The 2008 Election: The Battle to Define Feminism
Second in a series

For more than 40 years, the mainstream media has chosen to define “feminism” and “the woman’s agenda” through a leftist prism. Then came Sarah Palin.

In part one of this series, outlining the three struggles raging behind the presidential campaign, we looked at the ongoing populist rebellion against the entrenched elite, namely, the media. And now, we see another kind of rebellion: the insurgency against the liberal orthodoxy of feminism.

The National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966, was always a leftist front, seeking to disguise a social-democratic, even socialist, agenda behind the veil of feminism. And the liberal establishment was happy to say that such leftism spoke for “all women.”

Well, it didn’t. In fact, even in the days of MSM monopoly, there were conspicuous exceptions to liberal orthodoxy, such as Marabel Morgan, author of a 1973 book, “The Total Woman,” a conservative Christian-themed self-help book.  And, also in the 70s, Phyllis Schlafly and her “Stop ERA” allies proved to be more powerful than the combined power of the liberal elites.

And of course, the larger reality is that Republicans have won seven of the 10 presidential elections from 1968 to 2004—despite the best efforts of left-leaning feminists to declare that the women’s vote is reflexively pro-Democratic. Well, as all those elections results proved, that hasn’t been the case.

And in recent years, such prominent conservative women as Ann Coulter, Laura Schlessinger, Laura Ingraham, Michele Malkin, Mary Matalin, and Condoleezza Rice have all become non-liberal role models.

But conservative women (and moderate women, who admire spunk) didn’t have anyone to root for on the national stage—until Palin entered in August, from stage right.

Realizing that Palin profoundly threatens their monopoly on the definition of feminism and femininity, virtually the entire liberal establishment has fired its guns at her.  Sally Quinn, writing for The Washington Post, said of the choice, “I find it insulting to women.” And Gail Collins, appearing in The New York Times, assured her readers that “Sarah Palin is a terrible choice for running mate.”

And then we heard from the grande dame of feminism, Gloria Steinem, a founder of NOW, who took to the pages of The Los Angeles Times to denounce Palin:

This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. 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.

That “new pie,” of course, has always been a sort of estrogen-soaked socialism, but Steinem didn’t get into the true left-feminist agenda, instead preferring to denounce a Republican woman:

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

And Anna Quindlen, scribbling for Newsweek, echoed Steinem, expressing the earnest hope that Hillary Rodham Clinton would save America from the “wrong” kind of feminism:

This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so.

But Clinton doesn’t seem that interested in taking up the avenging-angel role, in part, of course, because she wants Obama to lose so that she can run for president again in 2012.

So in the meantime, lesser Democratic figures have stooped to the crudest kinds of defamation. On Wednesday, the Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Carol Fowler, jabbed at McCain for choosing a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” As they say down South, that put the hay down where the horse can get it.

Professional feminists inside the Democratic Party are so preoccupied with abortion that they let it blind them to the optics of their own cruel and counterproductive words.

Fowler later apologized—sort of. She said, “I apologize to anyone who finds my comment offensive”” Translated, that means, “If you are one of those dimwits who took offense at what I said the first time, well, then, I will pretend to be sorry so that you will vote for Barack Obama.”

A few powerful voices did speak up for Palin. The well known writer Camille Paglia, an “out” lesbian, a Democrat, and a declared supporter of Obama’s candidacy, was nonetheless moved to say of Palin: “This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.” Then Paglia added:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist.

As a blue-collar, small-government-favoring, God-fearing conservative, who declares herself to be a proud “hockey mom,” Palin is about as far away from the world of Gloria Steinem & Co. as one can get. And yet the McCain-Palin ticket is clicking with women—and more importantly, the country as a whole.

So this election is now a test between radicalism and traditionalism. Which vision of womanhood will prevail: Steinem’s or Palin’s? And oh, by the way, how do the women of America feel about Obama’s ideas for sex education for five-year-olds?

We’ll know for sure on November 4, but my guess is that Obama’s candidacy will look about as attractive as lipstick on a pig.