Who’s Afraid of Sarah Palin?
October 6, 2008
by Sheryl Lee
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This weekend, Slate Magazine, a Washington Post subsidiary, featured on the front page of its website an illustration of Sarah Palin perched on a stool, wearing red high heels, with her breasts popping out of her skimpy red dress and a bible tightly squeezed between her bare thighs. The accompanying article by Tom Perrotta, entitled, “The Sexy Puritan”, suggests that Governor Palin is using “sexiness” to further her conservative Christian agenda.
In support of his argument, Perrotta cites a sex blog called “Christian Nymphos,” “whose authors,” he says, “offer candid how-to advice on anal sex, fisting, and ‘masturbating for your husband.’” Despite his protest that he’s “not trying to link Palin to the Christian Nymphos”, he is doing precisely that, with the implication that Governor Palin is by association guilty of some vague sexual impropriety.
With this sleight-of-pen, Perrotta utilizes lewd imagery to demean and discredit a woman, while implying that she is complicit in her own degradation. It’s not a new trick, and it’s not the first time Slate Magazine has diminished its credibility by publishing bigoted material*.
Other Slate readers were as put off as I was by Perrotta’s article. Here are some of the responses from the Slate Fray.
A picture speaks a thousand words, by lubbesuh
The cartoon included with the article which describes Palin as a “sexy Puritan” shows a woman with her boobs popping out of of her dress seated with a Bible between her knees. Now why did the author even bother to write anything. We all get the message loud and clear. Anything goes when it comes attacking female candidates this year, Slate being one of the biggest perpetrators.
This article is garbage, by JTHC75
Is Palin sexy? There’s nothing particularly overtly sexy about her. Her dress is no different than how many professional women dress today (actually, it’s still pretty conservative). Her hair and makeup are unremarkable. Her personality seems kind of “flirty,” but not overtly sexual. Many people are this way. Talk to a charming Southern woman to understand what I mean.
In other words, I don’t see how Palin is going out of her way to be a sexy anything. What I do see is the author objectifying her as a sexy thing (but she asked for it, right?)
Find me an article where the words “anal sex, fisting, and masturbating for your husband” somehow are invoked in a discussion of any VP candidate. Go ahead, I’ll give you ten years. Or one where an illustration is provided of a mini-skirted stiletto-heeled candidate with a bible clamped between their naked thighs. Why, it’s not like Perrotta was implying anything!
Get Over It Tom….by Novemberrose
Some women (as some men) are better looking than others & this tells you NOTHING about who they are or what their values are. If you think she is “sexy” that is YOU, she’s certainly not slutty looking & I’m sorry but pretty women are not sex objects they are people & as such should be judged for OTHER factors. It’s this brand of pig headed thinking that kept me in baggy clothes & bad hair for years, thinking I could never be respected & be pretty. Well, guess what, it’s not Palin’ s pretty face that’s making you confused about who she is, it’s your inability to separate your penis from your brain.
It’s this brand of sexist banter that will drive women to see “red” on election day. I thought liberals were supposed to be open-minded. How about closing your fly before you open your mind next time.
On September 9th, prior to publishing the Perrotta article, David Plotz wrote a piece entitled, I Dream About Sarah Palin. Do You? He said:
“GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been haunting me. Night after night, she appears in my dreams, always as a scolding, ominous figure.
And then there’s her sex appeal. A couple of conservative men I know have mentioned that they’ve been having sexual fantasies about the Alaska governor. I’m sure they’re not alone.”
Plotz solicited other people’s dreams about Sarah Palin. Here are a excerpts from the responses published in a subsequent article.
“Sarah Palin’s standing over me (I’m naked, she’s not) and shouting, podium style, through a pair of great, floating glasses, ‘And you know what? I’m going to cut it off. I’m gonna CUT IT OFF.’—Joshua Mensch
“Of course there are some romantic portions of the dream I will not go into detail about. She is very attractive—as you know.”—Michael A. Kaiser
“Last night I dreamt I was at a strip club, and Sarah Palin was dancing on stage in a G-string and being periodically groped by three professional baseball players dressed in uniform”—T.D. Botkin
The New Agenda has written a letter to David Plotz, the current editor of Slate Magazine, protesting the publication of this article.
— — —
* Last November, Will Saletan wrote a series of columns for Slate on racial difference in IQ scores. He took much of the information for these pieces from research by a known white supremacist. For this, Slate Magazine was criticized in the New York Times, and The New Yorker ran a piece with evidence which countered that cited by Saletan. Slate’s then-editor, Jacob Weisberg, and author Will Saletan both subsequently apologized for the articles.
This is dis-respectful!!! And yet NOW has turned a blind eye to this and Larry Flynt doing a porn movie using a Palin Look alike!!!
ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE SAYING… IF YOU ARE NICE LOOKING AND WANT TO RUN FOR AN OFFICE…DON’T!!
Surprise, surprise! Many men and it appears an equal number of women can’t handle an intelligent, talented, energetic woman who just happens to conform to cultural mores of attractiveness seeking a high position of power and authorty. I suppose some upwardly mobile men secretly despise her for marrying an oil field worker, part Eskimo to boot. I mean can’t you just hear some of the white collar fellas bellied up to the bar asking how a blue collar jerk got such a good looking woman? A large number of men are tacity endorsing the sexist slamming of Sarah Palin. We are talking nuts and bolts here, aren’t we? Are there any women out there secretly loathing the figure of Sarah Palin who birthed 5 children and are silently and tacitily endorsing the sexist slamming of her? Can’t you just hear some of the talk at say the health club? How did that anti-abortion bit** keep such a figure after popping out 5 kids? Nuts and bolts, mainstream America, yet some are holding back from simply voting gender. This kind of crap coming from Slate is slung at us with not even a veneer of credibility, so sling something back by putting the first woman in the White House.
Men and women look different, there is nothing to say that the male way of looking is the correct way for a VP to look. Men and women have different mannerisms, there is nothing to say the correct mannerisms for a VP are male mannerisms. Men and women have different voice tones (remember the talking heads regarding Hillary..”her voice her voice she sounds like my ex wife!”) there is no rule that says the correct way for a VP to sound is the male way. I am sick of all the sexist bigotry. If these people at Slate had a brain they would be embarrassed.
Connie, I imagine David Plotz will be embarrassed. I’ve read him for several years, and he’s always seemed a decent sort. Tom Perrotta, too, who wrote “Little Children”, seems somewhat aware of women’s challenges; however, they both appear to have their heads in their nether regions on this one, and someone needs to bring it to their attention.
sigh
I can’t read XX factor–it is too painful.
Same reason I try not to read some of the female misogynists at BOTF.
The view from Europe is that the current presidential race sees too preoccupied with sex rather than substance. The media, pundits and lobbyists, including some women’s groups, seem content to keep the debate firmly stuck in the relatively safe area of sexism and victimization of an ambitious woman. I use the word “woman” as I have not seen or read many references to her correctly as Governor Palin. As politics and process goes it’s ludicrous and TBH a bit tawdry.
I agree with Connie’s wider point that public offices must be sexless however people aspiring for the position must be capable of executing that office. For the office of the VP one assumes that the responsibilities are significant and a person filling that role must have a résumé to match. If Governor Palin has the skills for the job then have a frank and fair discussion about issues and responsibility.
If the Governors skill set does not match what then? Is a criticism of a women’s capacity of do a job automatically sexism or is it a natural function of a meritocracy? Does this distinction depend how it’s done? Has the US reached that point yet? Is the sex based debate raging because Governor Palin has not yet had a detailed discussion on the specifics of her résumé?
I live in the UK where we had an incredibly strong leader in the eighties, Margaret Thatcher, who saw the world change and brought both abundance and hardship to us. The idea that a woman is incapable of true leadership is moronic; the idea that a woman must be held to standards of the office is not.
I’ve probably used a great deal of generalities and assumptions in the above but I am a beginner in women’s issues and need to learn more. My daughter is due at the end of this year and I want to be able to look her in the eye as she grows up.
Men will drag women down by any means necessary. They will sexualize them, or call them disgusting hags/pseudo-men, depending on the situation. But the intent is the same both times. It has nothing at all to do with Palin. It’s unavoidable if you are a woman. These men need to be FIRED.
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