Ann! Ann! LOUDER!!! Ann! ; )
(Great song choice)

she used to edit Ms. magazine?????? WTF?!?!?!?!?

Title IV?

Aw, and I guess Elaine didn't see on this "prominent blog" just today that Palin doesn't identify herself as a feminist. Maybe just she didn't see it before she put up that article, and will publish a retraction . . . ha.

Well now seems like the mystery is solved on why she is the former editor at Ms. Magazine!

the strategy is obvious,
greatly summarize what a feminist writer said, without providing any of the examples that she gave, then argue why the simplified statement is wrong, then don't even provide a source so nobody can check and see her whole argument.

I think making sure that everyone knows who the writer is (Ann Friedman!!!) so that they go and actually read her argument is an awesome way to debunk that article.

ann friedman!!

Why does this post make me think of the "Ending Relational Aggression Among Girls" post? Hmm...

I agree with MLE, but I proffer it is even deeper than that. I think she doesn't want to bring attention to this site, period. Think about it---this is a place where all of the anti-feminist drivel gets debunked in a concise, researched, and highly readable format.

The first time I stumbled across this site, I was stuck here for over five hours. It was like discovering a new primary color! : ) Feministing is dangerous, and by dangerous I mean truly enlightening.

She is not a right-wing nut, and all the rest of the Internet drivel—the book banning at the Library, the rape kits decision – is nonsense. I digress."

....Ann, is she lying? Why would the rape kits thing (or at least her oblivious and her fitting of the Public Safety Commissioner) be "nonsense"?

Who is lying here, and if its the GOP, how dare jey keep doing this shit--saying, "You ugly feminazis are just JEALOUS, she SO supports women!!!"...based on what? The fact that she has access to the workplace AND can raise a family?

Why do they keep saying this stuff when they won't (and can't) back up such claims? They know she's going to linger after this election....so they're starting the "up is down, down is up, she has the right anatomy so women should fall for her" lies now?

When did Kim Gandy say that Sarah Palin wasn't a woman? Oh, yeah. I think the exchange went something like this:

Stephen Colbert: Are you saying that Sarah Palin is not a woman? Because if you're saying that, that would be a bombshell that would get me great ratings. Are you saying that Sarah Palin has got some junk downtown?
Kim Gandy: [sigh]
SC: Not willing to say it, but if you actually think Sarah Palin is a man, just say you believe women should have equal rights.
KG: I believe women should have equal rights.

Good job, Elaine.

Ann Friedman!

I'm a Democrat, but I've worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin's nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women's rights.

Lafferty apparently wants to be the Patrick Moore of feminism.

The one thing that seemed to attract women to Palin most is she claims to be a special needs advocate,..something that does seem noble. But on the McCain Palin site there is no information on what they well actually DO for families of special needs children, and on Friday Palin denounced fruit fly research, which has helped scientists understand autism better! WTF!!?

Pathetic. Below is the rather lengthy comment I left. Thought I'd reprint it here because it's bound to get lost in a sea of 'Thanks for being fair to Sarah, I hate liberal hypocrites'-type comments:
-----
First of all, I have seen tons of feminist blogging and online discussion EQUALLY outraged at the sexist treatment of Palin as of Clinton. In fact, the blog you refer to in the paragraph that follows has a regular feature called 'Palin Sexism Watch'. It's unfair to mislead your readers by suggesting that most ("many of those - not all") feminists are NOT concerned about sexism across the board, despite how they feel about the target of sexist remarks, and that instead they somehow cherry-pick instances to suit them. This is an irresponsible misrepresentation designed to inflame.

Second, you completely made a strawman out of the blogger's argument about Palins 'empty rhetoric'. You've made up your own version of what she wrote instead of accurately, responsibly conveying what was said. You then argue against this strawman you created, and therefore set yourself up for an easy, low-resistance win.

Further, the entire article makes a strawman out of why most feminists are anti-Palin. It is not just because of the abortion issue. It is certainly not that "she looks and sounds different" (??) Reread some of these sources you casually refer to, minus the filter that makes you see only what you want.

I also find it manipulative to dismiss well-argued discussions as 'Internet drivel'. Internet drivel? That's a cheap way to make it sound like anything online is just gossip and hearsay. How can someone say this in the middle of an online-published article?

Also manipulative and deliberately inflammatory is pitting feminists against 'real' women - those you say will 'get' Palin's supposed feminism - instead of representing feminists as being concerned with the rights and needs of all women. Not to mention conveniently drumming up anti-intellectual sentiment to try to get people on board with your weakly argued theory. It's also offensive to the broad range of women out there who don't support Palin and don't see her as being good for women's rights to suggest all 'regular'' women will - and by implication should - believe Palin is a feminist.

This is a lazy, self-serving article. Lazy in that you didn't do any real research into feminists' position on Palin - you substituted it for what you believe they think, and want to believe they think based on unfair stereotypes. Lazy in that anything you did read, you don't seem to have finished or absorbed. You also don't do the material you cite justice by rebutting it at its own level of discourse, instead re-characterising it as something to fit your arguments. Self-serving in that you get to feel big and above all these women you look down on so much. Funny that your article is about that and you are doing it on a grand scale.

Finally whatever you personally think of Palin, if you support and admire her*, it is utterly reprehensible to decide that other women are unintelligent and underinformed in their decision not to, and to essentially question their right to criticise her. I'm sure you'd claim you don't question that right - just the way they supposedly do it. But the tone of this article does suggest questioning that very right. Feminist Palin critiques are not treated with respect when you recklessly mischaracterise them, reducing every intelligent piece of discourse to some sort of knee-jerk, bitter prejudice. This article in essence says 'you should shut up', and the mischaracterisation is a tactic that helps ensure others reading this agree. This therefore becomes a forceful way to call for shutting feminist critics up.

Palin is a potential leader, not just someone who is randomly a public figure that is suffering unfair scrutiny. She NEEDS, like all other candidates, to be scrutinised. She does not come up well after doing so. It doesn't matter if you "believe" she's a passionate supporter of women's rights, as you say, if her record shows quite the opposite.
-----

*(Minor) note: I meant 'whether or not' rather than 'if'- I realise reading that back it doesn't totally make sense.

Yey orangesoda, great comment! Will be interesting to see if she responds.

For me, the question of whether she is feminist or not is not just solved by looking at her record on women's rights. Let's imagine for a second she had always supported and voted for pro-women stuff and her record was pretty good on that. But then you look at her record on gay rights, class, race, sex-education and it's shit. I wouldn't automatically say that disqualifies her as being a feminist, but it comes pretty damn close.

Reportedly when she was with Ms., she wasn't getting along with The Feminist Majority Foundation (they own Ms.) at all. Gee ... what a surprise.

Yey orangesoda, great comment! Will be interesting to see if she responds.

For me, the question of whether she is feminist or not is not just solved by looking at her record on women's rights. Let's imagine for a second she had always supported and voted for pro-women stuff and her record was pretty good on that. But then you look at her record on gay rights, class, race, sex-education and it's shit. I wouldn't automatically say that disqualifies her as being a feminist, but it comes pretty damn close.

It's nice that Lafferty claims that Palin "personally believes in womens' issues". Too bad that doesn't mean a damn thing unless she publicly shows it.

Thanks, aideen! I agree that her record on all the issues you mention speaks volumes about her supposed feminism.

BTW, I particularly dislike this line from the article: "you are not a feminist until we say you are." It makes feminism sound like some mean high school clique with arbitrary rules for joining. Palin is seen as cruelly rejected, rather than unfairly claiming (or it being claimed for her) a 'label' she does not fit at all.

The contention is that feminists use the definition self-servingly. Yet the argument of a self-serving definition is far more applicable to Palin's own (initial) assertion that she is a feminist, when her actions and beliefs are consistently anti-feminist. Or now that she has rejected the label, it's applicable to those continuing to attach it to her with this ridiculous 'screw you, ugly bitter feminists who don't like sexy working moms!' attempt at 'reclaiming' feminism.

Sarah Palin herself does not describe herself as a feminist. She said she doesn't like to "label herself". How can a person be characterized as a feminist if their record clearly shows that they hold anti-feminist views, and they cannot even SAY that they are a feminist.

If a woman doesn't have the ovaries to proudly declare herself a feminist, she is absolutely not worthy of the title.

Jessica's post about Elaine Lafferty's comments made me think back to a comment that Geraldine Ferraro made:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Excuse me, but it's not true that if he was a woman of any color that he would've not been in this position. If he was a white woman, he very well could have been in this position, like Hillary Clinton was. Carol Mosely Braun, a black female Congresswoman from Michigan, ran twice to be the Democratic nominee for President. How many people know of her? How much press did she get? If we see race in Barrack Obama, why don't we see race in Hillary Clinton?

It's not uncommon for white feminists to often not understand the intersection of race/gender/class that exists for minority women. I remember being in an Equal Rights Amendment meeting once, where the ERA proponent was a white woman, and an ERA critic was a young black woman. The critique of ERA by some feminists, by the way, is that it doesn't go far enough, not that it's not needed. At one point in the discussion, the ERA proponent frustatedly told her critic, "You are a woman, first." I commented that for minority women of any kind, there's no such thing as "first." You are either a black woman, immigrant woman, lesbian woman, etc., just like Hillary Clinton is a white woman.

Elaine Lafferty thinks that the Democrats take women's vote for granted. I admit I felt a little bitter when Obama for the nomination over Clinton, but Lafferty's comment makes me think, don't white feminists also take minority feminists' votes for granted?

Will you look into the reports that Obama pays the women on his staff 83 cents on the dollar?

I actually think Friedman makes some decent points, particularly in regards to (even if she doesn't come out and say this) the fact that Palin's Christian Right-ness inhibits her from taking on some of the more 'progressive' stances on feminist issues like abortion and gay rights. The problem I see with many (but not all) attacks on Palin's virulent "anti-feminist" stances is they seem to gloss over these affiliations. Personally, I think she's a feminist - not in the sense that she's the answer for female oppression since the beginning of civilization, but hardly the feminist doppelganger that many would like to espouse of her. (Or maybe "feminism without feminist?")

@ lifeethics - really? That's disappointing...

Jessica, by the way, the Destiny's Child bit was a nice touch, I didn't get it at first and then when I read the rest of the post I nearly wet myself laughing!

Godd looking out on this one Jess

Lifeethics: It's true that if you simply add up the salaries of men and women in Obama's Senate office and average them, the women make less. But that's a ridiculous way to compare things, and not what equal pay advocates are advocating for - they want women to be paid the same for the same jobs. And if you do an apples-to-apples comparison of Obama's female employees, the disparity disappears.

@lifeethics: That was debunked a while ago.

I'm so depressed. I have a very good friend who is a Republican (woman) and yet I see so little in the media that lets me even disagree respectfully with their party.

Anyway, this ex-ms magazine editor seems to be a paid hack now.

The comment about Kim Gandy is a bizarre slander. It's so stupid. Thanks Unfunny for the context, watch the video for yourselves. Kim Gandy DID NOT SAY Palin wasn't a woman.

Why would Elaine Lafferty even make such a transparent lie? It's all about lying now. We know that these stories go out and get passed around and few have the time to resolve them. The election is in a matter of days.

But really Elaine Lafferty presumably has no non-Republican future ahead of her and to pyschoanalyze for a moment I can only assume she truly hates NOW.

If a woman is not pro-choice, it is very difficult for me to see how she supports women's rights. Is the right to personal autonomy and bodily integrity not the most basic human right there is?

By the by, there are plenty of Christians who are sincere in their religious beliefs and also not anti-choice.

Additionally, I think she means Title IX, not Title IV, but then why would such a ardent feminist bother to make sure that designation was correct? The book banning issue and charging victims for their rape kits were not nonsense, unless that's just a way the writer likes to label facts that cause her cognitive dissonace.

This writer, who I won't name, can declare Sarah Palin "smart" and a "feminist" all she wants, that doesn't make Sarah Palin a "smart feminist," nor does it mean the majority of people who heard that description applied to Sarah Palin wouldn't do a spit-take.

"If a woman is not pro-choice, it is very difficult for me to see how she supports women's rights."

Considering the conflation of moral, religious, and scientific ideas that center around abortion, I'd have to disagree. It doesn't matter that its a matter of basic human rights: countless counterexamples to that logic is that the fetus has a right to "live" of its own, too. I'm not saying I agree with said logic, but, if you ask me, it's a bit disingenuous to say that somebody who is pro-life will never be a feminist. Seems a bit reductive, really.

Are you kidding?

@Eidola: I would have to say that anyone who calls herself a pro-life feminist hasn't fully considered the many ways that anti-choice policies hurt and constrain women.