I don’t care about Sarah Palin, but given what I do I am forced to read and think about her much more often than I would like to. Similar to Amanda, I don’t think of Palin is a martyr or someone who was so heinously treated by the media that we should pity her in any way. I have yet to see any evidence of her being humbled about being wrong and an asshole, and while attacks against her have also been sexist, that is not the bulk of criticism around her. Palin hates women (at least that is what is apparent through the little legislation she has worked on) and has used her teenage daughter to score political points, only one of her many asshole moves. And frankly, using your teenage (mom) daughter for political gain, while stuffing words in her mouth about abstinence, well that doesn’t score very high on the feminist scale.
I was especially struck by this rather optimistic (or misguided, I am not sure) piece by Michel Martin at NPR about how complicated Palin is.
Can I just tell you? I do not know a single working mother who does not dream at some point, even if just for a minute, about packing up that desk and heading for the homestead, even if that fantasy is about as realistic as the one about supplementing unemployment with Powerball winnings. And I bet that’s why so many mothers, who work outside the home or not, were rooting for Sarah Palin, at least at first.
Whether you shared her politics or not, Palin was somebody you wanted to see in the game, trying as she was to balance a very demanding job with the equally demanding job of raising five children and maintaining a decent relationship with her husband. She seemed to have so many attractive qualities. She seemed practical, honest, unfazed and down-to-earth, exactly the qualities people hope newcomers in general and hopefully women will bring to public life. And she is making no judgment at all about the whole campaign shopping spree thing, stylish, which I for one appreciate.
I never felt any of this. I never wanted to see Palin succeed and I certainly didn’t think of her as a good mother, especially after she unapologetically used Bristol’s story for her own political gain and I have no doubt she will continue to do so. Maybe I can’t relate since I don’t sit at home wishing to be a stay-at-home cat mom, but I think this romantic idea that Palin is somehow quitting the Governorship for familial reasons is giving her way more credit than she has proven to deserve. I for one am not looking forward to her future political moves because I know they are only going to aggravate me further. Not to be too pessimistic or anything, haha.
186 Comments
I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve it.
For the most part, though, criticizing a female politician by calling her a bad mommy goes against my feminist principles. It’s a lot like bodysnarking. It implies that she is ZOMG a Failure As a Woman!
I don’t see that as what was going on in the OP. There was an objection to Michael Martin’s characterization of Palin as the sympathetic, “Aw Shucks,” good-wife-and-mother type. So essentially, it was a critique of the image of Palin that Martin described and that Palin herself took pains to create.
I agree with susanstohelit & co. , though. It is a slippery slope and it seemed like comments were sort of devolving toward mommy-shaming.
Samhita to you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l2y8HDU7-U
It will be a fine day for feminism when my clones attain power.
gee, Amanda, I think you did a perfectly adequate job of demonstrating your point right there.
As a mom, I don’t think it is appropriate to criticize anyone’s parenting skills unless what they are doing qualifies as abuse. We may not like her policies, we may not like her way of speaking, but we have no right (as women and/or feminists) to criticize her parenting. She does what works for her, and quite honestly those kids look healthy, well fed, clothed, and seem to love her so guess what? Not my place to intervene. Do I agree with her parenting style? No. But that does not mean she’s a bad parent. Just means I wouldn’t do what she does.
Sidenote: If it was a male politician, would we even question his parenting style? Likely not. I have never seen or heard anyone say, “How dare Billy get a BJ from that woman- he’s a dad!” Sure they criticized it overall, but never because he was a father. Something to think about.
Now, to respond to the NPR writer: actually, I have to admit, I tend to find the same thing re: packing it up and going home. There are days I wish I was home, playing with my son. Days I wish I could pack it all up and call it a day. Most of my mom friends feel the same way. This, however, does not mean I agreed or worshipped Palin, EVER. I admired her ability to work, be a mom and wife, etc. But her policies left much more to be desired for me. I do not associate with her JUST because she’s a mom. It is, and should be, much more complex than that.
At the end of the day, she is just like every other politician I do not agree with and am tired of reading about.
But her police chief did while she was mayor. We don’t know how much if any of it she specifically endorsed, but at the very best she obviously didn’t care to stop it.
That was my problem with it, too. I didn’t learn anything from this post except that Samhita thinks Sarah Palin is an asshole who hates women. No news, no new take on Palin, nada. Normally, posts from the Feministing editors offer actual pieces of news as well as insightful commentary on current events – it’s what sets them apart from the hordes of other bloggers and is the reason I love this blog. I’m certainly no fan of Palin’s, but there was nothing new or constructive here at all.
Yes. Yes I do.
“Getting on a plane when your water broke with a high-risk pregnancy to ME says “I want this baby to die on its way out so that I don’t have to take care of it.” –Mighty Ponygirl
Wow.
What a reckless, hate-filled and harshly judging comment. I don’t support Sarah Palin, her politics, or the image she tried to market. But attacking someone’s private life, particularly something as complicated as parenting, when 1. as mentioned, it takes two (Todd), and 2. I personally (and many here, seemingly) am not a parent, is an unfair ambush of personal choice. For those who see Palin as a fair target because her party portrays itself as the unquestionable purveyor of family values and forces them into public policy, shame on you. Practice your own politics, not theirs. Palin didn’t create the image all by herself, and while her subsequent choices are questionable, I find it bizarre that so much resentment has boiled out of these blog comments, even from impassioned, intelligent, socially-conscious observers. As a new visitor to feministing.com in recent weeks, I was delighted by the elevated rhetoric so I find this contemptuous post disheartening. It’s fair to say most of us disagree with her policies and the use of her family to leverage her platforms, but to say you believe she wants her children to die—well, that’s just about as bad as saying Obama was palling around with terrorists, don’t ya think?
I’m sure none of you are irritating trolls who go about spouting your 3-credit college-class-level “expertise” on social movements you actually know little to nothing about, or anything like that.
that’s a good site.
Read for context. To ME. That means “This is my interpretation.” I even followed it up to say there may be other interpretations.
I think Palin is a twit, and I can see the argument for judging her mothering since she’s made it part of her political persona.
But here, you’re not only judging that she made a poor parenting decision, you’re claiming that the *reasons* she did so make her a bad mother, and you have to way to tell what those reasons are. You don’t think she should have flown back, fine, but it’s possible she did because she believed it would be best for the baby.
I maintain that not rushing to the hospital because your membranes are no longer intact is not the kind of crazy reckless decision that folks are making it out to be. Heck, it’s pretty common advice to tell women whose waters have broken to wait until the onset of contractions (or 12 hours) before they come in to the hospital. Water breaking does not equal active labor.
Oh! Zing! Nice one, allegra. Nice one.
“I think it is solely up to Palin as to whether or not to have a disabled child.” What a shame she wouldn’t afford you the same choice.
Oh, for sure. It was my interpretation of the entire text that it was more of an emotionally charged critique (with opinion statements) than an intellectual one.
“there’s enough wreckage floating around in her gene pool”— Since when was anyone’s family perfect, anyway?
“And you know what, if we were talking about J.K. Rowling, or Tina Fey, or Paris Hilton, then whatever: being a woman hating asshole bad parent isn’t particularly important.”— Would you be dogging Tina as ferociously as you are Sarah, or is it just because she’s a politician? Cause to me, in my interpretation, not just of your texts but of many, it seems that criticisms are fueled just as much by personal dislike as policy disagreements. We like Tina Fey, so ya know, if she’s never home cause she’s filming her next movie, writing for 30 Rock and doing an SNL skit, we understand…
“if she weren’t simultaneously destroying the lives of her children”— what is the basis of this? Because Bristol had a baby as an unwed teen, her life is ruined? Harder, I can see that, ruined, I’m not sure. And who’s to say Bristol didn’t want the baby and that she doesn’t follow her mom’s pro-life convictions?
I agree that the policy for rape victims to pay for their own forensics kits is reprehensible. I am 100% a pro-choicer. But because Palin differs from me does not mean that she is a woman-HATER. Do you really think she HATES her daughter? My mom is all kinds of conservative and therefore on the other end of my political ideals, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t HATE me. I just think of her as old-school, in the dark.
I admire your passion, and more importantly your persuasive writing, but please refer to my primary point of practicing your own politics—why get on that nasty, catty, slanderous level of S. Palin anyway? We all know she’s under-qualified. What else needs to be said?
“irritating trolls”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
“irritating trolls”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
I’ll check out that site too
I did not have a chance to read through all 169 posts, so if I address issues already covered in sincerely apologize…however…
I cannot begin to explain how disapointed in this post I am. I, like many feministing readers, do not support Palin on a political and social level. However, I believe in good manners, civility, and contructive crticism; very little of which I have seen in this post. Specific points that are discouraging to me are
a) attacking her mother skills and claiming she is not a “good mother” does nothing to promote a feminist agenda; and if anything puts more attention on her personal life that perhaps should be left more private. How often on this site are we critical of media outlets that describe influential women only in terms of their realationships/families/spouses rather than their professions. Crtiticizing her mothering skills only contributes to this.
b) Though I dont agree with Palin’s stance on women’s issues I sincerely doubt that she “hates women”; this language is reckless and creates more fodder for all the righty’s that want to claim that feminists and feminism do nothing to address sexism directed at Palin.
c)And hate to say it but the media and other popculture outlets has been critical of her, in some instances rightly so, but think back to SNL skits, photoshopped pictures of her on nude models, the Palin porn video (Nailin Palin or something to that effect) that was created, the Palin action figures, she is the “bimbo” gov., the Letterman fiasco, and so forth. Though I dont identify with her I am mindful of some of the obstacles she faced on a personal attack
level.
This post contains nothing constructive, nothing that advances feminism, and only adds to the sensationalizing of everything that surrounds this woman. This post is immature, flat out, sorry to be so blunt, and I rarely post, but I just hung my head when I read this..
Not you specifically. But I’ve seen this in other places, that somehow Fey was part of a pattern of overwhelming media attack on Palin. When in reality Palin didn’t get it any worse from SNL than any other public figure.
The SNL skits were dead on, Tina often quoted her verbatim (which with Palin counts as cruel slander). Your other points are good.
This site called out a lot of the sexist BS you mention, including the pornification of Gov. Palin. A lot of that came from her “supporters,” BTW.
I love that movie!
Exactly. Her police chief did it when she was mayor.
A person who does not think Palin is responsible, well…doesn’t understand management.
I am responsible for how the people who answer to me interpret my policies. And if people who answer to me make policies, I AM RESPONSIBLE for the results. If Palin didn’t actually chase women down expecting to rip checks from their checkbooks, she is still responsible for women having to pay for rape kits.
Or was Henry II innocent in the murder of Becket?
Add to that the insanely high rate of sexual assault in Alaska, and the fact that no other crime results in the victim having to pay for the solving, and you have an administration that targeted women.
I agree 100% with you on this, which why this post slamming her personally and her mothering skills makes me upset. It seems contradicting to me to say “we will call out sexism aimed towards you then criticize your mothering skills and say you hate women”
I want her to go away also, but I don’t see you this post that has well over a 150 comments is helping her go away…just my two cents…
I meant “how this post”..no coffee yet
“A person who does not think Palin is responsible, well…doesn’t understand management.”
That definitely includes SP.
Oh. Well St. Sarah d’Arc could hardly be a martyr to the liberal media if she’d simply gotten the same treatment as everyone else and crumbled under it.
Her supporters talk about her like she’s their favorite stripper.
Besides my simple disagreemement with you (I think Samhita’s post indefensible and discursively useless), two things:
1) PUMAs? Really? I’m surprised you seem to place such stock in a phenomenon that was long ago disproved with election results. The scope of the PUMA thing was a media canard, anti-feminist in origin. Moving on…
2) Can you please not turn discussions of womanhood into discussions of vaginas? There are plenty of women out there who don’t have vaginas, and you’re sure ignoring their existence. As Interior_League said, this doesn’t have to get anatomical.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of this and am really worried that nobody brought up a lot of these points earlier.
In addition, aside from the fact that in general I want a GOP that’s canny enough to keep the Dems on their toes, I sure as hell don’t want every woman interested in seeking high public office to have to wear a “D” by her name in order to get there. (I also, of course, hope the president gets his act together so he couldn’t later lose his re-election to Palin – which would take some serious crashing and burning on his part.)
Samhita, what the hell? Before you posted this, did you consider what you intended it to do for feminism or for the Feministing community and readership? What did you intend for it to do, anyway? If you don’t care about Sarah Palin, why write and post this on a blog you know is a major feminist forum?
I ask because I can find no journalistic value in this post. It contributes nothing to any kind of political discourse, and from the sound of it, it isn’t even trying to. For chrissakes, you can do a lot better than to say you never wanted her to succeed and to criticize her parenting. (And didn’t you editors decide long ago that such criticism was anti-feminist and off-limits?)
I’m weirded out by this post not because it says anything all that egregious (you know there’s been far worse) but because, from what I can tell, it doesn’t even purport to have anything insightful or valuable to say about anything. All it does is voice some mean-spirited, knee-jerk antipathy and lazy potshots and risk damaging feminism. Gee, thanks.
“And didn’t you editors decide long ago that such criticism was anti-feminist and off-limits?”
Exactly. This post reeks of do as I say and not as I do.
this was intended to be a reply agreeing with everybodyever’s post, that reply button is sneaky!