Sarah Palin is no feminist

Why have people had such a hard time articulating what is wrong with Sarah Palin from a feminist context? Maybe it’s because the feminism card is even more guilt inducing and harder to play than the race card. That can only be a good thing because it means that the rights fought for by true feminists, which Sarah Palin is most definitely not, are finally ingrained in our social consciousness.

The definition of feminism can sometimes be hard to pin down due to its long history and the mutations it undergoes as it radiates around the world to serve women of different ethnic backgrounds. I do not want to denigrate its function as a tool of emancipation for women all over the world; but when some of us say that Sarah Palin is not a feminist, it has nothing to do with how feminism can function to help women in, let’s say, Chad. When we put the words “Sarah Palin” and “Feminism” together, we are referring to the garden variety type of western feminism developed in America and Europe. The kind of feminism that calls for voting rights, the rights to contract, property rights, and the right to wade in the sewer of party politics, as well as, a woman’s right to bodily integrity and autonomy. That is, feminism does not only call for women to have the same rights men have in the market place and at home; but due to our different physiology, it also calls for the right to safe and legal abortions and the right to contraception, which can only come about with comprehensive education in what that means.

Sarah Palin has indeed functioned within the system that feminists have helped to create, after all she has used it to float up to the top of the big digestive system that is our current political scene; but she has eschewed the part of feminism that calls for bodily integrity and autonomy for all. Her views on that come from a paradigm that is anathema to feminist ideals. Dick Morris, advisor to Bill Clinton and now conservative political commentator (I suppose working for the Clintons might turn anyone into a conservative), lauds Palin’s personal reproductive choices, and so do I, in as much as they are her choices, a word that comes into play only when there is more than one option.

Palin has not been in office long enough to legislate in the matter of reproductive choice; but her views on the subject make it clear which way she will go given the time; she will curtail women’s choices, just as she curtailed those of her 17 year old child. She is no feminist, and nobody should have a hard time saying that, regardless of her strengths as a woman.