Barbara Kay: The day Sarah Palin kneecapped radical feminism

Thanks to Sarah Palin, the long hibernation of socially conservative feminism is over
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In her column in Canada's National Post Tuesday, Barbara Kay explains why the Marxist-influenced feminists hate Sarah Palin. Those radicals had helped to create a culture that, says Kay, "if not overtly man-hating, is always man-blaming... and their contributions to the family and society trivialized." But that all changed on September 3, 2008, when Sarah Palin took the stage at the RNC convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul to accept the GOP's vice-presidential nomination in a speech which "electrified the nation":

Palin was the first public figure to openly and successfully ridicule the hitherto untouchable Barack Obama. She also was the first American woman to campaign for high office by paying homage, but no ideological dues, to the Sisterhood. This Alaskan small-town huntin’, fishin’ God-fearin,’ abortion-hatin’ mom of five showed that a woman can break through any glass ceiling she wants without the imprimatur of the feminist politburo.

Feminists watching Palin’s stunning performance knew a stake was being driven through their movement’s heart. They went ballistic. Feminist blogger Jessica Grose wrote on her Jezebel web site: “When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded … What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay murderous, rage.” Judith Warner wrote in The New York Times that Palin was an “insult to women.” Comedian Sandra Bernhard riffed on YouTube: “Turncoat bitch! You whore in your cheap f***ing … cheap-ass plastic glasses.” Academic Wendy Doniger opined, “Palin’s greatest hypocrisy is her pretense that she is a woman.”

And who can forget Canada’s very own Heather Mallick — then of the CBC, now of the Toronto Star — who watched Palin with “my mouth open, my eyeballs drying out, my hand making shaky notes.” From those “shaky notes” emerged a stomach-turning attack on Palin’s “pram-face” daughter, Bristol, followed by the advice: “Turn your guns on [Bristol’s boyfriend] Levi, ma’am.” (And liberals say conservative discourse encourages violence!)

[...]

If there is one issue that illustrates the bright line between revolutionary feminism and Palinite feminism, it is abortion. The unfettered right to abortion is an irreducible feminist dogma. It wasn’t always the case. The Suffragettes were political pioneers, but social conservatives. Thanks to Sarah Palin, the long political hibernation of socially conservative feminism is over.

One thing we all know is, you don’t want to stand between a Mama Grizzly and her babies. And these Mama Grizzlies happen to like babies a lot. The born ones and the unborn ones too. Exciting political times ahead.

[More]

- JP

Quote of the Day (September 8, 2010)

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Sean Boru at Philly2Philly:

"Sarah Palin... is a liberal's nightmare because she is the most current example that there is more than one feminist ideology. She is a conservative feminist. This has clearly struck a nerve with liberal women who don't seem to be showing any of the open-mindedness they claim to have. Palin embodies three attributes that are logically undeniable. She is physically attractive, has more than an average number of children, and has had a successful career. (Yes, we know she left the Governor's office early.) Uncharitable people try to attack those who they think they can't compete with in order to try to pretend their success isn't legitimate. Palin's presence may have revealed that those who have labeled themselves as progressive aren't actually for all women, they are for women who hold liberal ideologies. That is not progressive, it's self-serving."

h/t: roy y

- JP

Jennifer Rubin: Palin in Ascendance, Liberals Admit Defeat

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At the Contentions blog hosted on commentary Magazine's website, Jennifer Rubin weighs in on the feminist left's recently expressed Palin envy:

Palin clearly has the left in a tizzy. They have finally gotten it: she is redefining feminism. In the New York Times, two liberal feminists exhibit more than a little anxiety over the Palin juggernaut. To put it bluntly, they have Palin envy...

[...]

You betcha. You see, Palin has proved by example that a woman politician need not spout the pro-big government, pro-abortion, pro-welfare-state line. “Ms. Palin has spent much of 2010 burnishing her political bona fides and extending her influence by way of the Mama Grizzlies, a gang of Sarah-approved, maverick-y female politicians looking to ‘take back’ America with ‘common-sense’ solutions.” She sure did, and she proved herself to be the most effective female politician in the country. Sorry, Hillary — while you have been playing errand girl for the Obama foreign-policy train wreck, Palin has ascended to the throne. (Nancy Pelosi’s days are numbered.) The left is waving the white flag of surrender:

"It’s easy of course, for liberals to laugh off Ms. Palin’s 'you go, girl!' ethos and increasingly aggressive co-optation of feminist symbols. We progressives discount her references to the women’s movement — not to mention her validity as a candidate — by looking down on her as a dim, opportunistic, mean-girl prom queen, all spunk and no policy muscle.'
...

"If Sarah Palin and her acolytes successfully redefine what it means to be a groundbreaking political woman, it will be because progressives let it happen — and in doing so, ensured that when it comes to making history, there will be no one but Mama Grizzlies to do the job."

Wow.

And it’s really worse than the New York Times worriers admit. Palin not only trumped the left on style but she also managed to connect on nearly every issue — ObamaCare, bailouts, Israel, taxes, American exceptionalism, and the stimulus plan — in a way the president and his liberal supporters could not. For all of her supposed lack of “policy muscle,” it was she who defined the debate on ObamaCare and she who synced up with the Tea Party’s small-government, personal-responsibility, anti-tax-hike message. Who’s short on policy muscle — the White House or Palin?

Read the unabridged original Rubin op-ed here.

- JP

Dana Loesch: Sarah Palin and the rise of the Feminist Right

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In a Washington Examinber op-ed, Dana Loesch makes the case that conservative women are on the rise because the the feminist left has failed:

Popularly defined feminism is no longer about liberating women from the patriarchy but about beholding them to a political party whose policies clearly affect women negatively.

This past month, liberal feminists made more hay made over Palin's "mama grizzlies" talk than the matter of the Food and Drug Administration jerking Avastin off the market. Avastin is a drug used to treat late-stage breast cancer and has been shown to extend the life of some breast cancer patients by five months, but was deemed "cost-prohibitive" by the government.

Emily's List cared enough about women to make a video criticizing Palin, but apparently not enough about breast cancer patients to make a video criticizing the FDA's move.

Liberal feminists made more hay about Palin's chest than I saw them make over the nine women who were recently stoned to death in the Middle East. Those same liberal feminists were also silent when Alle Bautsch was beaten in the street for being a conservative woman.

Liberal feminists talk of choice, but refuse to take the liberated, independent responsibility for their choices and instead press Uncle Sam to subsidize their abortions and birth control.

Loesch has more to say, and you can read it in her full opinion piece here.

- JP

Cassy Fiano fires back at the femisogynists

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Cassy Fiano refudiates the latest attack on Sarah Palin by the Feminist far left:

The femisogynists just cannot let Sarah Palin go. Ever since she came out of the closet as a feminist, their heads haven’t stopped exploding. When you add in the number of strong, successful, conservative female politicians who have emerged in the past year, it’s no wonder that the fascist feminists have been going through a major identity crisis. The Sarah Palin feminist story is actually pretty old news, but the feminist left just can’t stop bringing it up. The latest to join in on the cacophony of complaints is the executive vice president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Bonnie Grabenhofer. The problem? All these gosh-darned conservative women, led by that dastardly Sarah Palin, just don’t realize that they’re victims and slaves to their reproductive rights. How dare a woman think she paved the road to her own success and be pro-life??

Grabenhofer starts with the trite and beaten-to-death meme that Sarah Palin is not a feminist.

NOW executive vice-president, Bonnie Grabenhofer, told The Daily Caller that to her, “feminism is a social justice movement aimed at getting social, political, and economic equality for women. We work for the advancement of women on multiple fronts.”

...According to Grabenhofer, Palin doesn’t qualify as a feminist.

“I do not consider Sarah Palin to be a feminist,” she said. “She has benefitted from the work of feminists but she has not worked to advance the rights of women. She works against the progressive ideas meant to help.”

What, exactly, disqualifies Sarah Palin from being considered a feminist? She’s a self-made women with an impressive career.

[...]

But, of course, there’s a litmus test that you have to pass in order to join the Fascist Feminist Club, and Sarah Palin failed. It doesn’t matter how self-sufficient she is, or how equal a partnership she has with her husband, or how hard she worked to forge herself a spot in the boys’ club of politics. Because she’s pro-life, she can’t be considered a feminist.

Grabenhofer continued, saying that in order to be a feminist, a woman must support abortion rights.

“If you cannot control your reproductive rights, you cannot fully participate in society,” she explained.

Abortion is the end-all, be-all for the femisogynists. It is the sacred cow of their movement. If you don’t support abortion, then you aren’t a real woman. Not only are you not a real woman, but you are anti-woman, and an anti-feminist. There’s no room for dissent in today’s extremist feminist movement. But there’s a slight problem with their orthodoxy. Grabenhofer’s argument, that if you cannot control your “reproductive rights,” you cannot participate fully in society insinuates that a pregnant woman is not capable of participating fully in society, thus the need for abortions.

Isn’t that a little insulting to all mothers, everywhere?

Read the full Fiano refudiation of femisogynist Grabenhofer at the NewsReal Blog.

- JP

Hawkins: Palin Is A Better Feminist Role Model Than Steinem

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A lot of liberal heads have been exploding lately, especial among those who prefer to wrap their radical leftist agenda up in the cloak of feminism. This post by Right Wing News editor John Hawkins is going to cause even more radiclib cranial combustion:

It must be tough to be a left-wing feminist these days. For so long, they got away with essentially defining feminism as "being a liberal woman." Then along came Sarah Palin. Granted, she's not the only conservative woman who deserves to be treated as a feminist icon. For example, I've long said that Michelle Malkin is a fantastic feminist role model and if you're looking for an empowered woman, who's a better example of that than Ann Coulter? But Sarah Palin is such a towering figure that people are paying attention to her attempts to redefine the word "feminism." That's not making shrill battleaxes like Gloria Steinem very happy...

[...]

Shorter Steinem: Only liberal women can claim to be feminists and be role models for other women.

Yet, if Sarah Palin is not a phenomenal role model for young women -- then nobody is. Take a look at what we have in Sarah Palin....

Read Hawkins' post unabridged at RWN.

- JP

Cathy Young: A Feminist Flare Up

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The debate continues to rage over over who has the right to use the "feminist" label. Cathy Young, a contributing editor for Reason magazine, weighs in via her weekly column for RealClearPolitics. Excerpts:

Perhaps all the talk of the "Year of the Conservative Woman," sparked by the crop of fairly conservative Republican women running for office, has slightly unhinged some feminists on the left. Or maybe it's a flare-up of the Palin Derangement Syndrome caused by Sarah Palin's galling insistence on calling herself a feminist. For whatever reason, the Feminist Dogma Police is out in force, handing down edicts on where the party lines must be drawn -- and, for whatever reason, they have been getting a platform for these edicts not in specialty publications but in the mainstream media. The loser, ultimately, is feminism itself.

First, The Washington Post ran blogger Jessica Valenti's diatribe against Palin and other women who, in her view, were trying to usurp the feminist mantle. Sure, Valenti allowed, diversity of opinions is good -- but goddess forbid there should be feminists who dissent from the sisterhood's orthodoxy on abortion or pay equity, or who believe that women in America today are not oppressed by "the patriarchy." Then, Slate.com published a piece by another big gun of the left-wing feminist blogosphere, Amanda Marcotte, titled "A short history of 'feminist' anti-feminists" and painting Palin as the latest in a line of "women who call themselves feminist" while opposing the feminist movement.

Marcotte's account, which identifies three generations of "feminist anti-feminists," is pretty shoddy history. For one, her first generation -- the Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly or Concerned Women for America founder Beverly LaHaye -- consists of women who never called themselves feminists and explicitly opposed gender equality as counter to the God-given roles of the sexes. (Bizarrely, Marcotte even calls this first wave "plain ol' anti-feminism.") And her third generation, which includes Palin and is clumsily labeled "co-opting feminism anti-feminism," is a random list of women and organizations whose only common feature seems to be that they either oppose abortion or believe that women are ill-served by a sexually permissive culture.

We weren't aware until reading this Cathy Young column that Marcotte was, although admittedly only briefly, blog coordinator for the John Edwards presidential campaign. How's that metrosexual pet male thing workin' out for the radical leftist feminists now? No wonder they're all so angry and a disproportionate share of them are lesbians. They put their political trust in such beta males as Edwards, Bill Clinton and the Kennedy brothers, all serial cheaters. Go figure.

Read the full op-ed here.

- JP

Three views on Mama Grizzlies and the debate over feminism

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In the wake of the victories of a number of female candidates in the June 8 primary elections, pundits continue to weigh in on the significance on the mama grizzlies-versus-liberal-feminists debate. Here are excerpts from three opinion pieces on the topic, all of which mention Sarah Palin...

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review, "If Mama Ain’t Happy, She May Just Run . . . for Office":

Women are people too. We see the world differently than men because we are different, and complementary. But women also see the world differently from one another, woman to woman.

This is the breakthrough we’re seeing in American history right now, and it’s becoming next to impossible to deny these realities. The evidence is there, from Sarah Palin to Meg Whitman or even Democrat Blanche Lincoln. In the wake of a series of primary elections this June, there has been much talk that we are in another year of the political woman. And this time, she is frequently more right than left.

In truth, this is nothing shocking or new. The celebrated model of the female politician may have been a liberal, like Democrat Barbara Boxer, fighting against the rights of the most vulnerable among us, the unborn. But she was never every woman. In fact, those who fought for female suffrage were a different type, whether women who have voted subsequently realize it or not. They brought a maternal instinct to their activism.

When you meet a Sarah Palin or a Carly Fiorina, or the next woman the media goes into a frenzy over, you’re not actually meeting someone who appeared yesterday or who is somehow contrary to nature. When you look at some of the issues we’re debating today — issue such as preserving who we are and protecting those innocents — we’re in exactly the place as a nation where a few good women of this kind might do a world of good alongside a few good men.

The Left willl try to pretend a woman who doesn’t buy the party line of the professional-feminist sisterhood is somehow an oddity, even a traitor to women or a misogynist. (I’ve heard them all.) But the truth is that she may simply represent a commonsense backlash. The feminist movement tried to deny so much that women, uniquely, can bring to the cultural and political table. And America is moving on, Ms.

Ross Douthat at The New York Times, "No Mystique About Feminism":

When historians set out to date the moment when the women’s movement of the 1970s officially consolidated its gains, they could do worse than settle on last Tuesday’s primaries.

It was a day when most of the major races featured female candidates, and all the major female candidates won. They won in South Dakota and Arkansas, California and Nevada. They won as business-friendly moderates (the Golden State’s Meg Whitman); as embattled incumbents (Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln); as Tea Party insurgents (Sharron Angle in Nevada). South Carolina gubernatorial hopeful Nikki Haley even came in first despite multiple allegations of adultery.

But mostly, they won as Republicans. Conservative Republicans, in fact. Conservative Republicans endorsed by Sarah Palin, in many cases. Which generated a certain amount of angst in the liberal commentariat about What It All Meant For Feminism.

“Do you still cheer,” Slate’s Sara Libby wondered of Whitman’s and Carly Fiorina’s California victories, “if the [glass] ceiling is crashed by two conservative businesswomen?” On “Good Morning America,” Tina Brown fretted that “it almost feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism.” Writing in The Daily Beast, Linda Hirshman declared that support for abortion rights and Obamacare were litmus tests for true feminism, as opposed to the “selfish” variety that triumphed on Tuesday.

These conflicted responses echoed a similar debate that broke out a few weeks earlier, following a Palin speech in which she repeatedly laid claim to the feminist mantle — praising the “mama grizzlies” currently running for office as conservative Republicans, and hailing an “emerging, conservative, feminist identity.” Half the women in journalism, it seemed, weighed in on the address, with reactions ranging from “you’ve got to be [expletive] kidding me” on the Web site Jezebel to Meghan Daum’s declaration in The Los Angeles Times that if Palin “has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she’s entitled to be accepted as one.”

The question of whether conservative women get to be feminists is an interesting and important one. But it has obscured a deeper truth: Whether or not Palin or Fiorina or Haley can legitimately claim the label feminist, their rise is a testament to the overall triumph of the women’s movement.

The Washington Examiner's Barbara Hollingsworth, "Pro-life women take political center stage":

In 1869, being a feminist didn't automatically mean declaring war on unborn children. "When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged," said suffragette Susan B. Anthony.

The Susan B. Anthony List, an Alexandria-based political action committee named after this heroine of women's rights, spent nearly $2 million to keep federal funding of abortion out of the recently passed health care bill. When that attempt failed, the group then commenced a $215,000 independent expenditure campaign on behalf of its top priority candidate: California Republican Carly Fiorina, the only woman ever to run a Fortune 20 company.

Last Tuesday, Fiorina -- whom SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser calls "the perfect pro-woman, pro-life contrast to Sen. Barbara Boxer" -- won her primary, as did other pro-life women such as gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman in California and Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada, and House candidate Kristi Noem in South Dakota. Dannenfelser called the results "an historic win for pro-life women candidates ... the greatest affirmation of our mission in the history of the organization."

In November, Fiorina will square off against Boxer, whom Dannenfelser describes as "the most aggressive champion of abortion rights in Congress."

Thirty-seven years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is at the heart of the fury directed against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who had the audacity to appear on stage at the Republican National Convention holding her Downs Syndrome infant and who pointedly refers to the pro-life women she endorses as "mama grizzlies."

The SBA List plans to spend $6 million more in the months before November's mid-term elections to support mama grizzlies and to punish "pro-life" Democrats who voted for Obamacare, which includes the greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Supreme Court decision.

Like their namesake, these grizzlies bite.

Follow the links to read the unedited original articles.

- JP

Quote of the Day (June 10, 2010)

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Lori Ziganto:

"Tina Brown, the editor of The Daily Beast, spouted her oh-so-insightful and well-thought out ‘conservative women are meany pants and icky’ opinion on 'Good Morning America' today, in a segment discussing the primary wins of many GOP women, including Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Nikki Haley, on Tuesday night... Like the children that they are, [Femisogynists] could only turn to lame attempts to smear conservative women, using Sarah Palin as a scapegoat once again. Geez, lefties. Isn’t it about time you thought of something new? It’s incredibly tiresome. At least try to mix it up a little, keep it interesting? Tina Brown can’t, apparently..."

- JP

Cassy Fiano: Why Feminists Should Embrace Sarah Palin

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More on the continuing debate sparked by Sarah Palin between the old feminists and the new, from Cassy Fiano at the NewsReal Blog:

Last week, I noted the hypocrisy of Jessica Valenti and the feminist Left in their outrage at Sarah Palin labeling herself a feminist. The hand-wringing of “progressive” feminists continued and grew to a fever pitch...

[...]

What none of these feminists seem to be able to understand is that they need Sarah Palin playing for the feminist team if they want the movement to have a prayer of becoming relevant again.

The problem is that feminism has been hijacked by women bent on a radical, extremist agenda. It’s about advancing leftist causes now, not fighting for women’s equality. They say they fight for “women’s issues,” like universal health care, abortion (on-demand and taxpayer funded, of course), gay rights, amnesty for illegals, and other radical Left causes that pretty much have nothing to do with actual women’s rights. It’s condescending to women, when you really think about it, to tell women that they can only care about certain issues which must be decided for them rather than thinking for themselves. Modern feminists are telling us that these are the only issues women need be concerned with, and if you don’t agree with them on these specific issues, you’re anti-feminist and anti-woman. Slowly, this pushed women away and sent feminism further and further into the fringe until feminism became a dirty word. It’s not a coincidence that bloggers have been saying that Sarah Palin “dropped the f-bomb” as if it’s a swear word. For a lot of women, it is. And it’s the fault of the extremist feminists themselves.

[...]

[T]hey can’t understand why women want nothing to do with feminism anymore.

Sarah Palin represents American women much better than these modern feminists do. She has a certain set of conservative values and she is a feminist. She does not, however, say that you must agree with her in order to be a feminist. She does not demand you agree with her on every last issue in order to like her, either. She could be a huge asset to feminism if they’d get over their stubborn snobbery.

Women like Sarah Palin because they see themselves in her, even if they disagree politically. She’s a working mom with a loving husband and a great family. She got into politics by getting involved with the PTA, for crying out loud. She didn’t set out to make history or change the world. She’s got a common-sense, take-charge, no-nonsense attitude that women can relate to. She sees herself as a self-made woman, rather than constantly catarwauling about how she’s a victim. Women like her for all of these reasons. She’s an everywoman, and she is easier to relate to than extremist role models like Amanda Marcotte or Jessica Valenti.

[...]

If these extremist feminists want to have the slightest prayer of regaining the relevance they’ve lost in mainstream America, then they need to embrace Sarah Palin and other women like her. Feminism started as equality for women, to give women the right to vote. It didn’t exist to tell women who to vote for or where to stand on the issues. Sarah Palin is not usurping feminism from the real feminists, she’s the real feminist reclaiming it for the modern American woman.

These are just a few excerpts. Read the latest complete commentary by Cassy Fiano here.

- JP

Big Journalism: Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift Wrestles with Her Inner Girlfriend

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More outrage from the feminist Left over the rise of conservative women. Like her soul sister Jessica Valenti, the tired old liberal columnist for troubled Newsweek magazine, Eleanor Clift feels so threatened by the New Feminism of Sarah Palin and other women not of the political left that she has little else to do but howl in protest:

As the nearly two-year-old Palin piñata-fest demonstrates, for the devout liberal the intersection of Sorority Street and Politics Avenue is left-turn only.

To no one’s surprise, Sarah Palin remains the left’s First Lady of political feminae non gratae, the gold standard. The needle on the left’s Feminometer moves from the safe green left-hand side (Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi) to the beige neutral middle (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins) to the hazardous red-hued right-hand zone (Michele Bachmann) to the far-right crimson danger area (Sarah).

Palin’s status as the left’s lead whipping girl is not news. What is news is that women like Eleanor Clift (Hell hath no fury like a liberal feminist scorned) are using the same elitist Palinesque prejudices to bash this year’s crop of wrong-turning conservative women.

[...]

Nevertheless, one question is begged of Clift: Throwing in the towel so soon? That’s not exactly what you’d expect from a progressive twenty-first century woman.

At least, it’s not what Sarah would do.

The full story by Gregg Opelka is at Andrew Breitbart's newest site, Big Journalism.

- JP

Sarah Palin's New Feminism Trumps Jessica Valenti's Tired Old Version

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At Robbing America, John Galt finds Jessica Valenti's WaPo rant, "The Fake Feminism of Sarah Palin," to be a "Highly entertaining piece":

This pretentious psycho-babble pseudo intellectual mumbo-jumbo incoherent tirade and verbal version of a chicken-without-a-head attack on Sarah Palin has the unusual reward of being a festival of misallocated terminology and leaving Palin with an awesome repartee of intellectual qualities we did not know even existed.

[...]

Ms. Valenti says, “it isn’t [Palin’s feminism] a structural analysis of patriarchal norms, power dynamics or systemic inequities”. Wow, and we thought that Palin was a straight forward old conservative that simply arouses good old traditional hate from ‘fellow travelers’.

Whereas Galt ridicules Valenti, at NRO's The Corner, Carrie Lukas deconstructs her argument:

Feministing’s Jessica Valenti has a new op-ed in the Washington Post, and she has decreed that to qualify as a feminist one must believe that American women are oppressed.

[...]

Valenti doesn’t explain why she thinks those of us on the right are wrong when we argue that American women are doing pretty well. She merely argues that we inappropriately co-opt the language of feminism when making our case.

Feminism lost its way when adhering to the leftist politcal agenda became more important to feminists than empowering women. The more the feminist left uses abortion and gay marriage as litmus tests for feminists, the more irrelevant it becomes. Sarah Palin and her mama grizzlies represent the new feminism. Out with the old!

- JP

Cassy Fiano: Gov. Palin brings out hypocrisy of feminist left

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On David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog, Cassy Fiano takes on the feminist left in general, and Jessica Valenti in particular. As usual, we have excerpts:

Sarah Palin is the feminist Left’s favorite target. It seems strange to anyone not entrenched in a radical, extremist feminist agenda. Feminists once fought for equality between the sexes — the right for women to vote, giving women a fair chance to go to college and get a job without fear of discrimination, and the choice to either stay at home with her children or work full-time. Fighting for equality has long since fallen by the wayside though, and the leftist agenda has fully set in. Women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin, therefore, cannot be feminists.

Daring to call Sarah Palin a feminist will make radical modern feminists’ heads explode. Currently screeching with rage is Jessica Valenti, angry that someone might think that Sarah Palin is indeed a feminist.

[...]

Today’s feminists like Jessica Valenti are the least “pro-choice” people on the planet … and I don’t mean when it comes to abortion. They want to dictate everything about the lives of American women. If you don’t live exactly the way they want you to live, then you’re “anti-woman” and an “anti-feminist.”

Change your name to your husband’s when you get married? You’re a slave to the patriarchy and an anti-feminist. Personally and politically pro-life? Anti-woman! Believe in small government, fiscal responsibility, and the free market? ANTI-FEMINIST! Believe in closing the borders and enforcing our immigration laws? Don’t believe in universal health care? Think global warming is all a fake? These all make you an anti-feminist, too.

Sad, isn’t it? A movement that once fought for equality for women now doesn’t want women to think for themselves. Someone like Sarah Palin, who quite literally has it all, should be a perfect example of a feminist. She’s got a loving marriage and a wonderful family. She is the breadwinner in her family and is one of the most powerful women in the country. But she doesn’t wallow in patriarchal victimhood; she’s a conservative, she’s pro-life. She doesn’t toe the Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte line, and therefore, she can never be considered a feminist. If you need an example of how hijacked the feminist movement has been by radicals, this is it.

You can read the full Fiano critique of the leftist feministas here.

- JP

Quote of the Day (May 23, 2010)

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J.R. Dunn:

"Feminism has backfired on the left. The heralded 'Year of the Woman' (was it 1992?) was supposed to introduce a new breed of female politician that would inevitably steer the country in a progressive direction. Instead, the best and most effective female politicians have been conservative, many entering the public sphere after raising families, clear evidence that the traditional way of life is in no way as stultifying as the radfems insisted. Palin, Bachmann, and now Brewer are setting the political standard for millennial America. We are fortunate to have them. Now if only we can get some of the males to try whatever it is they're drinking."

- JP

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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

Anna Belle Pfau: Sarah Palin, Susan B. Anthony & the Problem with Partisan Feminism

*
Anna Belle Pfau, an amateur historian specializing in American women’s history, penned this opinion piece, which we found at David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog:

Ann Gordon, editor of The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and Lynn Sherr, the noted biographer of Susan B. Anthony, have co-penned an article lambasting Sarah Palin for her speech before the Susan B. Anthony List, a prominent pro-life group. The gist of their article is hard to discern, as it really does come across as a disorganized diatribe against Palin for no other reason than that her name appeared in print next to Anthony’s.

Gordon and Sherr do attempt to make a cogent argument about the accuracy of historical scholarship, but they are unable to hold themselves to that same standard. They claim that no one knows if Susan B. Anthony was pro-life and that, at any rate, she didn’t think the subject belonged in politics. They also say there is no evidence from Anthony herself that she was pro-life, and provide contradictory evidence to that claim by citing a letter which clearly suggests Anthony had moral qualms about a terminated pregnancy she knew about. Gordon and Sherr make no mention of the fact that Anthony’s newspaper, The Revolution, clearly articulated anti-abortion or pro-life views on a regular basis.

[...]

My biggest issue over the outbreak of this argument, however, is the short-sightedness of women like Gordon and Sherr, who purport to support progress for women, and yet attack one of the biggest symbols of that progress simply because their belief in left-feminism allows them to dictate who can and cannot be a feminist. The breakfast Palin spoke at has been covered by the media ad nauseam, and this new debate only serves to titillate the media pundits who thrive on this kind of thing. This is a function of our fractured politics.

[...]

Left-feminism is so caught up in preserving itself as a brand for the Democratic Party that it can’t see, or support, progress – not even when it happens right in front of them. This sets the worst example for those newly minted feminists on the Right, who have, perhaps, only started their own partisan version of feminism because they have been shunned and rejected by their short-sighted progressive counterparts. It’s worth noting that Gordon and Sherr have both made significant contributions to the modern women’s rights movement, and that should not be forgotten. But it’s a shame they have allowed partisanship to trump what they know are the righteous goals of equality and opportunity for all women. And it’s a lost opportunity for us all when we breed partisan division among women and groups who could otherwise work together and achieve progress for all women.

Ms. Pfau's unabridged op-ed is available here and here.

- JP

NewsBusters: Post Buries Article on Palin's Call for 'Conservative, Feminist Identity'

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Newsbusters managing editor Ken Shepherd was "disappointed but hardly surprised" that the Washington Post "buried" a story written by Amy Gardner on Sarah Palin's call for pro-life women to form a "conservative, feminist identity":

While the 10-paragraph article in itself didn't raise any bias alarm bells, I was disappointed but hardly surprised that the Post buried the story on the last page of its A-section.

Gardner's article focused on how Palin, "[s]peaking to a breakfast gathering of the Susan B. Anthony List in downtown Washington on Friday" observed that liberal pro-choice feminists are hypocrites for on the one hand insisting that women can hold fulfilling careers while being mothers but at the same time those same feminists hold out abortion for young women who might feel their unwanted pregnancies are an inconvenience obstacle to career or educational goals.

Gov. Palin's calling out of liberal feminists for their hypocrisy, observes Shepherd, was the stimulus for the Post's Jonathan Capehart, a Palin critic who took the trouble to attend the SBA List's Celebration of Life Breakfast fundraiser to see her speak. In his column, Capehart conceded that the first woman ever to be the vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party had made "a very interesting point."

Read Shepherd's full NewsBusters post here.

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 29, 2009)

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Anthony Bialy:

"Her foes confuse clarity with idiocy. Let them keep spectacularly misunderstanding her, especially because they despise her for more than her 'You betcha' manner. Namely, she’s both successful and admired in crimson states, which provokes endless infuriation among shrill leftists. Only abortion-embracing, male-despising, womyn-spelling females are supposed to climb as high as she has, a fact which will happily grate on them eternally."

- JP

Ruth Marcus, meet Mary Ann Kreitzer

In her latest commentary, Mary Ann Kreitzer answers Ruth Marcus' back-of-the-hand compliment over Gov. Palin's remarks to Thursday night's major Indiana right to life event.

An excerpt:

Marcus' words link her to the early screeching, bra-burning feminists who described motherhood as slavery and demeaned women who chose it over careers. But why does she hate Palin so much whom she attacked relentlessly during the presidential campaign? Palin chose career, balancing it with family. Ah, but she breaks the biggest rule of radical feminism. She doesn't promote or shill for abortion. And so her words must be twisted to make it appear that she is, indeed, "pro-choice," but a hypocrite who wishes to deny the same choice to others.

In "Palin's Personal Choice" Marcus says Palin "made her eloquent case for choice at a right-to-life fundraising dinner." How did Palin suddenly switch from pro-lifer to pro-choicer on Marcus' balance sheet? She expressed her fears and her doubts and, yes, the temptation to abort. As a Catholic and a sinner I know just what Sarah Palin was talking about. I too have been tempted to do evil out of self-interest, and an immoral law (as it did with slavery) makes evil choices easier to justify. Welcome to the human condition!

But distorting reality is necessary to demonize the opposition. So after quoting Palin's description of her doubts and "thought process," Marcus plays the gotcha game...

Highly recommended reading.

Update: Now Ms. Marcus, please meet Ramesh Ponnuru.

- JP

Defending Gov. Palin Against Misogynistic Attacks

In this video, Bill O'Reilly and Tammy Bruce excoriate feminist groups for refusing to defend Sarah Palin and other women who don't adhere to radical leftist views from misogynistic attacks:



h/t: The Conservative Xpress

And at The New Agenda, Cynthia Ruccia has an excellent post up about how common sexism has become in our society and how only a few have been willing to stand up against it.

- JP