feminist blogs

Various feminist bloggers (myself included) weigh in at Jezebel.

What will you do?

Via Sociological Images — a truly great blog I discovered recently — comes this story about a Sarah Palin lookalike contest held at Vegas strip club (oh, sorry, “gentleman’s club”). Lots of bikinis, sexualized use of guns and sexism abound. You can view more photographs of the event here.

The saddest thing is that it’s not the most offensive display of sexualized misogyny that has been directed a Palin. The sex doll came close, but I’d say that award goes “Naylin’ Paylin,” the Larry Flint pornographic film starring yet another Palin lookalike, the existence of which all of us should have seen coming.

There are two problems with both the porn film and this strip club contest, and neither one of them is about porn and stripping in general. The first issue is consent. Sarah Palin did not consent to having her image used in this way. Portraying her sexually like this without her consent is a violation — and contrary to what many people apparently think, existing as a woman in public is not the same as consenting to use of your body as public property. This isn’t satire or parody; it’s just sexist and degrading.

Which brings us to the next issue. The entire reason that anyone gets to hide behind the parody and “all in good fun” arguments is precisely because portraying Sarah Palin sexually is intended to be mocking towards her. It’s taking a powerful woman and working to make her non-threatening by turning her into a sexual object. And it’s the very opposite side of the coin as calling Hillary Clinton ugly and denying her sexuality. Both reinforce the ideas that women exist to sexually pleasure men, and that sexuality is the only power we have (or should be allowed). Whether revoking or affirming that “power,” the result is an attempt to render the woman inferior and powerless.

We still live in a world where women seemingly cannot be seen as sexual and at the same time be taken seriously. We still live in a world where sexuality itself is seen as degrading to women. That is the purpose of these types of exercises — to debase Palin by reminding everyone that she (presumably) has a vagina and is therefore only good for fucking. I truly believe that if sex was not still viewed as inherently degrading to women, we wouldn’t be seeing these sorts of displays at all.

The goal is to mock Palin’s intelligence not by engaging with her foolish beliefs and ignorant rhetoric, but by pointing and saying “look, boobs!” or “I’d sure like to hit that!” And making her non-threatening isn’t only dangerous politically when Palin is in fact in a position to potentially do a lot of harm; attempting to make her non-threatening in this way is dangerous to all women who hold power, who want to be taken seriously, and who dream of being able to be proud of their sexuality and brains all at the same time. An acknowledgment of female sexuality shouldn’t be seen as mocking — these portrayals of Palin only reinforce the idea that it is.

This is degrading to Sarah Palin, particularly as a woman, both because it ignores the right of consent and because the very intention is for it to be degrading. It’s in no way a celebration of sexuality (since in order for it to be, it would by definition have to be consensual), but a ridicule. And in the end, all women are the butt of the joke.

cross-posted at The Curvature

This afternooon we receivemned an letter from the RNC in suppporte of teh McCCain-Paylin champayne that begagn,

annd twe wonderned why aneeonye vould vote fourgh a champaygne that couldnit bother speelling they’re solicitashyn letteres write.

Perhaps there are more apt comparisons to Bush than we’ve acknowledged.

We already knew that, but what I find particularly irritating is how anti-choice activists use Palin’s son as “proof” of her beliefs — and how she buys into it.

Many politicians include their children in their campaigns — I don’t think that’s problematic. I don’t think it’s problematic at all for Palin to say that having a special-needs child has informed her view of what children like Trig need. In fact, I hope that’s actually true, and that she’ll work to create policies to meet the needs of other families who don’t have similar resources. I don’t think it’s problematic for her to say that her pro-life views informed her decision to carry her pregnancy to term. But something about the way she talks about it (and the way Focus on the Family’s James Dobson talks about it) rubs me the wrong way. For example:

Dobson: You may not recall it, but in April, before all of this happened, before you were selected by Senator McCain to be his running mate, I wrote to thank you for welcoming little Trig into this world, your little baby with Down Syndrome. And I just wanted to express to you what a powerful testimony that was to the sanctity of human life. And you wrote me a very gracious letter back and there are just so many parents out there who also admire you for your love and care for that precious child.

Palin: Well, I so appreciated your words and yeah, when we found out I was about thirteen weeks along when I found out that Trig would be born with Down Syndrome. To be honest with you, it scared me though and I knew that it would be a challenge and I had to really be on my knees the entire rest of the pregnancy asking that God would prepare my heart. And just the second that he was born it was absolute confirmation that that prayer was answered with all of us just falling so in love with him. And then this whole new world has been opened up to me since then. I’ve always had near and dear to my heart the mission of protecting the sanctity of life and being pro-life, a hardcore pro-lifer, but I think this opportunity for me to really be walking the walk and not just talking the talk. There’s purpose in this also for a greater good to be met. I feel so privileged and blessed to have been, I guess, chosen to have Trig enter our lives because I do want it to help us in our cause here in allowing America to be a more welcoming nation for all of our children.

He wrote to thank her for having a baby? I thought the appropriate card would have been found in the Congratulations section, but that’s just me.

Having a special-needs child is certainly difficult, and raising children generally isn’t an easy task. But no child should be treated like a showpiece on his parent’s pro-life mantle. And Dobson’s condescending way of talking about Trig, and about Palin’s decision to continue the pregnancy, smacks a little too much of treating him like a Very Special Little Handicapped Thing as opposed to a baby.

The fact is that Palin made the same choice — to give birth — several times before Trig. I’m pretty sure that no one sent her a “thank-you” card for her other children. And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t talk about her other kids serving as “opportunities” for her to demonstrate to everyone just how pro-life she is.

I’ll send Palin and Dobson thank-you cards — and call them “pro-life” without sarcasm or scare-quotes — when they actually start walking the talk and provide preventative services for women who don’t want to become pregnant, and offer a variety of options for pregnant women who want to give birth but may not think it’s possible (financial assistance, daycare, health care, etc). I’ll thank them when they promote policies that make the world a more welcoming place for disabled people — and no, forcing women to give birth against their will doesn’t count. Hell, I’ll stop calling Palin and Dobson raging fucking hypocrites when they do anything life-affirming at all, other than talk about how pro-life they are.

But then, of course, they’d be pro-choice.

This morning’s headlines on Democracy Now! included reports of people having problems at the polls during the early voting process that has already begun in many states. Two weeks out from Election Day and we’re already hearing this - what does this bode for November 4? The DN! reports include claims from voters in West Virginia that the touchscreen machines they used changed their votes from Obama to McCain, allegations from Democratic Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio that the Republican Party is trying to scare newly registered voters by challenging the status of almost 200,000 new registrations, and this most chilling report from North Carolina (a contested state that has been swinging towards Obama):

McCain Supporters Harass Obama Voters in North Carolina

In North Carolina, over 200,000 residents have already cast ballots in early voting. In Fayetteville, a group of John McCain supporters heckled and harassed a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama as they voted on Sunday. The Washington Times reported the McCain backers shouted and mocked the voters as they walked into the voting place. The website Facing South reports the McCain supporters likely broke the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits anyone from intimidating or threatening a person for voting or attempting to vote. On that same day in Fayetteville, North Carolina, thirty people reported having their tires slashed after attending an Obama rally.

And although it’s not an example of direct voter suppression per se, DN!’s next headline is inextricably linked to Republican efforts to cast aspersion on the newfound empowerment of newly registered, formerly disproportionately disenfranchised voters, many of whom have been registered by ACORN and similar organizations:

Obama Campaign Volunteer Assaulted in Wisconsin

In Caledonia, Wisconsin, a fifty-eight-year-old Obama campaign volunteer was assaulted on Saturday while canvasing. Nancy Takehara was attacked by a disgruntled homeowner who accused her of being connected to the community organizing group ACORN. Takehara said, “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming.” Takehara said she was not seriously injured.

Between reports like that and the vile, racially-charged garbage that’s been coming out of the McCain camp and his supporters of late, it really does feel like we’ve been forcefully transported back to a darker time in American history. Or, more accurately, the venom and bile that’s been mostly simmering under the surface all along is boiling up thanks to McCain, Palin, and their surrogates stoking the flames.

It’s getting scarier and scarier out there. And we’ll all have to be that much more vigilant and vociferous in our defense of everyone’s right to cast their vote and have it properly counted - no matter who they are or who they’re voting for, and no matter the color of their skin or their chosen candidate’s.

I’m speechless, doggone it.

Oliver Stone’s “W” opened in theaters Friday, to mixed reviews. “History is said to repeat itself as tragedy and farce, but here it registers as a full-blown burlesque,” writes Manohla Dargis. “It says nothing new or insightful about the president, his triumphs and calamities. (As if anyone goes to an Oliver Stone movie for a reality [...]

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I’m home during a half day — which is lucky because I’ve got a head cold that beats all head colds — catching up on political news. Part of my research includes watching The View, which has gotten consistently more interesting since the addition of Whoopi Goldberg and the sad, plodding political leanings of Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who thinks Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayres is exactly the same as McCain’s relationship to the Keating Five scandal.

Hasselbeck’s is a new GOP talking point (she practically read her defense of McCain-Plain verbatim from a campaign email yesterday), one of the points that Palin has been casually mentioning on the campaign trail by trying to tie Ayres’ activities with The Weathermen to Obama to brand him a domestic terrorist. Although I think Kathy G may be minimizing Obama’s working relationship with Ayres (I don’t know, I’m a layperson), she has two interesting posts on the prevalence of the Ayres family in their Chicago neighborhood, which is to say that if you live there and are even nominally active in Chicago politics, you’ve probably rubbed shoulders with them. All fact-based reporting suggests that they didn’t have much of a relationship. (Apparently that Todd Palin was a card-carrying member of the secessionist AIP, and involved enough that everyone assumed Sarah Palin was a member as well, isn’t an indicator of radical, unpatriotic beliefs.)

The real story, if the story is about character and judgement, as people like my mother assert, is this:

On this day of tit-for-tat politics, the Obama campaign missed the real reason why the Keating Five remain relevant 20 years later. The point lies not in the details of the bygone scandal (trust me, they are complex and murky), but in the way that McCain has abandoned in this presidential campaign all the good-government habits that he adopted after he was chastised by the Ethics Committee. As he recounted in his memoir, “I decided right then that not talking to reporters or sharply denying even the appearance of a problem wasn’t going to do me any good. I would henceforth accept every single request for an interview … and answer every question as completely and straightforwardly as I could.”

McCain, who until the spring was indeed the most accessible major politician in America, has veered completely in the other direction, avoiding reporters at one point for more than a month. As the decider on the Republican ticket, McCain is also responsible for the Arctic-chill media strategy that has almost completely muzzled Sarah Palin since her selection as his running mate.

Far more disturbing is that it has become difficult to believe that John McCain recalls the larger lessons about personal honor that he supposedly carried away from his Keating Five disgrace.

Indeed. Several years back when McCain was at his maverickiest, I remember thinking that he would be the only Republican on the stage that I would ever consider voting for. He was purportedly a man of integrity who, for all his faults, appeared to break from the GOP’s platforms where they made fiscal sense. As a person, McCain vowed never to take the low road. He was different than that, he said, especially during his presidential campaign in 2000, where he was accused by supporters of George W. Bush, and arguably by the Bush campaign itself, of fathering an “illegitimate black child” — Cindy McCain adopted their daughter Bridget from Bangladesh — that his wife Cindy was an drug addict, that he was gay, and that he was a “Manchurian Candidate” who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days. But today, members of McCain’s campaign staff include the old guard that once attacked him on these charges. And ironically, although they try to dogwhistle Americans who hold onto racist caricatures when they watch Barack Obama take the national stage, they may be sounding the death toll for the effectiveness of the Southern strategy.

And it’s sad, really sad, that this man whose entire political career was based on the idea of a different, more transparent kind of politics, has fallen to the level where he will sit idly by as he benefits from painting Obama as an untrustworthy, sinister Other. His supporters get it, too: