ON SEXISM
Most every time I’m offended, for-real offended, to my core, like white people get, it’s usually over something silly. I mean the why-you-do-that-to-yourself silly that only the tactless, artless, and unaware can muster. I’m talking Sarah Palin silly. Despite her and her campaign’s written and spoken claims to the contrary, like many white women, she is the epitome of everything feminism was created to remedy.
So who’s to blame? My money’s on the machinations of masculinity. Some millennia ago, an undoubtedly insecure and probably cuckolded bunch of dudes decided the white woman’s mind was too tough to crack. Rather than figure them out, this group simply labeled white women as ethereal beings. To wit, you find many white women today in various states of destitution. They are selfless to the point of indefensibility, vain to the point of wretchedness, and decidedly devoid of creative thought (read: overly-deferential to the whims of the nearest man). Were it not for the thousands of years of pedestal-raising, bar-lowering, pandering dotage, we could have been beyond wishing for a female president and instead hoping for a female pope who would transcend even the original sin.
But she’s not ethereal; she’s ephemeral. And the tenor of the times makes her more so what with obsessive narcissism and moralistic preening taking the place of collective pride and common sense. And it is upon this degraded setting and insecure platform that the esteemed Governor of Alaska steps forth as exemplar of all that white women (and the rest of us) have been instructed to worship these many woeful years.
The Sexy Puritan, awash in contradiction and fallacies, Gov. Sarah is the nadir of reactive post-feminism. Those that have carried most loudly the mantle of “values” (and “place”) have decried gains in gender equity that had been centuries in the making. They’ve attempted to project a new image of the able and willing woman: one able to do anything but willing to subjugate herself upon duty’s (read: society’s, family’s, or man’s) call. In Palin, they’ve found their perfect tool:
- She’s a beauty queen. Worse than a stripper, pageant participants tend to have more ego and less self-esteem than their dancer counterparts. How else would you contrast one who demands a price for her beauty and one who only requests to be judged? They are most easily exploited. Note her confident “folksiness” (yet another word to be stricken from my vocabulary come November) when she soapboxes eternal, propped up by the glassy-eyed recitals of her pimps’ edicts…
- She’s aimless. Karyn White was making a point, people. She’s not your superwoman because she shouldn’t have to be. The logic dictates that those who attempt to become so (of their own free will) are kidding themselves. Kind of like saying teenage pregnancy is a blessed event. God didn’t want that. And neither did you…
Sarah’s biggest problem is her seeming willingness to go along with all this. In all, she’s coming off as the GOP’s Bottom Bitch* and that’s not a role model standard to be placed on the national stage. Allowing herself to be pimped out on the trail, alternately coddled (read: fondled**) and pandered to by her supporters while being indignant, condescending, and victimized in defense of her principles, is not noteworthy. It’s silly. Insidious, really. Her manipulation (both by others and herself) has far-ranging ramifications for the young women coming up today, especially in light of the previous pedestal-sitters that have won the lion’s share of attention of late (think Britney).
From Truth to Sontag, verse has been consecrated demonizing (to good effect, I believe) this exact kind of exploitation as a vehicle for putting a woman in the respected spotlight of a man’s world. And for this trick to step into that hallowed space, accept the shine like she's fulfilling some kind of promise, all while daintily undermining the sacrifice of better women before her to even turn on that spotlight – it’s absurd (probably reason one why it’s accepted). No matter how much I disagree with she's about, if she came correct (or even on her own two feet) I'd respect it. But the glass jar presentation and practiced mannerisms of a robot are exactly the type of bullshit female paradigms that women have been fighting since slavery. The cruelty of her candidacy is in the legacy it'll leave behind to white women that'll pervade the culture. The thought of young girls of any stripe being asked to model themselves after Sarah Palin is reason enough to just start burning shit down again. And specifically, the last thing young girls of color need is the assignment of waging a new front in gender warfare against the hybrid Palin-esque cyborgs that'll leapfrog them in these near-future generations. I don't want my daughter forced to fight a Palin clone for a job. That'd be some bullshit.
[*In case you don’t know, the “Bottom Bitch” is the first whore recruited into a pimp’s stable. She’s sticks with him/her the longest and often acts as second in the harem hierarchy. Iceberg Slim, the Earl of Rochester and Leonardo da Vinci have all posited that what pimp knows of women, he learned from his mother, or succinctly, her effect on his father figure. If she abandoned him, women are fleeting and unreliable. If she beat him, women are vicious and small. If she took beatings or did not defend him from same, women are easily broken and weak in spirit. The pimp’s remedy to all that ails her is first comfort, followed alternately, by discipline or responsibility, and finally brutality before the cycle repeats itself. And so long as the man’s soul remains corrupt and entropic, he’ll continue to rinse-and-repeat the process long past the days of phallic usefulness. The tragedy of the term “lesser sex” is rooted in the origins of the Bottom Bitch as her permissive acceptance of such manipulation re-assigns the shamefulness of these emotional endeavors from leader to follower. Being a Bottom Bitch is never a compliment.]
[**Word must be said to counter the despicable allowance of catcalling and objectification that everybody is allowing to permeate in this campaign. From Obama to McCain to Palin herself, for no one to have stepped forward to condemn the lascivious patronizing of this albeit misguided woman by her own supporters is unconscionable. If she were a former porn star that received daily treatment for extant STDs in her executive office, she still commands the respect of the electorate to not be congratulated in her public appearances for being hot, giving wood to codgers with her winks, and especially not for her “adorability”. The woman is a 44-year old mother of five. Get over yourselves and stop all the puerile comments from entering what should the most grave and frank discussion of social ills we’ve had since September 12, 2001. Damn, man.]
