The wingnuts continue to wag fingers at feminists for not supporting Gov. Palin’s election campaign. The way these loopers misrepresent feminist positions would be comical if it wasn’t so agenda driven.
- Jim Quinn (paraphrased): feminists simply can’t stand that Palin didn’t join the Abortion Cult when pregnant with her son Trig.
WRONG: Palin made a choice, an informed choice, taking into account her own wishes and her own circumstances, and feminists support women making their own reproductive choices about the size and timing of their families. Good for her, and how fortunate that she doesn’t live in a country which would have forced her to have an abortion (like China) and neither does she live in a country where she could not access an abortion if she had decided that terminating the pregnancy was the best choice for her (like Ireland).
However, Palin enthusiastically advocates a social/religious movement which which takes opposition to abortion to the extreme of opposing women’s health services that help poor women who do want healthy babies, just because these women’s health services also provide abortions to women who don’t want to be pregnant. This advocacy of the restriction of reproductive choice for other women is what feminists who oppose Palin’s election campaign are objecting to, not her own personal reproductive choices.
- Kerri Houston Toloczko (paraphrased): feminists are hypocrites for not loving Todd Palin to pieces when he’s so happy to support his wife’s high-flying career.
WRONG: the Palins’ mutually supportive and egalitarian marriage is worthy of admiration and emulation, and feminists support and encourage couples who recognise that it can be the female partner who has the most capacity for achievement and financial gain, and who cheerfully organise the division of domestic labour accordingly. I very much doubt that any feminist on the planet begrudges Palin her proud, supportive husband, and it is certainly true that such rationally egalitarian relationships are one aspect of the feminist ideal. Good for them.
However, the Palins are both on the record as dedicated social and economic conservatives who support a whole raft of policy positions that most feminists have always opposed. If feminists suddenly decided that those policies didn’t matter any more simply because Palin is a woman and her husband manages their home, then that would be hypocrisy. Continuing to oppose policies that feminist organisations have opposed for decades, even when a woman with a hunky househusband is the leadership figure promoting them, is an example of feminists being consistent.
Anyone got any more Nuance For Dummies needing an airing?
Categories: culture wars, ethics & philosophy, gender & feminism, media, Politics, relationships, work and family
Hoyden About Town 
Sorry that I can’t give you a source, but I read somewhere at the time of Palin’s nomination that it was some women on the left side of politics in America who were decrying Sarah Palin for going back to work straight after having her last (disabled) child and that it was the CONSERVATIVES who were championing her right to choose to go back to work, rather than being his full-time carer.
I remember thinking “WTF?” I wish I’d bookmarked the page, because something about it seemed arse-up. I think in retrospect it was probably a right-wing beat up, because I don’t know of any left-leaning women who would do anything other than support the rights of another working woman to choose to work (not to mention saying three cheers for Palin’s husband’s decision to be a stay-at-home father).
In the scheme of this rather nasty presidential campaign (especially from the GOP), I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to hear that it was something that had just been made up.