Whenever women in a patriarchal society buck male opinion, there’s hell to pay and they know it. Women in America really went out on a limb this year by backing Hillary in the face of withering derision from men (and from young women attempting to curry favor with men, consciously or not). Now they’re making amends by piling on Palin.
Ridiculing Sarah Palin as a moron — which she clearly is not — is de rigueur for everybody now in the Obama camp. It’s their preferred sport. It’s true that Palin is verbally awkward in interviews, but then, Obama himself is a man whose unscripted remarks are so confused they defy belief. A teleprompter-deprived Obama thinks there are 57 states in the Union, believes Oregon is in the Great Lakes region, doesn’t know which states border his own state of Illinois, and has no idea which Senate committees he’s on.
But still: people always make fun of their political opponents, and they’re rarely fair about it. What interests me about the Palin attacks is their vigor. To a large extent, it’s a continuation of the misogyny that is such an integral part of the Obama movement: from the campaign itself, from the media collaborators, from the male supporters, from the self-loathing young female supporters.
The new ingredient is those women who had the temerity earlier this year to sort-of admire Hillary and who are now desperately eager to get back in the good graces of the patriarchy. It helps that Sarah Palin is not the brilliant, mature stateswoman that Hillary is, but just saying that isn’t enough. No, Palin has to be ridiculed as a moron, a half-wit, a looney-tune, a mental toddler. Women vie to demonstrate the fullness and depth of their rejection of the cootie-encrusted bitch. Of course the patriarchy-enabling aspect of it is unconscious, as it usually is. This stuff is ingrained in us from birth.
I think we need to start feminism all over again.
Posted by Violet in Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin
