Sarah’s Sapphic Slander
Sarah Palin. If you haven’t heard of her by now, you are either a hermit in the backwoods of Vermont, or dead. As the VP choice for Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Palin and her complicated family have been plastered on television screens, newspaper pages and magazine covers for the past few weeks. Touted by her party as the breath of fresh air needed to pull in fence-sitters (and Hillary supporters), Americans are now seeing the Alaskan governor for what she is rather than what she and the Republicans claim her to be: an anti-Feminist uber-Conservative who, if McCain is elected, will take women’s rights back half a century.
Despite being a self-proclaimed Feminist, Palin’s stances on key issues like abortion and sex education say otherwise.
Palin’s oldest daughter, Bristol, has now been thrust into the political limelight as the poster child for what happens when your mother becomes a vice presidential candidate with intentions of overturning Roe v. Wade. Had McCain not chosen Palin as his VP, it is possible that Bristol would not be on her way to becoming a wife at the ripe age of seventeen. But her mother, who stands for ethics and family values, cannot have an illigitimate grandchild when she’s touring the country as our potential vice president (or president should McCain drop dead in office – not an unlikely possibility).
Perhaps the pregnant teen would not be an issue at all if her mother promoted sex education, but no. As a devout evangelical Protestant, Palin does not approve of contraception, nor in educating children about anything other than abstinence. Even though absintence-only education programs have been proven to fail time and time again as a method to stop teen pregnancy, Palin and the majority of her party hold tight to this stance. Being a woman who bears the brunt of the situation should a pregnancy come about, it is unfortunate that Palin remains anti-sex education.
Both stances can be seen as anti-female on several counts. Considering that women in politics, specifically national politics, are the faces of American women both here and overseas, Palin represents a detriment to the rights the majority of us have been fighting for for decades. Should McCain be elected, it is possible that our right to choose will be taken from us, and abstinence-only education will proliferate into more and more schools, only serving to multiply the amount of unwanted teen pregnancies annually. How is this a Feminist approach to government?
Do we really want the first woman VP to be a woman with a small amount of political experience on a state level, none on a national level, whose claim to fame might be the beauty pageant she placed second in in high school? Pardon me if I am wrong, but I thought the glitzy, air-headed visage of a pageant queen is exactly what women are trying to rid themselves of in order to be taken seriously, especially in the political arena. Palin is bringing it back on a national stage, however, showing the country and, perhaps, the world that a pretty face lacks what it takes to lead with the so-called “Big Boys”. Like I said, another step back for the Feminists.
Whether or not McCain is voted into office, bringing Palin with him, this November, the damage to a large extent has already been rendered.
The democrat party is the party of the feminists, no? And yet they turn down an experienced politician like Hillary in favor of a know nothing black community activist who has about a week of experience in the senate. You ought to be complaining about the democratic party debacle, not about what the republican party is doing. You would never vote for a republican anyway.