Palin and the battle for feminism
Kay Hymowitz has written an excellent piece for City Journal explaining one of the linchpins of female rage at Palin from the left: she is seen as a traitor to feminism. Although this may seem paradoxical, since Palin is a powerful female, she’s not their powerful female.
I’ve written a lot about woman-on-woman hatred of Palin. I have long believed it’s multiply-determined; there’s an embarrassment of riches there. But lately I have come to think that what Kymowitz calls the battle for feminism is at least a large part of it. I have a draft for a post on that very subject that I wrote a few days ago; unfortunately, it’s not ready for prime time yet and I’m very busy today, so it will have to wait. In the meantime, Hymowitz’s article is quite fine.
[NOTE: And although I’m not familiar with it, this about-to-be-released book by Hymowitz sounds fascinating.]
Someone will have to explain how Hillary Clinton who got all her advantages by staying with a philandering husband is the model for feminist achievement. What achievements does she have that do not flow from Bill Clinton starting with her first job in Arkansas?
Heh, you’re late to this. We got literally years of it over Thatcher.
A very good article with some good passages but unfortunately no satisfying explanation of the phenom of PDS.
“Man Up” and do what?
Settle down and marry in the Divorce Hell we’ve created by messing with family law?
“Man Up” and fight in a war? Where? The army is supposed to be shrinking in terms of personnel in the next few years.
Females, for the most part, don’t need us for protection. They don’t need us for procreation (see how easily they kick daddy out of the family), and they don’t need us for income since , esp. in big cities, they tend to out-earn us in their cubicle and government jobs.
Just what does she want us to do, and more importantly because this is NEVER asked – what is in it for US?
Call it the patriarchy, kyriarchy, whatever you want, but the old order had gender roles based on the needs of society and there were actually enticements and penalties for both sexes to act within these roles. That is GONE now, at least on the women’s side, and I’m not about to play “White Knight” for females that are in direct competition with me, let alone have anything to do with the ones that play feminist when it suits them and damsel-in-distress when that suits them.
I’m going to run my own life and tell Kay Himowitz and whoever that jerk was that wrote “Manchild In the Promised Land” to go to Hades.
Kinda bolsters what i’ve always thought. Feminist good at raising awareness seem oblivious to women who enjoy raising kids.
no comment.
i have commented at nauseating length on this
and all i would do is lay out the same points, same history, and same things till they sink in and have their effect…
Someone will have to explain how Hillary Clinton who got all her advantages by staying with a philandering husband is the model for feminist achievement.
simple… it has nothing to do with women
and everything to do with communism and dictatorship
hillary wrote as her welessly paper that marx was correct. her husband chose to be an exchange student in the soviet union as a fulbright scholar, rather than serve in vietnam.
ergo… they are fellow travelers, and if they are not going to condemn stalin and mao for nearly 100 million people, they certainly are nto going to condemn fellow travelers for living the sociopathic lifestyle that they foment and like.
you confuse the arguments for consumption with valid arguments.
everone does.
which is why the originator of all this, called them innnocents clubs. until spain, then they were called fifth column, the traitors who will unlock the gates inside society and bring it down.
the only thing that surprises me is that you can read their goals, their plans, what they want, what they did, who changed sides and why, and all of that is denied by the common person in favor of some consumptive argument that its about womens rights..
its not… its about divide and conquer..
always was, and the minute our women decided to betray their own childrens future for a handful of magic beans from progressive socialists, our end was sealed.
[there is a historical reason why women were not in politics. and it has nothing to do with what the feminists and the others say]
all you have to do when reading mein kampf is to beleive it, then stop it. but since it was not believed, it was not stopped.
all you have to do when reading the feminists is to believe them…. but since we selectively beleive them, its not stopped.
Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” – Catharine A. MacKinnon
their job was to fulfill the part of the communist manifesto where families are destroyed, and women are free to be plow horses for the utopian state. (see nike employees in barracks = room of their own).
that womens labor would now be taxable was the whole point to “bring women into industry”.
after all, to these despotic greedy people who want slaves of their fellow man, the labor and money and resources that women provided their families and husbands, should go to the stae and the elite… that they waste too much on their family and husbands…
all you ahve to do is read them…
over sexualization
no fault divorce
homogenization of lower class of species
lack of resevoir of intelligence
judgmental mating replaced with indiscriminate rutting and accidental birth as arbiter
eugenics as a social good
now with health care euthanasia by administration
selling out women to tobacco and alchohol for the money for poltiical power, and using them and their gullibility and suggestibility to oppose everything that brought them to the ability to oppose it.
‘…Women’s liberation, if not the most extreme then certainly the most influential neo-Marxist movement in America, has done to the American home what communism did to the Russian economy, and most of the ruin is irreversible. By defining between men and women in terms of power and competition instead of reciprocity and cooperation, the movement tore apart the most basic and fragile contract in human society, the unit from which all other social institutions draw their strength.’
– Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse
“Feminism is the intellectual organization of gender hatred, just as Marxism was the intellectual organization of class hatred. Feminism’s business is fashioning weapons to be used against men in society, education, politics, law and divorce court. The feminist aim is to overthrow “patriarchal tyranny.” In this undertaking, the male’s civil rights count for no more than those of the bourgeoisie in Soviet Russia or the Jews in National Socialist Germany.”
– What civil rights has wrought.
By Paul Craig Roberts, July 26, 2000
“…[ M]odern feminism is a direct outgrowth of American Communism… Communists pioneered the political, economic and cultural analysis of woman´s oppression… Communists pioneered women´s studies, and advocated public daycare, birth control, abortion and even children´s rights… It is hard to escape the conclusion that feminism is Communism by another name. Having failed to peddle class war, Communism morphed into a movement dedicated to gaining power by promoting gender conflict. The “diversity” and “multicultural” movements represent feminism´s attempt to forge “allegiances” by empowering gays and “people of color.” Thus, the original CPUSA (Communist Party USA – CPUSA) trio of “race, gender and class” is very much intact but class conflict has never been a big seller. Feminists wish to destroy a Western Civilization that is dominated by white men who believe in genuine diversity (pluralism), individual liberty and equal opportunity (but not equal outcomes)… Many feminists are embarrassed to discover they are Communist dupes. They try to point out the differences between themselves and Marxists but these differences are matters of emphasis. Their embarrassment, however, is nothing compared to ours when we acknowledge that we have been subverted. They have taken over our minds. Feminists dominate the mass media and the education systems (both primary and secondary) and use these for indoctrination. They have great power in the legal system, many parts of government, and are currently subverting the military… The evidence is everywhere. The term “politically correct” originated in the Communist Party in Russia in the 1920´s. We use it everyday to refer to adherence to feminist dogma… Communism is alive and well and living under an assumed name.”
– American Communism And The Making Of Women´s Liberation.
by Henry Makow Ph.D.
“Like Marxism, feminism can explain everything from advertising to religion by following its single thread, the oppression of women.”
– Carol Iannone, “The Feminist Confusion,”
Second Thoughts: Former Radicals Look Back at the Sixties
eds. Peter Collier and David Horowitz
(Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1989), p. 149.
“How will the family unit be destroyed? … the demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare.”
– Female Liberation, by Roxanne Dunbar.
“Only when manhood is dead – and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it – only then will we know what it is to be free.
– Andrea Dworkin. The Root Cause, speech, 26 Sept. 1975
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
(published in Our Blood, ch. 9, 1976).
i could fill a thousand pages with what they write and talk about… and if one took the time to read it becfore supporting thigns one would NEVER have supported them.
The old feminism battles nature and produces hags. The new feminism supports nature and produces children, students, adults . . . citizens. And the old guard is exploding in rage because that’s all they ever did: They rode a bandwagon to the wrong party, a party whose ultimately destination is destruction. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and in the end, if you don’t recognize that liberalism scorns those it pretends to empower, then you’re likely one of them. The fury and hatred, well earned, is merely misplaced.
I haven’t read the full article yet, but early on, there’s this quote:
The second-wave feminists of the 1960s and 1970s who revived the moribund suffragette movement came of age during and after World War II,
This imagery of the history of women’s rights, while common, is utterly clueless about where the country was headed as the 20s, 30s, and 40s played out.
I suggest to you that a casual perusal of the facts about the times belies the notion that the suffragette movement — that is, the general goal towards equal rights for women — stopped or stalled in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
As time passed through the 20s and 30s, the expectation of equal rights for women in the nation grew substantially. In particular, I would suggest, for example, that you watch the 1931 Oscar winning picture Cimmaron. It isn’t a great film by modern standards, but it was original in its time and is one of the few westerns to win the Oscar for BP. It is a sprawling picture about the life of a family from the opening of the Oklahoma territory through a generation of living and prospering. If it seems cliche today, realize that other films are modeled on this one, not the other way around. Its depiction of women, blacks, and native Indians is fairly modernistic and egalitarian. And this film was made and released in 1930.
I also cite for you that an examination of movies for the next 18-odd years after Cimmaron show an increasingly egalitarian notion of women as strong, self-sufficient, and fully capable in their own right. “Rosie the Riveter” wasn’t a sudden shift for women, it was something they’d been closing in on for two decades and more.
From 1940’s His Girl Friday tp 1941’s Ball of Fire, both pre-war, one finds strong, capable women. Both Rosalind Russell and Barbara Stanwyck made careers out of these kinds of roles.
Or consider the depiction of the women in the family central to 1937’s You Can’t Take It with You. Or the female leads in just about any Capra picture of the times — From 1934’sIt Happened One Night to 1946’sIt’s a Wonderful Life — these are hardly “nervous nellies”. Older women were often less assertive, but that, too, was a likely accurate depiction of the women of the times. And Capra’s films were fairly popular for the most part — which they would not have been had not the audience been receptive to these depictions.
My personal favorite of the four Bogey-Bacall films is 1947’s Dark Passage, in which Bacall lives at home, alone, and is entirely self-sufficient.
No, the aberration was the 1950s, not the times before or after.
There was a clear and concerted effort on the part of the “powers that be” to put women back into the household. I argue this, once more, by using Hollywood as an example —
Consider 1947’s
That Way with Women vs. 1949’s Mother Is a Freshman
In TWwW, the female lead is spunky, self-assured, and is a strong-willed daughter out to protect her father (Sidney Greenstreet) from himself. Her dress and hair is “Rosalind Russell standard” — loose, flowing hair, loose skirts, and practical heels — you could see her breaking into a run if the situation warranted it.
In MIaF, only two years later, the female lead is a helpless widow who, having been left an annuity by her deceased husband, has exhausted the funds by late August… what will she do? Clearly, “she needs a man in her life”… She is given an offer of marriage by her husband’s executor, but she does turn it down (he’s somewhat of a nebbish) in order to set in motion the movies’ macguffin, which has her attending college along with her young daughter. There, she meets and is romanced by Professor Van Johnson, and (spoiler alert! ok, not really) eventually marries him, and goes back to her life in the household. Throughout it all, Loretta Young is almost the polar opposite of the female lead of TWwW and a clear precursor to 50s housewife “role model” — helpless without a man, in tight skirts and high heels and with a Kim Novak type hairstyle that you would have to spend 3 days a week at the hairdressers to keep remotely decent looking.
Only two years, and the entire “mold” of the female in US society began to radically change.
And I’d cite it to you, it was the memories and experiences of women before the 50s which really made the 1960s take place, along with the final stage of the Sexual Revolution with the legalization of contraception.
This view of feminism as a 60s thing is utterly wrong, and is self-serving of the liberal agenda.
They didn’t CAUSE it — they didn’t even DIRECT it. They just saw where it was headed, and got in front of everyone while pointing and shouting “That way!! That way!!”
:-/
WOW!
Great essays by Artfldgr and IGot Bupkis.
Thanks, gentlemen.
I think this is a simple case of envy. Palin is cute and athletic. She was a business woman, a mayor, a governor, a vice-presidential candidate, and now she is a best selling author and sought after pundit-celebrity earning millions of dollars. Plus, she has managed to do all of this and be a mother of 5.
Meanwhile, Gloria Steinem is still trying to figure out why a fish wants a bicycle.
Yeah they’re jealous. Same old same old. Women have been hard on other women forever. I’m grateful to the women’s movement, I’ve gotten to do things my grandmother and great grandmother couldn’t do. My great grandmother couldn’t even vote for a time. A lot of women really hate Palin though. Especially on the East coast. Yikes. It’s really sad they can’t celebrate her, for she is a phenom, even if they disagree with her on issues, but there you go.
As Tammy Bruce said, it’s not about women. Organized feminism is about the progressive narrative.
See the fems and the Duke lax rape hoax. They went on and on and on, howling, cursing condemning, refusing to look at evidence, blaming whole groups.
Then there was Duke student Katie Rouse, raped at a Duke fraternity house. Crickets. All of the terrible things that happen to women who are raped actually happened to this victimized sister.
Wrong narrative.
First one was rich white jocks entitled.
Second one was black sexual violence directed at white women. One is acceptable progressive narrative, the other isn’t.
So Katie Rouse is a “who?” “yawn”.
Matthew Shepard is a saint and Jesse Dirkhising may as well not have existed.
James Byrd is a martyr and Kenneth Tillery is a nobody.
If women’s issue are useful to progressives, feminists will pretend. If not, feminists won’t pay attention. If women’s issues oppose progressivism, the women involved are demonized.
Palin promotes the wrong narrative. Simple.
Yes, Palin does promote the wrong narrative. She’s successful for what the elitists on the left consider to be the wrong reasons.
I take a fairly simple view. Palin, and others of her kind, threaten the status quo. They threaten the political party hacks, they threaten the “insiders” in the corporate world, and they threaten the feminist establishment. Palin is the most dangerous, because she is the model and the trail blazer; she must be destroyed before others rally to her.
Her relationship to political and feminist professionals is analogous to Clarence Thomas and the racial professionals. If she can make it despite them, as did Thomas, then who needs ’em?
Geez, Art, that’s gotta be the longest “no comment” in the history of the internet. 😉
gotbupkis @5:07 . . .
Great post! You understand what girls in the 1950s faced–total contempt! We were trained to be underlings. The things my parents told me still make me angry–very very negative messages about achieving my dreams.
I’ll never forget those Kim Novak movies. She was stuffed into girdles and hairsprayed within an inch of her life. Check out the “classic” Vertigo. My daughter and I watched it together and both said “euw.” Remember the Doris Day movies? Very irritating and phony. It turns out she was much better singer than one would ever guess from her movies. She was just pretending to be a dope.
The women’s movement of the late 1960s/early 1970s was NOT about marxism or man-hating. The MSM picked out the crazies and made them famous. They looked for craziness just like they do now among tea partiers. Believe me, it’s the same phenomenon.
Some women are more career-oriented than others. Despite artfuldodger’s opinions, not all of us are motivated to spend our lives cooking, cleaning the oven, or hunting dust bunnies. I hire people to do those jobs. Betty Friedan may have been a marxist, but her book “The Feminine Mystique” was accurate.
One of the first movies I loved was Black Beauty, with Elizabeth Taylor. What was the message in that? You can’t be a winner if you’re a girl. You can’t race horses if you’re a girl. A pitiful message for young girls.
I love Sarah Palin. For me, she’s the ideal woman. I wish I had her energy and talents.
She would probably be a much better President than many who have already served. Tell me, what was so great about John Kennedy? What were his qualifications. His famous book was ghostwritten. He was just a run of the mill nobody who got us into big trouble. Thankfully, Khrushchev was a grown-up.
Scrolling down after Igot bupkis”s post . . .
Gloria Steinem was one of those “media spokeswomen.” She was created by the media. She was the Paris Hilton of the women’s movement.
There were a few more of those nobodies–Germaine Greer was another. I’ve forgotten all those marxist manhaters now–Shulamit somebody. Robin somebody. The MSM loved them. They probably all hate Sarah Palin because she goes fishing and rides an ATV.
> If women’s issue are useful to progressives, feminists will pretend. If not, feminists won’t pay attention.
Indeed. As was more than openly seen when NOW, who pushed so hard for “sexual harassment legislation”, had not a single thing to say when their progressive PotUS, who pushed the BS legislation through, was himself rather blatantly obviously guilty of sexual harassment.
No, not of Monica. She got “paid” real well in various job options and perks for her activities.
No, the women who were sexually harassed were the ones who DIDN’T seek a set of Presidential Kneepads, and who DIDN’T get cushy job offers at the Pentagon and elsewhere.
They are the ones who basically got told, “See, ladies, give the powerful man a hummer, and you can get a great deal of reward for it… Any volunteers?”
BTW, for someone who wants to grasp that there are differences between men and women, and one of the chief lies pushed by Feminism is that “men oppress women”, I do strongly recommend you seek out the works of Dr. Warren Farrell. Start with The Myth of Male Power and branch out from there. Dr. Farrell is a PhD Psychologist who is a former director for the NYC NOW organization, a position he was elected to a record three times for a male.
From the wiki:
As the book’s title implies, The Myth of Male Power challenged the belief that men had the power–in part by challenging the definition of power. Farrell defined power as “control over one’s life.” He wrote that, “In the past, neither sex had power; both sexes has roles: women’s role was raise children; men’s role was raise money.
Some quotes from the book:
“[Feminism has] focused on the fact that women as a group earned less — without focusing on any of the reasons why women earned less, [such as:] full-time working men work an average of 9 hours per week more than full-time working women; men are more willing to relocate to undesirable locations, to work the less desirable hours, and to work the more hazardous jobs.”
“[The question men need to ask, is:] ‘Is earning money that someone else spends really power?'”
“The political genius of the feminist movement was its sense that it could appeal to all women only by emphasizing expansion of rights and opportunities and avoiding expansion of responsibilities. Had the National Organization for Women fought to register 18 year old girls for the draft, it might have lost members. Had feminism emphasized women’s responsibilities for taking sexual initiatives, or paying for men’s dinners, or choosing careers they liked less in order to support adult men better, its impact owuld have been more egalitarian but less politically successful.”
“Essentially, women’s liberation and men’s mid-life crises were the same search for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, and love. But while women’s liberation was thought of as promoting identity, men’s mid-life crises were thought of as identity crises. Women’s liberation was called insight, self-discovery, and self-improvement, akin to maturity. Men’s mid-life crises were discounted as irresponsibility, self-gratification, and selfishness, akin to immaturity. Women’s crises got sympathy, men’s crises got a bad rap.”
“The U.S. Census Bureau found that as early as 1960, never-married women over 45 earned more in the workplace than never-married men over 45.”
“What Feminism has contributed to women’s options must be supported. But when Feminists suggest that God might be a She without [ever considering] that the Devil might also be female, they must be opposed.”
“While we acknowledged that glass ceilings that kept women out of the top, we [have] ignored the glass floors that kept [them out of the bottom]. Thus the ‘Jobs Rated Almanac’ reveals that the majority of the 25 worst jobs ‘happen to be’ male dominated.”
I got Bupkis . . .
Warren Ferrell is a good guy. He understands the “Big Idea.”
The “Big Idea” of real feminism, not “Gloria Steinem fake no-children feminism” is that we should stop forcing people to fit into stupid categories.
In the women’s movement that I worked for, we fought against “sex-role stereotyping.” Therefore, I can, without shame, enjoy science-fiction (a “male” genre), and my husband, without shame, can collect cookbooks (a “female” genre). Lucky for me, I found the right man.
As far as I’m concerned, us “real feminists” won, because today no one questions the fact that many men like cooking and many women like sports. In the 1950s-1970s, these were radical concepts!
Promethea,
My 50s-70s memories are a bit different or maybe I just had a weird family. We were far closer to the I got Bupkis description of the 30s and 40s, perhaps because we were pretty poor and had strong rural ties. The 50s Hollywood glamour woman was on another planet. Our women and men pretty much fell into the standard roles, but moved outside them whenever they wanted. The men in our family always cooked. When I moved to Philly post college and had my first apartment, I requested a toolbox and tools for Christmas. I still have it. I remember a Liz Taylor movie in which she was a new bride and didn’t know how to boil water. She may have looked good, but I thought she was too stupid for words.
I initially supported feminist goals but turned away when the manhaters started to assume power. How could I hate the dad who bought me that toolbox?
The phenomenon of Feminista Palin-haters has always intrigued—and amused me—me (in a head-shaking kind of way).
Sure, disagree with her views. It’s a free country (still). But hate her? Revile her? Despise her? Sheesh.
OK, so maybe she doesn’t dress as well as Michelle…. and that hairstyle….and those shoes…. etc., etc…..
Certainly—and this is probably the key—she doesn’t behave like she’s supposed to behave; and she doesn’t say what she’s supposed to be saying.
Could it be (shock, horror), that at the end of the day, feministas are merely snobs with an agenda?.
In a nutshell: I think she makes them feel really inadequate.
(Heck, she makes me feel inadequate….)
Good posts-
good points-
but it’s all the sound that her voice makes.
Nails on a chalkboard to them.
Promethea wrote, She would probably be a much better President than many who have already served.
AGREED !
Better ideas.
More experience.
Has done more in her life in the private sector and as an executive than half the presidents.
—“We support the institutionalization of the on-going shift of authority to the female sex as males become accustomed and increasingly eager to cover a secondary, support role, relying on female guidance. We promote open debate of this transition so that its effects can be properly absorbed by society and its benefits not held back by outdated legislature.
To this end, as soon as it becomes financially possible we plan to begin donating a part of our revenues to feminist organizations who aggressively promote specific, strategic policy changes.”
-DreamLover Labs makers of the Dreamlover 2000 male torture device
“The state is responsible for the upbringing of children” “The woman who takes up the struggle for the liberation of the working class must learn to understand that there is no more room for the old proprietary attitude which says: “These are my children, I owe them all my maternal solicitude and affection; those are your children, they are no concern of mine and I don’t care if they go hungry and cold — I have no time for other children.” The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.”
-Alexandra Kollontai -Komunistka, No. 2, 1920, and in English in The Worker, 1920