A-Infos (en) US, Boston, Anarchist journal BAAM #13 - Liberatory Potential of Palin = 0 by Adrienne

    I am nothing short of terrified by the discourse surrounding Governor 
Palin's selection as Republican vice presidential candidate. Just when I thought 
that the system couldn't be any more irreparably broken, I hear what should be a 
conversation about the governor and former mayor's positions on various critical 
issues and utter lack of experience turn into a jerkfest wherein everyone is 
more interested in discussing how hot, feminist, liberated and maternal the 
candidate is. ---- This makes my brain explode. It is clear that the mainstream 
discourse does not recognize Governor Palin as a politician. Leaving aside the 
insistence on sexualizing her (have you seen the action figures of Governor 
Palin in a schoolgirl outfit?), few have actually looked at her record, 
preferring instead to fixate on pornulated pictures of the candidate and the 
uterine goings on of Palin and her daughter Bristol.

    The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles
Times, NPR, Adweek and the New York Post
are among the media that have written about
Palin's `feminism' while the youtube video of
a talking head on CNBC will forever haunt
me, raving about how Governor Palin has
achieved `the new feminist ideal' because
men like himself aren't intimidated by her
and want to fuck her.
    This is what Palin's feminism looks like:
Under Palin's mayoral leadership, rape vic-
tims of Wasilla who reported the violations
of their persons were charged for their rape
kits. Governor Palin is opposed to safe, legal
abortion, even when the pregnancy is a result
of rape or incest. Palin is opposed to health
education and contraception. Palin is opposed
to funding health care and places like Cov-
enant House Alaska, a home for teen moth-
ers. No friend to queers, Palin went beyond
merely supporting Alaska's constitutional
amendment to ban same-sex marriage, she
supports stripping domestic partner benefits
for state workers, which hurts heterosex-
ual couples as well. Bonus: her church, the
Wasilla Bible Church, is promoting a confer-
ence designed to convert filthy homosexuals
into god-hearting heterosexuals. Palin's other
feminist credentials involve voicing her own
lack of ambition, instead attributing her status
to male support and approval, continuing to
actively seek male approval, and not rejecting
the maternal, sexual narrative that has been
imposed on her.
    Well, that's what bothers me most as a
feminist observing mainstream discourse.
But leave us not forget that Palin is married
to a Big Oil rep, supports drilling the fuck out
of everything, devastating every square foot
of land for industry, shooting wolves from
aircrafts and teaching creationism in public
schools. She challenges the listing of polar
bears as an endangered species as well as the
abundantly clear reality that human industry
is causing the climate change we are expe-
riencing. Despite Governor Palin's support
and participation in some fairly destructive
hunting, she has attacked Indigenous peoples'
right to subsistence fishing and subsistence
hunting. She has attacked Tribal Sovereignty
and the use of Indigenous languages and is,
generally, a fitting, and porn-tacular comple-
ment to McCain's ticket of pure evil.

-----------------------------
See also:
http://baamboston.org (not allways avilable)
Email: wordup (nospam) riseup.net
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