And, while I sympathize with these viewpoints - I, myself, have been a feminist with the view that there is no such thing as feminism that denies women reproductive freedom - I have to pause.
Who the hell is the feminist identity police? Who gets to say who is in and who is out? Where is that line drawn?
Because there have been feminists doing and writing things that I find abhorrent since the dawn of the term feminist. Lets not forget our own history here - this is the movement that has had various factions or members:
- Kick lesbians out of consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s because of bad PR and the "Lavender Menace"
- Abandoned voting rights for American women of color during US and UK suffrage
- Punished and loudly proclaimed that femmes and butches were not welcome in the movement
- Accused trans women of being "psuedo-women" who violated women's bodies in their transition
- Completely ignored a horrifying history of forced sterilization on women of color
- Ostracized mothers and parents and told them that their children were not welcome
- Condemned sex workers and working class women surviving peripherally through the sex trades
- Took their "knowledgable Western feminist" ideals to other countries and denied women their own voices
And this is a partial list. Want me to go on? Half of these things have happened with prominent feminist figures in the popular media and blogs in the last year. I don't get to distance myself from the likes of Mary Daly's horrifying transphobia or the Lavender Menace of the 1970s, no matter that I find them as appalling as anything (yes, anything) that Sarah Palin has said.
Western feminism has a load of problems, all versions of it. Although I identify as a queer radical feminist with strong postmodern socialist leanings, that doesn't mean shit to the average person. The distinction between me and all of the people I just described is meaningless to most people and, although I disagree deeply with what they say, they are feminists. Feminists with bad politics? Certainly. Bigoted feminists? Absolutely.
But, in some ways, I'm with RMJ's post, at least in part: Sarah Palin is a feminist, actually - because she works against women. I'm not claiming that it's uniformly true, but to condemn her simply because she has the sins of our foreparents (and, frankly, an amazing number of our contemporaries) and because she is a conservative is to erase the deeply-problematic history behind an identity that means a lot to me.
I don't like that Sarah Palin is a feminist. But, then again, I don't like that a significant number of prominent bloggers are feminists. That doesn't mean they aren't, just that I wish that we could more clearly delineate a movement that they wouldn't want to spread their awfulness through.
But we haven't. And to ignore that is to put our heads in the sand, never to fix the problems.
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I love where you're coming from with this post. I do think, though, that Sarah Palin is not a feminist. This isn't due to beliefs that she may hold that are counterintuitive to feminism or problematic or even bigoted. As you say, I can't think of a single feminist, including myself, that doesn't hold problematic or contradictory beliefs and opinions.
The reason I don't think she's a feminist isn't because of what she does believe, but rather because of what she doesn't. I cannot think of a single piece of feminist theory or ideology--casual or ivory tower--that she purports to hold. Even the notion of women working outside of the home is not something she thinks Other Women should do, but rather something she gets to do as a special exception because God happens to like her more.
Even when you get down to the very minimum foundation of necessitates feminism as an organized system of thought, she fails. Just the notion of "women don't deserve to be hurt" with no more complexity than that, and she really can't agree. She's co-opting the word because that's a long standing strategy of the right.
Saying she isn't a feminist because she has some fucked up beliefs ignores the history (and nowstory, really) of fucked-up-belief-ness in feminism. That's a reality we need to deal with, and I love your post for that.
But saying she is a feminist simply because she identifies as one as RMJ did ignores the reality that people like to steal other people's identities. I am not a Buddhist simply because I decide one day to identify as one, even if I hold much of their philosophy to be valuable. I'm certainly not a Buddhist if I hold no Buddhist values, beliefs, or philosophical structure as my own. The only reason I would even have a desire to wear such a label when I have not one thing in common with every other member of that group is because I have an agenda--likely a malicious one.
She wants to twist the meaning of the word. I think it's important not to let her while still recognizing everything you talked about regarding what parts of her we can see in us that we should take a closer look at.
also: I MISS YOUR BRAIN
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