Margaret Thatcher was not the first, nor is she the last of her kind. The list of women in politics who tow the conservative line is long and tiresome. So having Sarah Palin show up is no big surprise to me.
But now Sarah Palin has been cowering behind the guise of Feminism, the extremist right, to my dismay, have been crusading to manipulate and frame the Feminist discussion, and the media jumped right on board with them. They are muddling this discussion so severely that I"m afraid it will do permanent damage to the vastness of real issues that face women all over the world. The worst part is that they have equated the saying
"We Can Have It All" as
the feminist proclamation above all others. As one outraged feminist, I am here to denounce this notion.
Women's equality isn't about "having it all", it's about the right to have a say in one's life, one's work and one's government. Period. Reproductive freedom and health ranks as the single most important right of
every woman
and man - for life, work and government fall into place when reproductive freedom is made available. For any right-wing extremist to deny that they've ever benefitted from this very same reproductive freedom is an outright
lie.
I am also disgusted at at the media's attempt to get us to feel spiteful toward Palin's irrelevant characteristics, pitting woman voters for or against her for pure spectacle. This is sexist bullshit at its diabolical worst. News Flash! I don't care what she looks like, I don't care how many kids she has, or where she went to college - what I care about is her position. And on almost every position she falls on the
far right, the side that only takes into consideration the agenda of the over-privileged white upper class at the expense of everything else. That means she maintains the status quo, so that she and her family can reap incredible financial rewards that follow, and continue to lure the public into thinking that "this is what having it all looks like".
If their version of having it all means she is the embodiment of the American feminist success story, then no real woman could ever qualify. It's an immeasurable and therefore unattainable standard that never, in the history of the world, has been expected of any man.
