OMG! I have a vagina, too!!1
When I used to ride the bus to school, I would pass by a billboard that alternated between crazy, gun-totin’ Libertarian political bullshit and advertisements for the crazy, gun-totin’ Libertarian’s sign-painting business. During the 2006 election, there was a high-profile election going on between a widely-hated black Republican who was well-known for being corrupt and a white Democrat who didn’t have near as many strikes against him. During this time, the billboard basically said that blacks who didn’t vote for the black candidate just because his politics disproportionately hurt black people were traitors to the race, except that it was a little more verbose and a few n-bombs were dropped in the process.
I’m reminded of these by-gone days because as I was logging in to Word Press, I saw this little gem from another blog that appears to douchey to bother to link to:
“If you are a feminist, womanist, or a liberal/progressive who thinks women should cast their votes based solely or primarily on ‘woman’s issues’ then you cannot rightfully criticize any woman who casts her vote in order to help a woman break the glass ceiling and become the first female Vice President.”
Yeah, I can criticize a woman for voting McCain just because Sarah Palin has a vagina; I can criticize her because it’s fucking stupid. Just because one woman manages to succeed doesn’t spell improvements for other women, especially if that woman is an appeaser like Sarah Palin. And it’s not like being picked for VP in a ploy to get the mythical party-traitor Clinton supporters is some kind of great leap forward for womankind. Palin wasn’t picked because of anything she did, she was picked because Republicans think women are too stupid to actually consider the issues when we vote. Voting McCain just because Palin is on the ticket plays into the negative stereotype that we vote based on which candidate is better looking or a woman or has a better name rather rather than which candidate actually seems like they’ll act on the issues we care about. And VP? The VP doesn’t do shit. I mean, yeah, when you have a candidate like McCain, who’s over 70 and has a medical record to rival the length of War and Peace, it does up the chances that Palin would have to take the presidential spot, but that only makes voting McCain because of her a worse choice. How lame would it be to have her as our first female president, and only because some old man died?
So, to review: voting for an anti-black black guy just because he’s black? Stupid. Voting for an anti-woman presidential candidate just because he picked an equally anti-woman VP? Also stupid.
Filed under: feminism, politics | 5 Comments
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Exactly. I am so sick of hearing about this supposedly huge number of women who are going to vote against their interests because they’re mad that Clinton didn’t win the primary. Really? Liberal women are going to vote for an anti-abortion psycho because she has a vagina too? Riiiight.
I will punch any woman who votes for McCain because Palin is a woman directly in the vagina. Seriously, bring it on.
I can’t help but feel as if any woman who would vote for Sarah Palin (and McCain) after voting for Hillary Clinton in the primaries has almost no idea about any of the issues and is truly just voting because they want to vote for a woman. I don’t personally know of any of these phantom women; I don’t know if the women the media (and my friends in bars) keep finding who say they’ll vote for McCain after voting for Hillary are going to do an about face to the slap in the face Sarah Palin embodies. I certainly hope so, because as quaint an idea of “vags unite!” is, I think Gloria Steinem said in her LA Times article:
“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.”
Aside from making me want pie (and I also love that her metaphor for women who vote for McCain is “someone stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs”), I think she’s entirely correct, and it really depresses me that this is some crazy-new thought instead of being the PREVALENT thought, and that blogs like the one highlighted above are still appearing as conventional wisdom.
Rachelle – Ha!
petpluto – The idea that Palin getting into office would be a step forward for women is kind of like the idea that Jenna Jameson is a feminist because she produces porn now. So instead of sucking dicks for money, she now makes money off of other women doing so. Sounds feminist to me, har har.