The Virtual Stoning of Sarah Palin, Women Virtually Stoning Women, in General
Oct 17th, 2008 by admin
The American women who are acquiescing in the virtual stoning of Sarah Palin are obeying the same sick dynamic that animates every patriarchal society on earth. It’s why women in tribal hellholes nod approvingly when their menfolk stone the local adulterer. It’s why women cheer when other women, uppity women, are publicly shamed and abused. It’s why women at sites like Jezebel spend most of their energy vilifying other women as sluts, skanks, bitches, cum-dumpsters, whores, and whatever other names they’ve borrowed from the masculine vocabulary.
The absolutely crucial thing in making this nightmare work is the strong mental demarcation that each woman must maintain between “us” — herself and other “good” women — and “them”: the “bad” women, the sluts and bitches. For some women, the only “good” woman is herself. Women like this nurture a belief in personal exceptionalism: that they themselves are somehow exempt from the general misogyny that pervades society. This is the “honorary man” syndrome. “I’m not like those other women! I’m special! Men like ME! They respect ME!”
Note to the numerous woman-haters/Sarah-Palin haters reading, especially those of you who fancy yourself to be “progressive:” Political analysis and critique do not constitute “stoning.” That’s not what Dr. Violet Socks is referring to in the post excerpted above nor is it what I have talked about here, here, here. Stoning is not about taking a position on an issue. It is not about critique of another woman’s politics.
The stoning referred to here is about woman hating. It is about misogyny. It is not a response to facts or to opinions or to political positions, and it is not a critique of what a woman believes. This is true no matter how odious are the politics or views of the woman, in fact, being stoned.
It’s never right — no matter WHAT a woman might believe — to participate in or to launch stonings of the type we have seen everywhere so far as Sarah Palin is concerned. I hate this kind of thing like nothing else and want nothing to do — ever — with those who have participated in it. Stoning a woman is about hatred. When a woman participates, it’s about wanting to make some huge distinction between herself and the woman she is targeting, either for fear she’ll be next (which is tragic) or because it is only in these moments of distancing herself from a hated woman — going to great lengths to show how UNlike that woman she is – that she experiences the titillations patriarchy apportions to women who find ways to look down on, and feel superior to, other women (which is pathetic).
I cannot wait until the election is over. I HATE what it has proved is true about by far most Democrats, most progressives, most GLBTQ people, most liberals, most leftists: that they are abjectly and unapologetically misogynist. I hate it, but I’m glad I know what’s true and real, in ways I didn’t before.
Check out Sam’s comment in the comment thread as well– it is brilliant.
Heart
A lot of women seem to think that there is a social class called Women and they are not part of it. It is a mental defense mechanism called splitting.
Very discouraging. What will it take to bring them back to reality?
I ‘get it.’ Always have and reason is because I experienced first hand as a child and teenager some of my female relatives blaming and holding women responsible for men’s violence committed against women. Not until later did I learn my female relatives were parrotting what they had learned from men. I don’t blame my female relatives I blame the male misogynstic relatives in my family who deliberately use women to do men’s dirty work.
Remember the old saying ‘divide and conquer’ well this is what male power is doing. Dividing women and ensuring all women remain conquered. Or so they think.
No woman deserves to be stoned, no woman is any of the masculinist misogynstic sexualised insults routinely hurled at women and girls who are believed by women-hating men and their supporters to have deviated from male-centered and male-defined rules.
Sam’s comment is spot on and also Dr. Spocks’ article tells the truth and as always because it shows just how patriarchy works such evidence always causes a cresendo of ‘lies, men-hating’ etc. etc.
If women were to hear what men really think about women they would immediately realise misogyny is real, women-hating is real and yes many men do indeed hate women.
Just to repeat no woman deserves to be stoned; no woman deserves to be murdered; and most certainly no woman deserves to be subjected to male sexual/physical/or verbal violence. Such actions are woman-hating and they are used to uphold patriarchy. Women like men are human and women like men are not simply ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Dividing women into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a patriarchal myth used to keep women’s necks firmly under the heel of men. We don’t have to accept differing political views but there is no excuse whatosever for promoting violence against women, whether it is women promoting such violence or men doing the work. But as always, it is more than just women promoting violence against women, because underneath carefully shielded away from the ‘public gaze’ are the men applauding and egging women on. In reality it is all about men as a group hating women and determined so, they believe, to finally once and for all, end feminism. Well they won’t win not whilst there are women such as Dr. Violet Socks, Sam, Heart and other women too, who also ‘get it.’
Since Sarah Palin was nominated for VP, I’ve been flooded with Palin hating emails — ALL from so-called progressive women.
One weird thing. A woman who has a lot of positive influence in L.A. reported how she and a friend personally met and heard Sarah Palin over a year ago. It was a women’s conference of some sort — maybe National Association of Business Women — and they personally reported to me how inspired and encouraged they were when they met her. She was warm, dynamic and full of “I can do it” energy.
Fast forward one year later: these same women are mass emailing Palin hate messages and freaking out about how “awful” she is. The influential woman even mass emailed that terrible photo shopped Palin gun/swim suit item. I was completely shocked that a mainstream political candidate would be treated like that by other women, especially a woman whose “personal” direct experience of Gov. Palin was so positive. It was really like a lynch mob of women, a weird mental shut down, and it struck me as very odd.
I know, I’m a radical feminist and all that, but this anti-Palin mania on the part of Democratic women is baffling to me. I’ve have always been supportive of many types of women running for office, and I don’t expect mainstream parties to really address my issues. I don’t believe electoral politics does this really. What is so hard about women admiring other capable and “go for it” women? What prevents women from admiring successful women?
To me the whole point of the feminist movement was for all women to have a shot at their dreams, and for all women to be treated like serious, thinking and dynamic people. No straight woman out there is going to make much sense to my interior self. heterosexuality itself strikes me as a weird cross women have to bear — I don’t get that, and that’s my personal feeling on the matter, but that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t cheer all women who have the guts to stand up on a stage and give a great speech. It doesn’t stop me from smiling every time I see a woman advance on the political stage. Whether these women are conservative or liberal, somehow the very act of the miracle of strong women out there inspires me. Call me that old fashioned second wave feminist, but I like it when women succeed and make it big! I love listening to women give VP speeches all over the country. I love it!
Gov. Palin personally inspires me. I recognize a little bit of my midwestern roots in her. I think her grasp of oil issues in Alaska is interesting and clever. Will she be the perfect woman in office?
Well, after reading all the feminist blogs out there, guess what, all women running for major political office are hated and trashed, from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin, it’s the same dynamic.
What is it that causes women to freak out so much over this hardworking ordinary woman who had big dreams? This disturbs me to no end.
I guess women’s opinions — if they are conservative don’t surprise me much. Perhaps I can understand a woman’s horror over abortion, for example. Maybe I can understand a woman who would feel pride in a land that opened up opportunities to her. I’m not interested in flag waving, and I’m not a tribal American type.
But on the other hand, I do get a bit confused by people who have never traveled outside this country constantly attacking America as being all wrong all the time. My family members and I have traveled all over the world. Collectively we speak four foreign languages, and some of us have lived in former Soviet-block countries. We have seen first hand women who had bound feet in China, a woman who was being pulled by the hair down the town square of an Eastern European capital by her hating husband as everyone watched and did nothing to stop it. I’ve met lesbians from other countries who barely escaped murder themselves in the so-called wonderful lands outside the U.S.
I have loved both Palin and Clinton. I am excited and energized by both of these brave women. I don’t see a contradiction in this, mainly because if I judged women ideologically, I wouldn’t be able to go into all the worlds I go into. I wouldn’t have some of my “right wing wacko” women friends actually supporting lesbian and gay civil rights now. People connect and change, but you have to cross all kinds of barriers to hear this out.
But the mystery still stands… where aren’t all those emails aflyin my way trashing McCain? How come women are only going bonkers over Palin in their mass emails to me?
I think woman hatred and patriarchy are still very much alive and well within women. It’s the kind of self-hatred I often see in the lesbian community, and so I know what this looks and feels like.
I think the Gov. Palin candidacy is a real opportunity for right wing and left wing women to connect, and honor each other. Obama supporters have stopped attacking Hillary, and actually listen to me a whole lot more than they did before. They of course want my vote, and I know that sexists are able to clean up their acts if they want something from you. But still, magic conversations have opened up.
Gov. Palin is the heroine for the right wing women who were trashed by feminists. They needed their own true standard bearer, they got to see changed roles within a right wing context. This is very powerful imagry, especially for women who see Gov. Palin as a woman very much like themselves — no elite education, still from a lower middle class to middle class background, a mother, a basketball player and a beauty queen. Odd as all this is, there is something touching about it, something deeply human about it.
It’s Ms. Smith goes to Washington, a kind of new archetypal theme of the west. It is a new meme, and perhaps the very newness of it has feminists flumoxed.
I feel shocked at how women treat other women in this race. And the proof was in women’s personal experience vs. their flip into mania, into left wing craziness– women who personally met and LIKED Sarah Palin when they met her at the women’s conference. BEFORE she was famous!
Feminists keep on attacking women who climb up out of the lobster pot. Feminists trash women who achieve their dreams and rise in the world. This is what I see in a lot of blog feminism these days. Maybe it is the impersonal nature of the web and blogs and emails that causes this to happen.
It’s not the feminism I once knew, it is the weird something else.