The New Feminism: Sarah Palin and the Mama Grizzlies

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A trio of recent posts of interest all deal with Sarah Palin and the new feminism. Conservative women are becoming increasingly activist, and proponents of the old feminism are howling in protest. We have excerpts from the three articles:

In a Fox News op-ed, Kellyanne Conway & Penny Nance say if this is not the "Year of the Woman," it is most certainly the year of the woman activist:

Sarah Palin said last week that the “mama grizzlies,” -- those women who are rising up and becoming advocates for their country -- would take back this nation. There is indeed a new breed of women activists in America today. Indeed, roughly 45% of Tea Party activists are women. However, they aren't like the women who came of age in the 60s and 70s who were shrugging off the "bondage" of children and families and rallying around a newfound independence. No, today's women activists have taken to the streets and the voting booths for just the opposite reason. These women are rising up in defense of their children, their grandchildren and their way of life.

The majority of women believe the stimulus has failed to create jobs and have rejected both bailouts and so-called health care reform. For the first time since Gallup has tracked the issue, the federal budget deficit – now over a trillion dollars – has replaced the economy, the environment and Social Security as the issue that worries Americans the most when they think about how America will look 25 years from now.

Why doesn't Washington get it? The nation's economic and fiscal health directly impacts women. They comprise a majority of the workforce partly because the recession has disproportionately affected men and has left women shouldering the burden of employment and kitchen table economics. They are the ones making the majority of financial decisions for their families, including health care decisions, yet it is women who will be paying the high price.

In an LA Times opinion piece, Meghan Daum argues that the new feminism may not be much like the old, but viewing men and women as equals should provide enough common ground for both liberals and conservatives to co-exist in the movement:

Using grizzly bears as a metaphor, Palin seemed to imply that the tenets of feminism — or at least the word itself — need not apply solely to liberal, abortion-rights supporting (and, by implication, gun-eschewing, gay-marriage-advocating, reusable-eco-bag-toting, dangling-earring-wearing) women. Red-state PTA moms with a love of God and country can get in on the empowerment act too.

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I feel a duty (a feminist duty, in fact) to say this about Palin's declaration: If she has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she's entitled to be accepted as one.

I say this as someone who's unabashedly called herself a feminist (in public and in print) ever since, years ago, I established my own definition of it. In a nutshell, it goes like this: View men and women as equals; see your gender as neither an obstacle to success nor an excuse for failure; laugh at yourself occasionally; get out of bed in the morning; don't forget to vote.

As you can see, this mission statement applies to men and women, liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, the freshly shaved and the hairy armpitted. I may have opinions about abortion and other social issues closely associated with women's rights, but I see them as a separate matter from the question of whether I call myself a feminist.

And in a commentary at Townhall.com, NRO editor Kathryn Jean Lopez examines the old feminist hatred of Gov. Palin:

In many ways, the women among the Tea Party activists of today -- whom Palin counts as part of a "mom awakening" going on -- would be quite at home with their foremothers. If polls I've seen and rallies I've attended are any indication, today's female fighters are pro-life and sensible. They've seen the pain the last few decades of social radicalism has wrought. They're a danger to the feminist establishment.

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One respondent to Palin argued: "Her usual rhetoric extolling the values and importance of freedoms doesn't extend to women." In the rhetoric and reality of the liberal feminist movement from which a comment like that is born, freedom doesn't extend to the unborn child. Increasingly, Americans are not tolerating this. In the tradition of the suffragettes, women, increasingly, will have none of it.

And so I understand why women of the left react early and often to Palin. It's not about her, it's about the threat to their power she represents. They've based so much of their political activism on the tenets of the sexual revolution, which have been such a disaster for women, men, children, and families. But the jig is up. It didn't fly with the likes of Anthony and Stanton. And it's increasingly not flying now. It's not the pro-lifers who went rogue in the first place.

Follow the links to read all three articles unabridged.

- JP