It’s really cool to see a New York Times op-ed co-authored by Rebecca Traister and Anna Holmes. Women are still underrepresented on op-ed pages, and these two have the distinction of getting their start online (at Salon and Jezebel, respectively). Maybe this is the start of feminist bloggers storming the NYT?
Their piece – “A Palin of Our Own” – makes the incontrovertible point that progressives have done too little to celebrate high-flying female politicians. (Echidne lays out why Traister and Holmes are right about this.) They note that this has concrete policy implications that harm women, especially regarding abortion rights. If women weren’t considered marginal and disposable, Nancy Pelosi could have passed a health care bill that safeguarded access to abortion. So far, so good.
But do we lefties and feminists really want a Palin of our own?
It’s not the shooting-wolves-from-helicopters that puts me off. (Well, okay, that too.) Most of all, I’m disturbed by the idea that we should emulate Palin’s character and style. Palin’s distinguishing features are her willful ignorance, reckless disregard for truth, contempt for the reality-based world, and plain old playground-variety spite. Traister and Holmes write:
Imagine a Democrat willing to brag about breaking the glass ceiling at the explosive beginning, not the safe end, of her campaign. A liberal politician taking to Twitter to argue that big broods and a “culture of life” are completely compatible with reproductive freedom. A female candidate on the left who speaks as angrily and forcefully about her rivals’ shortcomings as Sarah Barracuda does about the Pelosis and Obamas of the world. A smart, unrelenting female, who, unlike Ms. Palin, wants to tear down, not reinforce, traditional ways of looking at women. But that will require a party that is eager to discover, groom, promote and then cheer on such a progressive Palin.
Anger has its place – you betcha! (Yes, I’m still pissed that I can’t employ Northdakotanisms any more without people thinking I’m aping Palin.) But unlike Palin, progressives aren’t trying to appeal to people’s basest nature. If we recruit and foster female politicians who speak “angrily and forcefully about [their] rivals’ shortcomings,” we’re just going to get into a mud wrestling match with Palin and her Mama Grizzlies. The end result? Everyone’s covered with mud.
I’m not convinced that Twitter offers much hope, either. Sure, lots of liberals and lefties use Twitter. Heck, I’m even on Twitter! The Ceiling Cat is on Twitter! The presence of all that goodness doesn’t change the bedrock fact that it’s easy to convey simplistic ideas in 140 characters. You need more space to develop an argument. And really: Would Palin’s tweets get so much media exposure if they weren’t so unrelentingly stupid?
That said, Palin has lobbed the F-word back into public discourse. Now it’s our job to catch it and reclaim it. “Feminism” has never been the property of any faction within it. As I argued back on September 4, 2008 – long before the feminist blogosphere ever discussed whether Palin deserves to be a feminist – she is a feminist, of a sort. The history of feminism includes activists who were also anti-abortion and anti-choice, as well as people who were deeply racist or homophobic. After all, the history of feminism is bound up with the history of the Western world, not a thing apart. There has always been a subset of feminists who reduced the movement to “equal opportunity to compete with men” and to hell with the collateral damage (poor women, lesbians, women of color, even mothers). Palin can definitely claim those feminists as her ancestors.
Palinofeminism is screamingly reductive. It’s all about claiming a woman’s right to compete in a man’s world – something liberal feminists have historically demanded – though in order to reap its benefits, you have to be, well, pretty much a clone of Palin. But the very narrowness of Palinofeminism offers an opportunity to redefine feminism, for those of us who are broader of mind and bigger of heart. Feminism can and must oppose poverty, racism, cissexism, homophobia ableism, ageism – the whole panoply of oppressions that make people less than they could be. Feminism needs to be about ending gender-based oppression, and yes, that includes practices and norms that harm men, too.
We need to seize the moment, now that Palin has dragged feminism back into public view, and put forth an inclusive, compassionate vision of a United States where everyone has equal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
How we achieve that, I’m not quite sure. I’m just a marginal university instructor in Appalachia with a small (albeit smart and loyal) blog readership. But I suspect that publishing more feminist op-eds is a great place to start.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
[...] article has been discussed widely on other feminist blogs — I’d like to address some comments made by Amanda Marcotte at Double [...]
I very largely agree with this post. One thing, though:
Variations on “patriarchy/kyriarchy hurts/harms men too” have become a stock phrase. But, though convenient, I think it’s a flawed phrase, and one that has the potential to turn off men who might be reading.
As I noted in this post a while back, one plausible reading of “too” suggests that men are an afterthought to feminism and would only receive incidental benefits from its victory, which I don’t think is your position. Another reading suggests that it’s somehow ironic or surprising that men should benefit from feminism, which is reinforced by modern use of the archaic term “patriarchy”; since I’ve generally seen you use that word only in historical contexts*, I don’t think that’s your position either. What I think you’re saying is that some men are oppressed because they cannot adequately fill society’s roles for men, and feminism must be willing to include these men. And I think this is something that needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Especially since a lot of the places that variant men are going when they sense feminism isn’t for them are sexist, revanchist, and ultimately not even helpful to variant men, much less to the rest of us.
This is why I care, even down to details: I used to identify as male before I knew I had a choice. Suppose I had felt more welcomed into feminism when I first began to explore it as a teen — that I had felt that the social norms I could not conform to and the gender policing I suffered were actual issues of concern, and issues I was allowed to speak to. I would undoubtedly have come into contact much sooner with transwomen’s voices. As soon as I encountered transwomen as they actually are, and not as Jerry Springer stereotypes, I recognized myself. I’m now very grateful for third-wavers’ work including transwomen and disseminating their voices. But if I hadn’t run away out of embarrassment from being a “male” interloper, my high school and college years might not have been such a confused and suicidal wrecks.
*Errm, reminding myself never again to click on WordPress tags. They rarely help, and no matter what I click on (in this case “patriarchy” there’s always going to be a triggering anti-transwoman post from a radfem on the first page…
I think you’ve read me correctly. I think benefits to men are neither inciendental and trivial, nor surprising or ironic. I hope that feminism can offer a partial path to a better world for those men who are, as you say, “variant,” for whatever reason. Those reasons could include intersectional oppressions as well as men who simply do not and cannot live happily in the existing masculine roles.
I would further say that even men who hold a great deal of privilege in the existing system would nonetheless benefit from flexible norms for masculinity. Lately I’ve started catching up on “Mad Men” – late to the party, I know – and that show is a marvelous illustration of how toxic hegemonic masculinity is even to those who have a shot at grabbing the brass ring. Granted, gender roles have become much more flexible since the early 1960s, but the principle still holds.
Thanks for sharing your story. Feminism needs “interlopers.” But it’s a heckuva burden to place on individuals. I’m very sorry that your path to adulthood was so hard, and glad you seem to be finding a way to be yourself.
Finally, you’re right that I almost never speak of “the patriarchy” except historically. I think we are now dealing with a sort of “rump patriarchy” in this society – or as a friend of mine once said, “zombie patriarchy,” which is undead and still able to cause quite a lot of trouble, but also in pretty stark decline.