Governor Sarah Palin

During the primaries, many people on my friendslist spent a great deal of time opining about all the sexism in the media, on the Internet, among their friends, and even between the candidates themselves. I agreed that Hillary's campaign was bringing out some latent and not-so-latent sexism and misogyny, but then I went back to watching porn and writing smut because I'm an adult, and I can make choices about what I want to watch, read, write, and how I want to live. I could devote myself 100% to earning my MA and writing books because I'm not a mother, and furthermore, I don't have any pressure on me to become one. slacker_97 is ambivalent about kids and respects the fact that I don't want them. My family occasionally nags me, but whatever, I ignore them. My point is, I lead a pretty good life that is entirely dictated by doing what I want to do. And I watched a glorious, intelligent, caring, savvy woman run for the highest office in the land, and she almost had it. I was sorry she lost, but I was proud of her, too. At the time, I didn't give much thought to the rampant sexism other people perceived or saw.

But with Sarah Palin, it's different. It's different to the point that it literally causes me pain. Men who come out in support of her think they're being modern individuals who can recognize and support a woman for vice president, but in reality, they are condescending and patronizing. They talk about how hot she is and how they want to fuck her. The media is harping on the fact that Biden can't be mean to her during the debates, otherwise it'll look like he's beating up on a little girl. I can't believe they would say that. I can't believe people think that. Biden has been in the Senate for over 30 years, and I guarantee some of the female senators he has and does serve with can go toe to toe with him without flinching. Why should he treat Palin with kid gloves and not treat her like she's a colleague? A colleague he's competing with for a job, no less. I see a lot of women--conservative, Christian, far-right, pro-life women--who will simply not vote for her. Their stated reason is logical (or what passes as logical when you get that far right) but still makes me sad. They can't vote for Palin because she's not doing God's work. She's not a proper Christian wife, raising her family.

It seems a lot of people I've noticed on the right don't even know what sexism is. For example, if you call Palin a dingbat, they respond with "Now I guess I know where the real misogynists are in this country." Except for the fact she absolutely is a dingbat. She believes creationism should be taught in schools. She thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance (more on that later). During a high-risk pregnancy, she risked her life and her baby's life so she could give birth out in the sticks. Seriously, if I wrote this woman into one of my novels, reviewers would tear me apart because she is, in many ways, TSTL--too stupid to live. It's not sexist to call an idiot and idiot, but apparently, the Right sees this as a way to score political points. Which, ironically, just goes to show how sexist they still are!

But all this puts me in a slightly uncomfortable place. Oh, I don't doubt my own motives for disliking her. Politically, she is my antithesis. There are no issues on which we see eye to eye. I still think she's an awful choice to lead the country--and that's about the only criteria a VP candidate needs to meet. I know she's going to lose McCain votes, and I'm happy about that. But I'm sad about why she's going to lose votes. And the simple reason is that, as a mother, she fails.

How can I say she fails as mother? I don't say it. But other women like her do. And by "like her," I mean, pro-life, anti-sex education, pro-gun, Fundamentalist or Evangelical, women. They see a four month old special needs baby, and they see a woman who is going on the campaign trail, and they think "How can she do that?". They see a seventeen year old pregnant girl and a mother going on the campaign trail and they think "How can she do that?". They see three other children ranging in age who will either be pulled out of school or will be in Alaska without their mother (and their father, of course, works outside of the home) and they're horrified. They're disgusted. To them, Palin is a fundamentally flawed person. In fact, she's so flawed, and her judgment is so lacking, they can't even vote for her in good conscience because she's just not enough like them.

It's not totally fair to Palin. Men don't come under the same scrutiny to the same degree and for the same reasons. Oh, if Obama was a horrible father, I'm sure we'd hear about it, but that would be a more calculated, political move. Nobody would really care, it'd just make good theater. On the flipside, we have the evidence that Biden is a great father, but nobody would have said a single word if put his job as a Senator ahead of his role as a father.

So the Palin nomination as been a miscalculation on all fronts. Disenchanted Hillary supporters will not support Palin because the politics are all wrong. And yes, Mr. McCain, women are smart enough to follow and care about politics. Ostensible McCain voters will not support Palin because they place their duties and obligations to family and God as higher priorities than the secular world, and they see a woman who does not share those values. Yeah, they agree politically. Yeah, she's a "hockey mom." Yeah, she was a member of the PTA. But she put her special needs baby at risk by flying home to Alaska, she went back to work 3 days later, and now she's embarking on a very serious, hotly contested campaign that will monopolize her time. And for a lot of people, the latter trumps the former. It may not be right in this day and age, but it's the reality. The rightwing men want to fuck her, the rightwing women are appalled by her (I'm speaking in generalities here, obviously, but the *ILF stuff started about 2 minutes after her candidacy was announced).