along similar lines.  By now her lack of an even basic grasp of historical reality, foreign policy, or time on the national political circuit is well documented.  No one even pretends that she is of a political mind and freely discuss her only a political image.  Her lack of substance will be named McCain's liability.  It already has.  As pundits dissect the campaign they will shred Palin.  Who knows how that will play into the subtle sexism still infecting politics- the sense that the women have a hard time winning national elections in part because of a lack of "qualified" candidates.  

Which is why I hope Palin makes an appearance in 2012 as a serious political candidate, and not as the current candidate Palin.  I want her to be educated on the issues, even as I shout at the tv as a result.  I want her to prove wrong the premise that she simply is Falwell's promised one, because I want to believe that this country is beyond simply voting for homecoming king (or queen) rather than president.  I want Palin to redeem the feminist right, to slap back at the misogyny in its own party that would elevate Palin as its standard bearer, signaling to all the truly brilliant feminist minds of the right that "this is what it takes" to get on the ticket.  Not merits.  Personality.

 

I Promise You, Palin Wears the Skirts on Purpose

Oh Sarah Palin.  Can you believe we are this close to the election and I have yet to really tackle the persona of Palin?  Me either.

Now, normally the idea of critiquing the fashion sense of any female politician is repugnant and one of the few areas where I get all bitchy feminazi.  But Palin's case is different.  And no, it's not different because I think Palin is a nutjob.  It's different because what strikes me as so fascinating is her constructed identity, and in that sense, the skirts, the heels, all of it is fair game.

Say what you will about Palin's apparent lack of readiness, her blatant disdain for all things intellectual, this is a woman who knows her political base.  She winks.  She flashes a toothy open-mouth smile, and she wears a lot of skirts.  She's teasing the right with her anti-intellectual lapdance and has made herself the walking, talking blow-up doll of the religious right.  I half expect to see the pull-string peeking out from one of her silky blouses.  She is the right's  antidote to Hillary Clinton's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits.  And she's doing it on purpose.

A lot of feminists have decried Palin's treatment by the press, and by other women in particular, as playing out another version of Mean Girls-- girl-on-girl hate crimes that hurt all women.  That would be true but for several factors, only one of which I can get into here.  The rest will have to wait for a future post.  

First, and most obviously, Palin is entirely complicit in her constructed political image and she works it with a savvy that the McCain folks either did not understand or totally disregarded.  When McCain first announced his pick the Republican base lit up like Christmas in Vegas.  The fringe of the party that had spent the better part of the twentieth century actively advocating against the rights of women heralded Palin as their champion.  And she took the crown with glee.  That snapshot allowed us to see what the religious right saw as an image of female leadership.  She was perky.  She was scrappy.  She was attractive (especially by political standards).  But she was also willing to cede all power, authority, and leadership to her male elder.  She was, at the end of the day, no threat to the male political establishment and never would be.    

But I have to give Palin credit.  She's just not mistress material.  As the McCain campaign derails pundits now complain about his inability to "control" Palin.  Her vicious race baiting (again, in stark contrast to the subtle race-baiting in the Democratic primary practiced by the Clinton campaign, but that is also another post) brings all the fever of a Pentacostal revival with none of the soul-saving.  It doesn't sit well with the Lutheran roots of mainstream America- it's too loud and too honest in it's bias.  

And Palin is too ambitious, again, a fatal flaw in the religious right's image of acceptable female leadership.  She's had a taste of the national spotlight and trust me, she's looking for more.  Think it was a slip when she referred to the "Palin/McCain ticket"?  I don't.

As the campaign draws closer to election day, and the pitch continues to elevate, and as the Grand Old Party sinks deeper in despair look for Palin's shirts to get a little tighter, the skirts a little shorter, and the hair worn down more than up.  Just a hunch.  

It's actually a game I'm pretty familiar with, but the thing is, Palin is no Hegemommy.  See to really beat the big boys, and I have no doubt that Palin aspires to beat them, you still need to be smarter than them.  The skirts, the winks, the toothy smiles are all the tools to get you past the cronyism, to let you in to the boardroom.  It's the substance that keeps you there.  On that point, neither the GOP nor its current fetishist Palin seem to get it.

Words Matter. And It Takes Tits To Say That.

Okay, so you've heard that I'm in one of those "transitions."  Yes, I gave up my lucrative career as a nut-cracking litigator to string words together for a living.  When I first announced this decision one of the more common responses from my peers (male and female) was: "Wow.  Good for you.  That takes a lot of balls."  Not everyone said this with the same tone, but I took the statement to be variations on a theme.  Balls.  Bravery.  Guts.  Maybe even slightly stupid.  But all interchangeable parts, right?  

For the first time ever this phrase stopped me in my tracks.  I mean, it's not like this was the first time I had heard it, let alone used it.  I always talk about needing balls to do this or the balls to do that.  I employ it ironically and not-so-ironically.  Sometimes when I talk about having balls to do something I mean courage, and sometimes I mean recklessness.  But it is always associated with action, with putting yourself out there consequences be damned.  But here I was, about to strike out on my own, to make my own name for myself, and all of a sudden this phrase took on a new complicated complicity.  Did I really want to have the balls to do anything?  What did that mean????

Words matter, and am I not the first to point out the interesting association between these shorthands for power and action, and human anatomy.  After all, sex is power, and when we want to create an appropriate visual of that source of power, the default should be to those organs.  It is beyond stating the obvious.  I mean, without such a truism there would be no Hegemommy.  Go back through this sad little blog and find a post, aside from the disclaimers and re-starts, that does not have as it's central premise the connection between sex and power.  See.  Told ya.

 The shorthand works just as well in reverse and speaks volumes to our collective unease with female sexuality.  Pussy.  Weak.  Cowardly.  Passive.  Once again, a shorthand I've employed as a slur for someones perceived weakness.  But now, as someone who depends on words for survival, let alone identification, these shorthands are becoming increasingly problematic.

This is complicated turf.  I see creativity coming from that same vat of primordial goop as sexuality-- a raw and charged power source that defines many different aspects of personality.  So as a writer, my creativity is undoubtedly linked to my sex and my sexuality.  How could I then continue to employ language shorthands that diminished the very power source I rely on to keep my lights on?

I've decided that I can no longer be complicit in the cultural demegoggery of  female sexuality and power, and I'm taking over my own shorthand.  Feel free to use it if you like.  Pass it on.  Like all things cultural, it may gain its own cache, find its niche, and create the counter-narrative to the presumption that an active display of power is a masculine trait.  That's right.  It takes tits.  Not balls.  Tits.

Once said out loud, the choice seemed ridiculously obvious.