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September 10, 2008

Mocking Bird Feminism

jgh:

“Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.”

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camille paglia (via candywrapped)

I’ll probably lose like 80 jillion followers for this but I like Pags and what she has to say, even when she goes a little batshit with it.

There’s something weirdly feminist about Palin, which pains me to say since she’s rabidly pro-life. Her beliefs are deeply conservative, traditionally antifeminist, yet she effortlessly juxtaposes notions of essentialist femininity (baby havin’ and lipstick wearin’) with butch toughness that would have been balked at by a 1950s GOP (“pitbull”, hunting, athleticism.) It’s an image, sure, a carefully crafted image. Yet there’s something daring about her genderplay.

Yet she simultaneously thinks everyone (except Bristol, obvs) shouldn’t get a choice over their own uteruses (uteri?) Oy. Contradictions.

I don’t see any contradictions, necessarily. To me Palin is like the perfect antifeminist; someone that all true feminists should find completely infuriating. She’s done a good job of projecting a public persona that combines both positive masculine and feminine characteristics (something a lot lot of other feminists, like, say, Hillary Clinton, are still trying to get a handle on) but she’s taken this talent and, thanks to the opportunities that the feminist movement has fought for, is using it in pursuit of an agenda that is completely at odds with everything real feminists claim to stand for (and i’m not just talking about the abortion issue here, either). I don’t think the Right could’ve come up with something better if they had made it in a lab.

She is EXACTLY what hillary is only the complete opposite. I don’t agree that she has, “done a good job of projecting a public persona that combines both positive masculine and feminine characteristics” it’s just that the media are a bunch of republican creaming gonads. she does nothing more then what hillary did, it’s just that hillary scared the shit out of republicans so they attacked her. palin just tells them what they want to here. what she was told to believe. so they love her. they both have the persona of being a “ball buster”. though in reality she’s not. she screeches like a hawk but she’s just a fucking mocking bird.