(no subject)

[leticia]

Dude, just /stop/.

Don't you dare fucking start slutshaming Bristol Palin, and you claim to be a liberal. You wonder why feminists are still angry? Because alleged liberals, our supposed allies, are making snarky comments about how she 'gets around' and calling her mother a bimbo.

Her mother is a bad policy maker. Her mother is granting her daughter support while withholding support from the less fortunate daughters of less rich mothers. These are valid points.

But neither one deserves slut shaming, because slut shaming itself is a tool of the oppression.

McCain isn't planning to pull Hillary voters because we can't tell one vagina from another; he's planning to make us inreasingly disaffected with the only party that pretends to care about our issues so we end up not voting at all.

I told a friend the other day, regarding Obama's little slips of the sexist tongue, "I'll take 'sweetie' over 'cunt' any day." But while Obama isn't saying it, the rest of the left is producing plenty of 'cunt' language and has been all along.

No other primary candidate in existance has been so reviled. No other candidate in existance has faced the same catch-22 - required to get up and support the winner (as Hillary did and every other candidate in history has) but at the same time, for that very show of support, accused of showstealing. Get the hell over your balls, little boys. Why are we still wasting so much party unity screaming about the girl who dared to play in the boys' clubhouse?

It's the same thing that has leftist bloggers thinking it's okay to call random.female on the right a trannie, or make snide comments to an imaginary adam's apple. Remember, girls, disagreeing with men makes you not a real girl. And transexuals are only okay as long as they're on YOUR side.

Of course I'm planning to vote for Obama. So are most of us. We're not stupid. But we still insist that you pay us the respect of understanding that when you slutshame one woman, even if she's committed the grevious sin of disagreeing with your politics, or just being the daughter of someone who disagrees with your politics, you slutshame all women.

Sexism doesn't know party lines.

Comments

[brianh]

This needs to be said and repeated, time and time again. If we stand for anything as liberals and progressives, it's freedom and respect for human beings. That includes /all/ of them, not just the ones we agree with, and certainly not just the ones with the Approved Plumbing. There's a quote from Shakesville that sums it up for me:

"That is NO EXCUSE for not speaking up against the mysoginistic bullshit thrown at her (and around all of us). Why? Because principles aren't reserved just for people we like, agree with, and would "do for us" in kind. This concept? Not hard." -- Misty from Shakesville

[stevenehrbar.livejournal.com]

And, of course, there's all the "Sarah Palin's a mother, the Vice Presidency is a big job, how's she going to have time for her family?" stuff, as seen in, for example, the New York Times.

Barack Obama's a father of minors, the Presidency is a much bigger job, and nobody's talking about if he'll have time for his family. Apparently women are supposed to sacrifice their ambitions for their kids, while fathers aren't.

[letiwolf.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It is true that multiple children, including handicapped ones, are an enormous time burden, but that time can come from her stay-at-home partner, hired professionals, family and friends, and it /doesn't make her any worse a mother/.

It is, I think, a somewhat valid question in HER case, because she would swear up and down if questioned in a social rightwing court that her children are her first priority because she's a good, safe babymaker who knows her place. And while the Vice Presidency is supposed to be a prety much ceremonial post, if McCain kicks it, America really couldn't afford a president who would refuse to deal with business because she had to cook dinner for her family, because thats what good mothers do.

IE, it's not a question of whether being a mother can be balanced with being a president, but whether being a /socially conservative proper mother/ can be balanced with being a president.

[siadea.livejournal.com]

I think that a lot of people aren't understanding how Palin is playing the "socially-conservative proper mother" card. I can say this because I'm surrounded by them, and Palin reminds a lot of a more politically-minded Aunt Carla. *laughs*

Let me try and unpack what I think Palin's up to here. She's saying "O look, I am not a threat, please underestimate me, no really, do. Meanwhile I will be getting everything else done around you." I might be projecting, as this is a very, very Southern tactic, but it seems fairly consistent. Furthermore, most of my family seems to understand what she's doing. Women Don't Brag About Their Accomplishments, they just sorta nudge you in their direction and underplay them. It's a way of getting stuff done in the patriarchy without undermining it, if that makes sense. So no, I think there's no fear of her putting off business to cook dinner for her family, despite her putting her children first, any more than Obama or McCain or Biden. (One feels the need to note that they don't think they have to disclaim that they put their families first. One pities that McCain does not have to, because if there were any justice, lightning would come down from the heavens and fry him where he stood for his lies.)

[letiwolf.livejournal.com]

You have a point. She wouldn't actually.

But she would expect OTHER women to, which is, of course, the whole problem.

[siadea.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure she would. If anything, she might expect other women to do as she has done. Socially-conservative proper mothers need not think women belong solely in the kitchen. I actually don't know any who do.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

Ah, a lovely distinction to make, thank you very much.

[stevenehrbar.livejournal.com]

Sure, to the extent that she supports sex-role typing, she should be called out on it. But that's done with the attacks focused on her expressed support for the sex-role typing, so it's clear that the problem is not with how she lives her life, but what she's saying about how others should live theirs.

That isn't what's being expressed when , for example, an Obama supporter says, "You can juggle a BlackBerry and a breast pump in a lot of jobs, but not in the vice presidency[.]"

[letiwolf.livejournal.com]

Completely agreed.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the nasty, anti-woman stuff I'm hearing about Palin (and/or her daughter) from people who damned well should KNOW BETTER just makes me angry and sad all at once.

[siadea.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[archangelbeth]

Double amen. Let me pull out my feminism icon for this.

[patpandahat.livejournal.com]

I would point out, just for the sake of completeness, that the "random.female" was hardly random, but instead had just gotten done justifying police officers shooting a young single mother, while she was holding a child in her arms, because she was a single mother whose children were all the product of relationships with drug dealers, so obviously whatever police excessive force was applied was warranted.

Which is, y'know, pretty goddamn disgusting, racist, classist and misogynistic itself.

[siadea.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm still not seeing any justification for the slurs Leti listed above...

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

No real justification, but maybe an emotional, schadenfreude laden justification. Liberals ought to know better, and that's why it hurts more when they participate in these kinds of things. But we're all still human, and if you're a liberal who hasn't really done a lot of work to examine the racism, classism, and misogyny that you yourself hold (we all suck it up during childhood, after all) then it's easy to succumb to stuff like this.

[patpandahat.livejournal.com]

I'm not justifying it, just pointing out that it's not as if the 'leftist bloggers' just randomly picked that woman out of a hat to slur, but instead, that the particular individual (Amy Alkon) had politics and opinions which were hateful towards women and lower-class minorities.

The women Amy Alkon was insulting was killed, and she justifies the murder because the woman should've known what she was in for when she had children with drug dealers and didn't magically escape the inner-city.

I didn't support the comparisons, but I understood where the raw emotion might come from. Frankly, I thought her personality as-is was disgusting enough to attack.

[letiwolf.livejournal.com]

It's not just her. That started one shitstorm, but who hasn't heard the sneers about Ann Coulter, or everyone's favorite stalker, Michelle Malkin?

[patpandahat.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Ann Coulter's pretty much fallen off the map.

The current female wingnuts are generally Kathryn Lopez, a very bad editor of the Corner and just generally sad whether she was male or female, Meghan McArdle, who is again, just generally a depressing upper-middle-class Randroid, and Pam Oshry who is basically a Kahane terrorist.

I think the basic problem is that the particular site I believe you're referencing (Sadly, No!, right?) isn't geared towards a serious examination of the issues, but is rather a snarky, mean-spirited way to vent off steam after eight years of lunacy. The comment board of this is kind of reflective, and there's a degree to which the line is overstepped in a lot of places.

It's also rather hard to really vent in a sexist fashion towards the male wingnuts (though lord, they've tried with Ben Shapiro). If you call Jonah Goldberg a fat, ignorant, gaseous shitbag who's a disgrace to all mankind, it's more regarded as just regular venting than if we say the same about Kathryn Lopez.

The site is not particularly nice to anyone, it's just that when the right-wing blogs utilize a female writer, it's harder to separate what's a snark at their disgusting quality of their ideas and writing from what's about their gender for a lot of the commentators.

For what it's worth, a lot of us do try, we're just not all there yet.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU. I loathe the slut-shaming that's being done to poor little Bristol Palin, who ought to have by all rights been left alone to deal with being a teenage mother without all this added drama. Obama *has* said that for his campaign at least, comments about Palin's family are out-of-bounds, and it looks like so far the people working directly for him are following that. But... the rest of the camp is being completely ridiculous. There are so *many* other things to ridicule Palin for. Why is this the hot one? It's gross.

[patpandahat.livejournal.com]

I'm still using the secessionist movement as my method of attack. Call me crazy, but I think it's important to not have a genuine traitor to the United States as part of the executive branch.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

Hurray!

[(Anonymous)]

What a wacky idea.

We've had them in the Oval Office for eight years.

[letiwolf.livejournal.com]

What a wacky idea.

We've had them in the Oval Office for eight years.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

She was never on the membership rolls of the secessionist party. Her husband was, but not her. She may sympathise with the secessionists (and her address to their 2008 convention indicates that she does), but she wasn't a member.