by Shaker Mod aforalpha
[Content Note: Misogyny; slavery; violence; dehumanization.]
Dear Martin Bashir,
I don't watch your show, but it has come to my attention that recently you set out to explain to Sarah Palin the horrors of slavery. To conclude your history lesson you suggested that she would be deserving of the degrading and violent treatment that a particular slave owner preferred.
I take it as read that Sarah Palin either does not understand or, more likely, care, what the true nature of slavery was and is. But if you think for even a second, it's okay to wish that kind of abuse, exploitation, and humiliation on anyone, even to make a rhetorical point, then YOU haven't understood.
Your comments trivialize the history of slavery, the present reality of the same, and the enduring consequences of the belief that some people have the right to own other people. And in exploiting the degradation and dehumanization that Darby and Hector were subject to in their lives in order to commit an act of symbolic violence against a woman whose political beliefs you disagree with, you stood up to be counted among those who believe that people are NOT all equal in dignity and deserving of respect.
The lesson to take from the Thistlewood diary, which you seem to have missed, is that we are all people and it is of the utmost urgency that we never forget that.
Sarah Palin is a person, Mr. Bashir.
Sincerely,
aforalpha
P.S. Joy Reid should always have had your show.
My Letter to Martin Bashir
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
Surprise! Despite claims to the contrary, the NSA tracks the locations of cellphones worldwide: "The NSA collects 5 million billion records a day in order to track the movements of individuals, according to documents and intelligence officials interviewed by the Washington Post. The agency taps into cables that connect cellphone networks globally. The NSA does not purposefully target American devices, but collects data on Americans' locations 'incidentially,' according to the Post."
[Content Note: Worker exploitation] A woman named Laurentina answers questions about working at McDonald's and why she's striking today.
[CN: Clergy abuse] In July, Pope Francis made it a crime to abuse children in the Vatican. Now he is "creating a commission to prevent the abuse of minors and to support victims of abuse, Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley announced Thursday in Rome. The new commission is expected to tell church officials to collaborate with civil authorities and report cases of abuse, O'Malley said." I don't hand out cookies for doing the bare minimum, but I will congratulate Pope Francis on finally doing the bare minimum, which his predecessors couldn't be arsed to do.
[CN: Misogyny; slavery; violence] I was out of town when this story first broke, but MSNBC journalist Martin Bashir said on-air that former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's is "an outstanding candidate" for "a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood," a slave owner who violently punished and humiliated people he enslaved, including making them shit in each other's mouths. Following a leave of absence, he has now resigned (because apparently there's nothing so bad any male journalist can say about a woman to warrant his firing). And the statement from MSNBC President Phil Griffin is fucking incredible: "Martin Bashir resigned today, effective immediately. I understand his decision and I thank him for three great years with msnbc. Martin is a good man and respected colleague—we wish him only the best." A good man and a respected colleague. There is also apparently nothing so bad any male journalist can say about a woman to warrant not calling him a good man a respected colleague.
Heads-up: Two million Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter passwords have been stolen in a massive hack. If your account was affected, you will be notified. But, as always, be careful of phishing scams, which will almost certainly increase after this news. Hover over URLs in emails to make sure they direct back to the site whence they claim to emanate.
Scientists have found "ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years." Whoa!
[CN: Violence] The Massachusetts teenager accused of killing his teacher in October has pleaded not guilty. There is still no known motive in the murder.
Senator Elizabeth Warren says she will not run for president in 2016. That doesn't preclude her being asked to run as veep on the eventual nominee's ticket, though! HILLARY?
Supermodel Joan Smalls bluntly calls out racism on the runway: "People hide behind the word aesthetic. They say, 'Well, it's just that designer's aesthetic.' But when you see 18 seasons in a row and not one single model outside a certain skin color…? There are people in the industry who are advocates, who support diversity. And there are people who do not. I don't get it. Beauty is universal. These doors have to open."
Gal Gadot is your new Wonder Woman. I don't know who she is, but good luck, Gal Gadot! I hope you make a terrific Wonder Woman! Too bad you're not getting your own movie and have to be shoved into the background of a Superman and Batman movie!
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Misogyny; reproductive policing; rape culture; classism.]
Actual Headline of WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker's latest: "On fertility, and the flauntingly fecund Sarah Palin."
Actual line from this column: "Lately, a strange shift has occurred among female politicians as they have resorted to flexing their womb-manhood. Rather than try to out-man the men, women have begun to celebrate—or exploit in some cases—their higher purpose."
Another actual line from this column: "Palin is nothing if not fertile. Or, perhaps more accurately, she is nothing if she isn't fertile."
And then there's this:
The most flauntingly fecund female politician in U.S. history, Palin made the most of men's imaginations as John McCain's running mate—even winning over the fantasies of the politically opposed. Most memorable of these was Christopher Hitchens, who, though no Palin fan, once confessed to me: "Even I have wondered what it would be like to change her expression."Lest you miss Hitchens' courtly, gentlemanly meaning, "change her expression" means "fuck her."
Hitchens knew how to be provocative and/or insulting while still seeming courtly, a gentleman's art nearly lost with his passing.
You know, it isn't even that I totally disagree with Parker that the increasing emphasis on female politicians' reproduction (or lack therof) is problematic. Where we differ is that I am eminently capable of discussing that idea without resorting to garbage misogynist tropes.
Parker talks about female politicians—including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a mother of five whom she accuses of hiding "behind the skirt of her own bassinet" to avoid questions about late-term abortion—"exploiting" their motherhood, as if the privileging of motherhood is new (nope) or exists in a void.
If there is a resurgence in female politicians who center motherhood as a key part of their bios, gee, maybe it's because we are in the middle of an enormous backlash against reproductive choice. Maybe it's because publicly policing female politicians' reproduction is all the fucking rage these days. It seems spectacularly unfair to criticize Palin for centering her role as mom, when she is part of a party that features as a centerpiece of its platform forcing unwilling women to be mothers, and when reprobates like Andrew Sullivan have been obsessively crawling up inside her uterus trying to find evidence that she's lying about to whom she's given birth.
If we have a problem with the disproportionate focus on female politicians' reproductive résumés, we need to make a serious examination of what cultural imperatives are driving that narrative. Both parties tend to reward national female politicians who are mothers. Voters do. We are in a moment of extreme backlash. It is not a coincidence that attorney and former First Lady Hillary Clinton is identified with businessy pantsuits, and attorney and current First Lady Michelle Obama is identified with homemakery modern A-line dresses with a retro feel. There are not-incidental race issues, especially about what kind of motherhood is culturally privileged, wrapped up in that meaningful difference, too.
I am barely scratching the surface. There are layers upon layers of social context in which female public figures—not merely politicians, but entertainers and athletes and so forth—are obliged and inclined to focus on their reproductive destinies. It's hardly as simple as "Sarah Palin exploits being a mom. What a jerk." And yet...
Actual conclusion of Parker's garbage column: "[Palin's] coquettish reminders that her field is still tillable diminishes her credibility as anything other than a one-liner comedienne. Perhaps Palin recognizes this herself and is auditioning for her own show. She may have a fertile future as an entertainer, though Honey Boo Boo will give her a run for her money."
Just a quick classist dig, right at the end, in case you'd forgotten that Palin was herself once a beauty queen who had the unmitigated temerity to be born outside of one of the two cities in the entire US that matter to people like Kathleen Parker.
* * *
I would direct you to the Washington Post's ombudsman, but, of course, they eliminated that position earlier this year. You can contact their part-time "Reader Representative" at readers-at-washpost-dot-com.[H/T to Shaker Richard Gadsden. Previous Kathleen Parker: The OFFS Awards; Bravo, WaPo; But What About the Men?! Not a comprehensive list of the coverage here of her special brand of garbage. Just a few fun examples.]
Palin/Bachmann Sexism Watch
And it's a doozy... Deeky recently discovered the following editorial cartoon and forwarded it to me:
It's gonna be a looooooooooooooooong election.
[We defend conservative women against misogynist smears not because we endorse them or their politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
Let the Sexism Begin!
So, the first emergent misogynist narrative of the 2012 election is not really a narrative as much as it is a habit: The inability of journalists to talk about candidate Michele Bachmann without comparing her to Sarah Palin.
To wit: Time's Mark Halperin, answering "Why Bachmann?"
With her impressive New Hampshire debate performance, Bachmann has gone from a conservative Sarah Palin—lite curiosity to a potential game changer. For two hours onstage with her GOP rivals, Bachmann appeared polished, serene and in command. Her smooth performance was partly the work of a top-shelf team of veteran advisers (manager Ed Rollins, pollster Ed Goeas, forensic coach Brett O’Donnell). They sanded down some of her rough edges but let Bachmann be Bachmann, complete with zinging anti-Obama applause lines and sunny-side-up conservatism.Emphasis mine.
Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are both straight white Republican women with brown hair.
Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty are both straight white Republican Minnesotans with brown hair.
It's actually pretty interesting that a former governor and sitting congressmember from the same state and the same party are running against each other in the same election, but that rarely even gets a mention.
And, weirdly, what does get mentioned (if implicitly) over and over—that Bachmann and Palin are both women—really isn't interesting at all.
At least not to anyone who considers "women are individual human beings" to be settled fact.
Well. This Should Be Interesting.
Sarah Palin's emails during her time as governor of Alaska are finally to be released in accordance with a Freedom of Information Act request:
Sarah Palin is braced for the release of tens of thousands of emails sent when she was governor of Alaska and which opponents say could damage a potential run for the White House.I am quite looking forward to (and fully expect) information that will further discredit Palin, even among her waning numbers of supporters, as a serious contender for the presidency. I am not looking forward to the enormous heaploads of revolting misogyny and classism which will indubitably accompany that information and the subsequent discussion.
The emails, copies of which will be obtained by the Guardian, date from her inauguration as governor in 2006 through to being propelled to fame as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008. The controversial time saw her initial sky-high approval ratings plummet and ended up in a series of rows, including an ethics investigation and a falling-out with her running mate, John McCain.
...Her office is due on Friday to hand over six boxes containing 24,199 pages of printed emails to the Guardian and other media organisations that had applied for copies. Our reporters will immediately begin sifting the documents for stories but the Guardian plans to publish thousands of the raw mails as quickly as possible to allow readers to scan them for interesting material.
...Palin, in an interview last week with Fox, said she was relaxed about the emails because every rock that could be kicked over had been. But a note of caution crept in when she added that "a lot of those emails obviously weren't meant for public consumption".
...About 2,275 emails have been withheld and some of the 24,199 have been redacted.
Sarah Palin is totes the worst, but not because she's a woman, a beautiful woman, an ambitious woman, a mom, a mom to many children, a mom to a disabled child, a former beauty queen, an outdoorsy type with a middle-class background, nor even because she politicks with the mendacious, aw-shucks, insufferably affected demeanor that's been a central part of conservative identity politics since Ronald Reagan's carefully blushed cheeks.
She's the worst not because she says stupid things but because she says wrong things, because she's an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, anti-socialized healthcare, anti-social safety net, pro-social Darwinism conservative asshole, just another self-proclaimed bootstrapper who can be flippant about reproductive choice only because she has it, who fancies herself an anti-disability crusader despite laughable double-standards and routinely referring to US journalists as the "lamestream media," who belittles feminists and their advocacy for the programs and policies that help marginalized women and girls, and who trades on being a rightwing token while demeaning the very feminist activism that has afforded her the public platform on which she brazenly basks in the luxury of her disdain.
Those distinctions aren't all that hard, given a modicum of effort and the willingness to not lazily rely on misogynist and classist narratives as substitute for substantive critique of a terrible candidate.
Bill Maher: Feminist Troll
[Trigger warning for misogyny.]
After calling Sarah Palin a twat and a cunt, and calling Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann bimbos, Maher was asked about his "controversial" comments on Hardball yesterday by guest host Chuck Todd, and Maher responded:
There's a lot of people in America who have, of course, nothing to do except look for something to get mad at. And I've been a frequent target, and I'm happy to provide that service. I always say, as I've said many times in these kind of situations, if I hurt somebody's feelings – I'm always sorry about that, I'm not trying to hurt somebody's feelings. But if you want me to say, "I'm sorry what I said was wrong" – no, sorry, I can't go there.OMFG he did not just play the "feminists are just looking for things to get mad about" card.
If you want to understand the grim state of women's equality in the United States, here it is: One of the great liberal heroes of the left is approximately as sophisticated in his thinking regarding women as your average troll at a feminist blog.
Quite genuinely, it is laughable that anyone could suggest that women have reached some semblance of parity when we still cannot criticize the use of cunt, twat, and bimbo as casual slurs against a former vice presidential candidate without being accused of looking for things to get mad about.
Perhaps—just perhaps—it's not that feminists who object to the substitution of misogynist slurs for substantive criticism are too sensitive, but that Bill Maher is not sensitive enough.
Because if demeaning women with misogynist slurs isn't worthy of criticism, despite the fact that it is such "little things," such pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable "little things," that create the foundation of a sexist culture on which the "big stuff" is dependent for its survival, I wonder what would meet Maher's threshold for our attention.
Not that I really give a shit, since I'm (shockingly) not of the belief that a straight, white, cis, able-bodied, wealthy, Western, undilutedly privileged man should be the arbiter of to what issues feminists and womanists should direct their attentions.
Particularly when, despite his claims to objectivity, he has a vested interest in having us direct our attentions elsewhere. Ahem.
In any case, I don't want an apology from Bill Maher. I don't care if he feels bad, and I don't care if he admits he was wrong, and I don't care if he says he's sorry or feels sorry or whatthefuckever. I just want him to stop using misogynist slurs.
It doesn't matter one tiny, infinitesimal speck to me whether he apologizes or not, and the fact that he evidently believes that this is all a big game of "Gotcha!" in which pretend-aggrieved people fake-complain in order to rack up some insincere apology on a scorecard, is further evidence of his utter lack of respect for women. And, yeah, I realize there are some conservatives who are playing that game, but there are also feminist and womanist women (and men) who are asking him, in good faith, to please knock it the fuck off because that shit doesn't exist in a goddamned void.
Of course, convincing himself that there's no such thing as good faith criticism, just people looking for things to get mad about, is a pretty neat justification to avoid listening to criticism altogether.
Doesn't change the fact he's contributing to a culture of sexism he purports to disdain.
And not only that, he's obliging other liberals to twist themselves into knots to defend his misogynist shit, thus more deeply entrenching the increasingly cavernous divides on the left between those who consider women's equality to be a centerpiece of progressivism and those who consider it a negotiable item.
New Rule: If you're not helping, shut the fuck up.
Oh, and by the way, Maher: Just for the record, I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.
Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, Part 29
[Trigger warning for misogyny.]
Last week, I mentioned that Bill Maher had called Sarah Palin a "dumb twat" on his show. On the next episode, he called Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann "bimbos." Then, Sunday night, during a comedy show in Dallas, he reportedly called Sarah Palin a "cunt," because "there's just no other word for her."
Except twat and bimbo, of course.
Now, it's no secret that I don't like Bill Maher, who relies on deeply misogynist, routinely homophobic, fat-hating, ableist, transphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, religion-hating jokes, and is a one-man rape joke machine, and then wonders why it is that marginalized people in the US tend to disagree with his assertion that we've got it so good here; what the fuck are we complaining about?
Maher's certainly not the only public humorist who pulls the same shtick, but one of of the particulars about the frame of his comedy is that he's a rational, thoughtful, intellectual guy. And he quite observably is smart enough to understand how institutionalized prejudices like sexism work, but chooses to utilize perpetuating language anyway.
Someone as clever as Maher cannot be confused about why it's problematic for a girl to be born into a world in which a powerful woman can be demeaned as a twat, bimbo, and cunt by people who disagree with her.
Someone as clever as Maher cannot be mystified by the concept that a misogynist slur against an individual works specifically and only because institutionalized sexism is directed against the collective; its power comes from the narrative that women, as a whole, are less than.
Someone as clever as Maher cannot be bewildered by the fact that calling Palin a cunt does not happen in a void, but in a culture that continues to marginalize women's voices across the political spectrum.
Someone as clever as Maher cannot be ignorant about what he's doing when he calls a woman (or a man) a twat or a cunt: If you're turning a (typically) female body part into a slur to insult someone, the implication is necessarily that twats/cunts are bad, nasty, less than, in some way something that a person wouldn't want to be or be associated with. That's how insults work. When twat/cunt is used as a slur, it is dependent on construing a (typically) female body part negatively—and it thus inexorably insults women in the process.
Someone as clever as Maher, who writes and talks for a living, also probably has other words in his vocabulary that he could use, if he needs to express his contempt for Sarah Palin—words that aren't inherently misogynistic, words that don't demean other women in the process of discussing a particular woman.
I challenge him to use those words, and prove to us he's actually as smart a guy as he thinks he is.
----------------
Related Reading: Double Standards, Tea Party Crumpets, Vanity Unfair, Same Boat; Grab a Paddle, Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, Part 28, On Choice, Parity for Palin.
[H/T to @scatx. Sarah Palin Sexism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight. We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Actual headline: Forget the tea party, what about the crumpets?
Actual subhead: Everybody knows some poor fool who married a woman like Christine O'Donnell or Michele Bachmann.
Actual lede: "To the connoisseur of American political theater, the most entertaining aspect of the 2010 election season has been the rise of the right-wing cuties -- political celebrities whose main qualification is looking terrific on television. From where I sit, in a comfortable chair in front of the tube, the GOP Cupcake Factor has enlivened an otherwise dreary campaign season."
Actual location of this article: Salon.
Whoops your progressive media got rank misogyny all up in it.
Not to mention a dose of disablism: Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Christine O'Donnell aren't "crazy"—they're just assholes. And I shouldn't need to point out to someone as smart as Gene Lyons that there is a rich tradition of trying to marginalize and demonize women by calling them mentally ill, or hysterical, or "unhinged."
Just because they're women one doesn't like who promulgate policies with which one disagrees doesn't make it acceptable—i.e. not misogynistic—to invoke one of the most recognizable silencing strategies used against powerful women for all of documented history.
And, for the record, this shit isn't new. These conservative ladies are hiking a trail blazed by the loathsome Phyllis Schlafly before I was even born. She might not have held elected office, but this path was first forged in the footsteps she left marching against the ERA. She ain't known as the First Lady of Conservatism for nothing.
Disappearing her, and the conservative women who have followed her, in order to treat Palin, Bachmann, and O'Donnell as some new trend in conservative fuckery, isn't exactly feminist, either.
Oh, the irony.
Yeah, I know none of these ladies would piss on me if I were on fire, but, as I've said many times before, I will continue to defend Sarah Palin et. al. against misogynist smears not because I endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.
But I'd prefer not to be obliged in the first place.
[H/T to Shaker wisiti. Related Reading: Vanity Unfair, Same Boat; Grab a Paddle, Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, Part 28, On Choice, Parity for Palin.]
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Michael Joseph Gross for Vanity Fair: "Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury."
It's terrible for a couple of reasons. One, because Sarah Palin is the worst. Except, and two, she's the worst for reasons that aren't even in this article.
No, she's not the worst because she's a bad tipper and reportedly has the unmitigated temerity to have loud fights with her husband. And she's not the worst just because she politicks with the mendacious, aw-shucks, insufferably affected demeanor that's been a central part of conservative identity politics since Ronald Reagan's carefully blushed cheeks. She's not even the worst because she, like pretty much every other politician who's angling for the presidency (not that that makes it right), consorts with political operatives who do shady things like set up questionable payment schemes for her speaking engagements.
She's the worst because she's an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, anti-socialized healthcare, anti-social safety net, pro-social Darwinism conservative asshole, just another self-proclaimed bootstrapper who belittles feminists and their advocacy for the programs and policies that help marginalized women and girls, who trades on being a rightwing token while demeaning the very activism that has afforded her the public platform on which she brazenly basks in the luxury of her disdain.
Gross' article, however, amounts to very little but "Sarah Palin is the worst because she's in politics...and is A WOMAN."
Sure, it's covert sexism. Gross doesn't talk about her boobs or use identifiable misogynist epithets to describe her, but it's sexism nevertheless, as the (frequently dislikable) habits of many major politicians, of both parties, are used to build the case that Palin is remarkably awful. But there is nothing particularly remarkable about a politician who requires family members get permission to grant interviews. Nor about a politician who ambitiously trades favors and ruthlessly gets people fired who cross hir. Nor about a politician who acts like an entitled ass.
What makes this article the worst thing I've read all day is the fact that most of what's in it is the sort of shit that is considered (rightly or wrongly) the mundane business of doing politics, and yet is somehow ZOMG SHOCKING when done by Sarah Palin.
Monika Bauerlein, the co-editor of Mother Jones, tweeted: "I didn't think anything could make me rear up in Sarah Palin's defense, but this VF profile is close."
It's a sentiment I share.
I remain constantly infuriated at the number of pieces written about Sarah Palin that compel feminist/womanist women to come to her defense, or, at minimum, point out the absurdity of the coverage. (Bauerlein also tweeted: "'Sarah, these aides say, seemed comforted by having the children around, and she seemed lonely when they were gone.' Truly a monster.") To have feminist writers mock the paucity of legitimate criticisms in a hit piece on Palin can't have been the point.
And yet here we are again.
I will continue to defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because I endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.
But I'd prefer not to be obliged in the first place.
[Related Reading: Same Boat; Grab a Paddle, Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, Part 28, On Choice, Parity for Palin.]
HA HA HA That Sarah Palin Is Such a Dingaling!
Yesterday, Sarah Palin tweeted: "Gulf disaster needs divine intervention as man's efforts have been futile. Gulf lawmakers designate today Day of Prayer for solution/miracle."
Which is stupid.
As various lefty blogs have rightfully pointed out.
But...I do wonder in what fundamental way Palin's stupidity differs from our president's, who used the occasion of his last Oval Office address to wax lyrical about "our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it" and to exhort us to "pray for that courage ... pray for the people of the Gulf ... pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day."
Wonkette thinks it's funny, in part, because Palin is a "noted oil-industry shill." Too true. And, ya know, so is the president.
Just sayin'.
In case it's not evident, this isn't an argument for reflexively defending Sarah Palin and her terrible policies and ideas. It's an argument for not reflexively defending Barack Obama and his terrible policies and ideas, especially when they are virtually indistinguishable from Sarah Palin's.
Same Boat; Grab a Paddle
Wendy Kaminer has a short piece in The Atlantic on "Kagan, Palin, and Lipstick Feminism," in which she examines what she imagines are the double-standards to which Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and Sarah Palin are held, because the former isn't a renowned fashion plate and the later is considered both fashionable and beautiful—and asserts that the disparity offers "complementary cautionary tales about the continuing appeal of an ersatz, 'Sex in the City' feminism that rewards beauty and punishes plainness with all the subtlety and compassion of a Playboy centerfold."
As evidence of how women and their "ersatz lipstick feminism" are to blame for their own oppression, Kaminer describes the following scene:
Years ago, I watched an array of law students lingering in a hotel lobby, waiting to be interviewed by visiting firms. The men were completely, conventionally covered by their suits; the women seemed half naked by comparison, in fitted jackets, often showing a little cleavage, and above the knee, or shorter, skirts. Maybe they hoped to benefit from these reveals, but I suspect they were subtly disadvantaged by them. The men were free to focus on their interviews; at least some women were likely to be distracted (however, unconsciously) by concern about their looks and the need to sit and display themselves appropriately. How much skin is just enough? Stilettos, kitten heels, or flats? Hollywood or D.C? These are questions men never have to ask. Will they ever cease to matter to women?That last question is a doozy, no? Implicitly holding women responsible for caring about a Beauty Standard by which they are judged even if they don't want to be is spectacularly unfair in any context, but in the milieu of a professional cattle call for an industry with a lingering, persistent gender disparity at its top levels, the apportioning of blame in one direction rises to the level of the absurd. Is it really women to whom prospective female employees showing cleavage and calf matters?
Certainly Kaminer is right that the conservative men who facilitated Palin's rise to the veep slot on the last GOP presidential ticket would not "have responded to her quite so enthusiastically had she been homely and 30 pounds heavier." And she is also right that the disgorged proclamations of noted dipshits like Bill Bennett about feminists hating Palin 'cause she's pretty are as laughable as they are patently irrelevant. But here she is wrong:
Kagan's appearance and fashion sense are mocked or savaged, especially but not exclusively by pundits on the right, following a familiar script. Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano endured similar hazings. Sarah Palin, to say the least, did not.She did indeed. (That is the most recent entry in the Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, with older entries linked at its end.) And while one could argue that mocking a woman because she wears pantsuits and mocking a woman because she was a Beauty Queen are different flavors of ridicule, I daresay the distinction matters very little to the women who are marginalized in either case on the basis of their appearance.
Nor should it matter to us.
All the pedantic distinctions in the world about how Palin "brings it on herself," or arguments that the savaging is somehow justified because she trades on her appearance, or the denial that she is demeaned on the basis of her looks at all, or whatever other rationalizing contortions are made in order to extricate one flavor of belittlement from another, are just damnable subterfuge to avoid addressing the rage-making reality that there is, seemingly, no way for a women to publicly present herself that is just…acceptable.
And the discovery of that grim reality is what has turned many ersatz feminists into the genuine article.
There have long been, and long will be, sparkly fauxminist substitutes for the Real Thing which are little more than "Patriarchy for Privileged Girls—now in pink!" Going after women who subscribe to such alluring prescriptions for self-hatred with our blame and ire isn't especially productive; going after them with a meaningful alternative, on the other hand, is.
Women sometimes do convey the bars of our own cages, hoping by some sort of magical alchemy that the self-defeating service of transmitting the marginalizing narratives upon which the Patriarchy depends will someday be rewarded. But one can never be an unconstrained beneficiary of one's own oppression, no matter how devotedly complicit, no matter how tantalizing the promises of a system that sustains itself with the energy of desperate captives eternally chasing the dangled carrot of exceptionalism.
When the veneer on the alleged bargain wears thin enough through which to see, feminists/womanists must be waiting on the other side with compassion, not judgment. It's no fun realizing you've been a sucker.
[H/T to Shaker MJ.]
Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, #18
[Trigger warning.]
Why, Sandra Bernhard, why?
In one of the most scathing and arguably vulgar personal attacks on the Republican vice presidential nominee yet, Bernhard lashed out at Palin during opening night of her one woman show in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night. Among other controversial remarks, Bernhard called Palin a 'turncoat bitch' who "would be gang raped by blacks in Manhattan."There is video at the link, should you be so inclined. It does not include her comment that Palin "would be gang raped by blacks in Manhattan," so I have no idea what the specific context is for that line—although I quite honestly can't imagine a context in which it would be anything less than deeply misogynist and racist.
In one particularly abasive [sic] rant, Bernhard attacked everything from Sarah Palin’s fashion sense and hair style to her political views and religious beliefs.
"Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the shit and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat bitch! Don't you fuckin' reference Old Testament, bitch!" Bernhard said. "You stay with your new Goyisha crappy shiksa funky bullshit! Don't you touch my Old Testament, you bitch! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your cheap fuckin' New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bullshit moment."
I also can't imagine a person as clever as Bernhard has always struck me to be honestly believing that making fun of a woman's appearance and calling her a bitch and a whore is somehow "edgy." That shit's about as cutting edge as the fucking wheel, okay?
Meanwhile, I'll leave you to dissect the jaw-dropping irony of a woman calling Sarah Palin an "Uncle Woman" while using the tools of The PatriarchyTM herself.
And once again, I am amazed at the sheer number of comedians who are willing to risk triggering sexual assault survivors in their audience in order to use one of the most horrific things a human being can experience as the butt of a fucking joke.
[H/T to Shakers Katie, Medusa, Juliemania, and Holly in Cincinnati. Sarah Palin Sexism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen. We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
