That was the cry when Sarah Palin appeared at a campaign stop in Philadelphia. “Let’s stone her, old school!” yelled a man in the crowd.
Maybe that’s next.
Over at The New Agenda, Amy Siskind raises the spectre of Kitty Genovese and asks, “Are Democratic women the new bystanders?”
What started as “MILF” has taken a slippery slope right into a cesspool. The next noxious installment was a Huffington Post story titled “Sarah Palin Naked”, in which the author writes: “Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to ‘first wipe off Palin’s tranny makeup.’ I married well)”. The article itself is repulsive; but the comments posted on the article were mostly men and women cheering this notion on—and none in the Democratic Party spoke out to condemn this careful and deliberate fantasy of Palin’s degradation.
Unchecked, the misogyny feast has intensified. Over this past weekend, Senator Obama’s supporters proudly wore shirts printed in giant neon green letters that said, “Sarah Palin is a Cunt”. One female supporter was so proud of this t-shirt that she posted a picture of it on Senator Obama’s website (it was quickly taken down, however). Not to be outdone, the Huffington Post ran a story on Monday titled: “’Nailin’ Paylin’ Photos: Pictures from the Set of The Palin Inspired Porn”. Did the Democratic women who frequent this website speak out about HuffPo’s promotion of this revolting attack? No.
As if the porn weren’t insult enough, yesterday a 25 year-old rapper posted a Youtube video (now removed from YouTube, but still available here) in which he raps about raping Sarah Palin, Barbara Bush, and Tipper Gore, amongst others. The reaction this time: deafening silence. As Dr. Lynette Long comments: “It saddens me that not only are women not outraged by this video but participate in this. Again I feel frustrated by the silence that envelopes the women’s groups that are supposed to protect all women not just Democratic women.”
Women of the Democratic Party, beware. Will you sit at the sidelines because she doesn’t agree with you on policy? Will you excuse your silence because Governor Palin does not share your political beliefs? What are you teaching your daughters? What are you teaching your granddaughters? Are you telling them that it’s okay for a woman to be vilified? That it’s okay for a woman to be degraded, belittled and raped in prose? And you will cheer this on, because she’s not your candidate, or sit on the sidelines, because of some notion of solidarity? Will you let the murderer return to the scene again and again before you finally call the police and end the attack?
The answer, in a word, is yes. Yes, women will stand by. They’ll watch Sarah Palin be stoned. They’ll even throw rocks themselves.
That’s how woman-hating societies work, and lord knows, if we’ve learned anything this election season, it’s that we still live in one. It’s tempting to say Barack Obama’s campaign has set women back by 30 years, but I suppose all that’s really happened is that the mask has been ripped away.
Patriarchal domination of women is at least 50% brainwashing, as any feminist who knows her chops will tell you. It’s not enough to simply create laws limiting women’s rights and freedoms; you have to get inside their heads. Make them believe the whole patriarchal line about good women and bad women. Encourage them to identify with the “good” women — the ones who follow the patriarchy-approved rules — and give them pats on the head when they obey. Convince them that “bad” women deserve to be raped/beaten/stoned because, after all, those dangerous “bad” women didn’t play by the rules. Above all, don’t ever let them figure out that the whole goddamn thing is a system designed to keep all women under the boot.
If you get it right, you can take the legal restrictions away and women will still carry on as before, eagerly trying to be “good” girls to earn those pats on the head, and just as eagerly throwing stones at the “bad” women. Just like right now, right here in the United States.
The American women who are acquiescing in the virtual stoning of Sarah Palin are obeying the same sick dynamic that animates every patriarchal society on earth. It’s why women in tribal hellholes nod approvingly when their menfolk stone the local adulterer. It’s why women cheer when other women, uppity women, are publicly shamed and abused. It’s why women at sites like Jezebel spend most of their energy vilifying other women as sluts, skanks, bitches, cum-dumpsters, whores, and whatever other names they’ve borrowed from the masculine vocabulary.
The absolutely crucial thing in making this nightmare work is the strong mental demarcation that each woman must maintain between “us” — herself and other “good” women — and “them”: the “bad” women, the sluts and bitches. For some women, the only “good” woman is herself. Women like this nurture a belief in personal exceptionalism: that they themselves are somehow exempt from the general misogyny that pervades society. This is the “honorary man” syndrome. “I’m not like those other women! I’m special! Men like ME! They respect ME!”
The other day Sam posted a comment about how this dynamic works in pornography, but it’s the same dynamic that undergirds all patriarchal degradation of women:
Right now where I’m at with it is there’s a social caste called Women which individual women separate themselves from psychologically. They see what men think of women and few want to believe men think the same about them. My adolescence was spent mistakenly believing I was the exception to the rule, but this did not mean I able to identify the rule as “Women are stupid whores who get what they deserve” until later.
I’ve been calling the phenomena “The AnonyWhore Principle” the past few weeks. By that I mean the psychological splitting that occurs when individual women see the anonymous women in pornography abused, belittled or treated inhumanely by men but reassure themselves they are not the target of the misogyny, that the misogyny begins and ends with the anonywhore only and is no reflection of what men think of her existence as a woman.
When men put pictures of twenty anonymous women on a website titled “Dumb Cum Dumpster Whores” it is ignored by women and feminists as just another day in the life o’ web porn, just the way porn is so no point in calling attention to it. Replace those twenty fake names (there is no woman really named Yeasty McTwat) with the names of twenty non-anonymous women- say Sarah Palin or Jade Raymond or Jessica Valenti - and suddenly it’s not just another day in pornville but a newsworthy Issue, a terrible sexist attack that demands redress. Pornographic sexism directed at game producer Jade Raymond is considered a wholly different beast than sexism directed at dumb cum dumpster whore Jade no-last-name.
The recent creation of the term “revenge porn” is meant to distinguish pornography in which men seek to ‘get revenge on’ one woman individually as opposed to regular pornography in which men use anonywhores to ‘get revenge on’ women as a social class. It’s not you to most women until it’s their first and last names explicitly said.
I transplanted from third wave to second wave when it finally sunk into my head that the way men treated anonywhores in pornography was really disgust and contempt aimed at femininity, and as a woman I am a bodily form of the generic femaleness men get off on reviling as weak, wet, and inferior.
What Sam is talking about is nothing less than the linchpin of patriarchy. As long as women cannot see that there is a class “woman,” and that when men hate women it really means they hate women, all women, not just some other women whose names you don’t know or some stupid bitch in a porn video, but all women — as long as women cannot or will not see that, then patriarchy is safe.
“‘Sarah Palin is a Cunt’ (just like you and me)” is the title of a post by Dawn C. over at The New Agenda. There’s a lesson in that title. A very simple lesson — but one that still eludes us.
The other day I was talking to a young woman, a self-described feminist, who could not understand why defending Sarah Palin from sexist attacks was a feminist act. She really, truly could not understand that. Her argument was that because Sarah Palin is a Republican (a “bad” woman), the correct feminist response is to use any means necessary to destroy her. Why not stone the bitch? Why not call her a cunt? Why not make jokes about raping her? She’s one of those bad women! Bad!
As if that weren’t derangement enough, when I pointed out to the young woman that none of what she’d heard about Sarah Palin was true — and it was these lies that she was using as her justification for why Palin needed to be stoned/raped/destroyed — she became even more angry. Enraged, actually. Instead of being relieved to learn that Sarah Palin wasn’t quite the foam-dripping monster she’d been made out to be, the woman was furious. How dare I introduce the truth? How dare I?
She then accused me of betraying feminism.
You know, when people start telling me that “true” feminism requires some godawful nightmare of woman-bashing, I know the wheels are off. The very concept of feminism — the very meaning of the word — has been corrupted, degraded, stolen from us. I haven’t seen a boondoggle like this since patriarchy persuaded a generation of naifs that Hustler magazine represented pro-feminist empowerment.
Maybe when all is said and done, 2008 will turn out to be the final flourish of the anti-feminist backlash that’s been rumbling through our culture for 30 years. Perhaps Hillary Clinton’s near-miss for the Presidency unleashed the beast. Maybe this is its last gasp.
I hope it is. I hope we haven’t lost completely. I hope we can start feminism all over again.
I hope.
Posted by Violet in Election 2008, Feminist Theory, Recommended, Sarah Palin, Second Wave Squared
