On Tea, Sisterhood and Truth
June 8, 2010
by Sandra
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
In her recent article, Tea and Sisterhood, Judith Levine derided two brave and outspoken women: Palin, and The New Agenda’s President, Amy Siskind. Scattered among the spiteful ad hominem attacks, goofy fear-mongering, and glib assumptions, Levine makes several statements that show that her usual brilliant incisiveness fails utterly when it comes to “the new breed of women-identified women.” You know, the ones who are unwilling to unquestioningly genuflect to their Progressive betters.
Levine suggests that Palin is opportunistically using feminism for political purposes (as though feminism were so ideologically pure of political taint to begin with), and that Amy Siskind is some kind of media shill. She draws the latter conclusion using some facile reasoning indeed:
One day, she’s dissing Nancy Pelosi for selling out “the sisterhood” by supporting the antiabortion Stupak Amendment to health care reform. The next she’s congratulating Palin for endorsing every fetus lover on the map. New Agenda? More like No Agenda.
Except that there is no contradiction there, unless you assume that feminism is fundamentally inseparable from pro-choice dogma. Even if you do make that assumption, Siskind’s point is obvious. Democrats should be working hard to represent their base, which includes Democratic Women. Republicans should be working hard to support Republican Women. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Regardless of gender, a politician who is elected on one platform and then governs from another should have their feet held to the fire. That’s simply an issue of integrity, and all constituents should care about that. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t defend even hypocritical female politicians from sexist attacks. It’s a separate issue altogether from the attempt to push for more women in leadership positions. Siskind’s position is clear: she criticizes women leaders who betray their constituents on the basis of their actions, and she supports women leaders who are willing to spend their own political capital supporting other women. Shockingly, it looks almost like Siskind supports having women in positions of power without assuming that these women are automatically beyond reproach.
Later on, Levine states that “To Palin, every womb wants to be filled and every woman ‘can handle’ a baby — or five. To Siskind, every vagina deserves a term in office. These women commit the same error as their renounced foremothers: reducing Woman to a universal category…”
Again, Levine misses the point. Despite being personally pro-choice, I don’t see a contradiction between a woman that wishes to support young women who have decided to bring an unplanned pregnancy to term, and a politician who in all her time as Governor of Alaska never made a single attempt to legislate against abortion. This kind of over-simplification (especially paired with the ridiculous conclusion that Palin therefore thinks that every women should be bearing as many children as possible) coming from such an intelligent and analytical writer is intentional ignorance.
Her criticism of Siskind doesn’t fare any better under closer examination. Her syntactical reversal is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate Siskind’s real intentions: She doesn’t want an office for every vagina, so much as a vagina for every office. More accurately, she wants women to have an equal opportunity to hold every leadership position. And what exactly is wrong with that?
What seems to have gotten Levine so agitated appears to be the idea that women might support other women outside the bounds of the feminist mainstream. These are the same feminists who are so wrapped up in supporting progressive causes that they seem to have forgotten that at its core feminism isn’t about solar power and gun control. What partisan feminists are missing here is the obvious fact that there will ALWAYS be Republican politicians who win. There will ALWAYS be Democratic politicians who win. They might as well be women. I want women to have an equal shot at EVERY position of power, even those I find personally reprehensible. If there were an Association of Evil Puppy Haters, I’d still want women to have an equal shot at leadership in that organization, just as I want them to have an equal shot at the Presidency.
And that’s why I support women voting for women.
A lot of the explanations I’ve seen for the 30% solution or the 50% solution or whatever you want to call it, have hinged on the fact that most nations with high rates of women in prominent political positions are also comparative utopias in terms of women’s rights. They take good care of their working mothers, they have more women CEOs, etc. Which is probably true. But I think that suggesting that by simply electing more women we’ll end up with more feminist policies is confusing correlation with causation. I think that societies that ARE more pro-woman in terms of cultural values will be more inclined to act and vote in ways that are pro-woman, including electing more women.
What result do I think electing more women will have? While this may make women politicians feel freer to vote for pro-women policies, I think the primary effect will be to increase the number of women in power. If we vote for more conservative women, we’ll end up with more conservative women. If we vote for more liberal women, we’ll end up with more liberal women. But I think that’s an end in and of itself.
All things being equal, I’d vote for a woman over a man. If one candidate was utterly terrible and the other was wonderful, I’d probably vote for the wonderful one. But the fact is, most candidates (from both parties) are shades of bad to mediocre. In that case, why not wring whatever tiny benefit out of your vote that you can? By say, voting for a woman, to show the parties that female candidates can win, and deserve their support.
In addition, I am no longer going to think in the short term. The world is in constant peril. Every second week we have some new natural disaster or horrific ecological incident, or new international threat. Women’s rights are the last thing on the agenda, every time, regardless of which party is in power. Both parties are all too happy to use us as a bargaining chip. There will NEVER be a good time to cast a protest vote, to operate outside the system that was carefully crafted to maintain the status quo. There will never be a low-stakes election, and there will never be an incredible and experienced woman candidate for president if we don’t have a whole lot of women in politics at the municipal, state, and federal levels to choose from.
Basically people have to decide. For me, my number one concern right now is the status of women. Both parties are willing to screw women over. So why shouldn’t I do the only thing within my power to increase the political capital of women? Maybe, eventually, that’ll shift the balance of power. It sure as hell won’t hurt. So yes, my loyalty is to the future of women, all women, even the ones I disagree with.
Great article – great points!
Going to the polls today to vote for every/any woman on the ballot – regardless of party. I’m sticking with the plan until women’s representation in our government reflects women’s representation in our population-It is simply the only way to remedy the past & present discrimination that systematically disadvantages women. Its only fair.
Good post.
“Like the wimmin who came before them, Palin, Siskind and their comrades appear to think that a double-X chromosome renders a human being automatically superior.”
LOL! I don’t have a problem with that. When 80% of congress is comprised of women and women are all earning 1.50 for every dollar a man earns, I’ll start to worry about women presuming they’re superior.
I really hate the phrase about vaginal voters or how people just want to put a vagina in office. The misogyny and viciousness in those kind of phrases is stunning. Women are not vaginas, they are people, whole people. Every time somebody accuses women of being a vaginal voter, they are implying that women have nothing else to offer but their vaginas. I don’t know what kind of feminism believes that, but I want no part of it.
I strongly agree that if there were a great male candidate I would vote for him of a poor woman candidate, however most candidates are mediocre to poor and in that case I vote for the woman.
And since the Democrats cuntize Republican women (Palin) and tell their own woman candidates to sit down and shut up (Hillary) or else pull them out of elected positions to appoint them as some Federal head of government bu!!$h!t, you won’t be voting for any woman Dems in high office soon because the Dems are systematically destroying their woman candidate farm team.
Frankly with articles like Judith Levine’s “Tea and Sisterhood” I can see why male Dems don’t respect female Dems. That article and it’s assumptions are laughable.
Great articulate article-to me women and men must obtain parity in office for all of us to feel equal…the absence of parity affects all of us- today I voted for Meg and Carly- perhaps others may like Boxer, but a senate runoff with two women is a very good thing…cudos to Amy for her excellent article a few days ago about Palin and alternate words for feminism…and to TNA for articulating points of view not seen at Daily Beast and Huff Po( whose readers not unsurprisingly poured their hate of Palin all over Amy again) Great work TNA
“I really hate the phrase about vaginal voters or how people just want to put a vagina in office”
I hate that phrase too but it indicates that the idiot Democrat party have not figured out that what is offensive is their attitude towards women. They clearly think the “progressive” word “cunt” is what made their attitudes SEEM offensive. They seem to think replacing “cunt” with “vagina” makes their misogynist behavior and philosophy regarding women in politics acceptable. They don’t get it and they aren’t close to getting it. They are probably too stupid to ever get it.
Bes,
No, I think they understand that reducing women to vaginas is offensive. That’s why they do it- to ridicule women. “Every vagina deserves a term in office”, “vagina voter”, “vagina litmus test”, all of these phrases was specially constructed to shame women into privileging their identity as a Democrat over their identity as a woman. They were designed to ridicule women for daring to think that womanhood is politically relevant.
This is typical mainstream idea of female politics — if you defend someone, you must agree with them on everything. I’ve just given up anymore — you say that a woman doesn’t deserve sexual humiliation, and someone will attack you for agreeing with them. “Sarah Palin does not deserve this treatment.”
“OH SO YOU ARE PRO LIFE NOW?”
“Sarah Palin does not under any circumstances deserve to be treated this way.”
“OH SO YOU THINK WE SHOULD DRILL FOR OIL?”
“Sarah Palin should not be sexually degraded.”
“OH SO LOOK WHO IS ENDORSING PRO LIFE VIEWS!”
“Sarah Palin should not be raped and murdered.”
“SO YOU AGREE WITH HER POSITION ON IMMIGRATION?”
It’s fucking INSANE. Women have got to drop this garbage whereby we think that defending someone against sexism and counting sexist treatment as important enough to take a stand on is the same as becoming one of their tribe. This is related to what I said before about how female primates will only attack the females of another tribe.
Hence, goes the monkey-minded “logic” of these fools, if you do not attack and in fact defend said female of the other tribe, YOU MUST BE OF THEIR TRIBE. KILL THE OTHER-TRIBE FEMALE!
Palin’s tribe is religious conservative, so defending her apparently makes one a religious conservative who agrees with her on everything.
It’s absolutely fucking nuts.
That’s the George Bush theory of feminism, Janis. “You’re with us or you’re against us.” It’s all about picking teams and choosing sides. The frustrating part is that most people would support about 70% of what the woman they are attacking believes in, if there wasn’t so much hyperbole and politics.
On the Dem side I’m watching them try to toss Blanche Lincoln under the bus in favor of the more liberal guy. Isn’t there always a more liberal guy?? Yes, there always is, “guy” being the operative word.
” … most people would support about 70% of what the woman they are attacking believes in, if there wasn’t so much hyperbole and politics.”
And that’s the problem with designating the Girl-Monkeys of the Other Tribe as acceptable targets for rape, humiliation, degradation, and other forms of attack. The forces of evil don’t have to restrict themselves to only women “who have it coming,” only women that the Good Feminists think should be raped. The women they think deserve it and have it coming and asked for it.
All they need to do is tell enough lies about any chosen target at all to convince other women that she is Not Of Their Tribe. That’s what they did with Palin, until they had otherwise rational human beings believing that this otherwise quite moderate and populist Republican had contracted with fundamentalist Christian rapists to rape lesbians and charge them for their own rape kits, and paid them off with the money from offshore drilling. ALL of the shit that’s been spread about her is a lie — the abstinence only stuff, the rape kits, all of it. But it worked. The forces of evil sprayed her with Other Tribe Scent, and their own females cheered while she was assaulted.
It works for any woman. Any woman at all. If any of these idiot women start saying something the powers that be don’t want said, they will suddenly find themselves slandered as sex-hating fundies who think girls sohuld pray away their cancer, and they will watch the feminist knives come out against them, too. Designating any woman as an acceptable target makes EVERY WOMAN a target. It boggles me that “feminist” creatures who have supposedly been studying this shit for decades don’t see this. They’ll say it, but they don’t believe it. Watching the skinny, pretty, trailer-trash bitch with the puffy hair (and the quite nice husband) get ripped to shreds is just too much fun for them to remember what principles they said they stood for.
“It’s all about picking teams and choosing sides.”
It sure as hell is. I think this has a lot to do with why so many of the online “feminist” forums (I need to stop putting that word in airquotes because if it means knifing bitches in the back instead of supporting women, then so be it) used to explode in a tail-eating cycle of “is she or isn’t she” so often. Is So-and-so a feminist? How Dare You Imply That I’m Not A Feminist! I don’t think she’s a feminist. Well, I don’t think YOU’RE a feminist! No feminist would think XYZ! I don’t mean Clinton, Palin, Pelosi, Haley, or even the 2008 election. I’m talking a bunch of bullshit discussions about anything from TV shows to shoes and whether you wore goddamned tampons or pads starting back in the late 90s clean up to about 2007.
EVERY single feminist on-line forum would, every couple months or so, degenerate into a bunch of hurt fee-fees about people being denied as feminists and then a bunch of band-aids being handed out, “Oh, but I don’t mean YOU! Oh, but YOU’re a feminist!” “Oh good! Oh, we’re so sisterly! Look at us being supportive of one another! Yay sisterhood!” Yadda yadda.
Because “picking teams and choosing sides” for these women, deep down, means, “If you come across me lying stabbed, raped, and bleeding in a ditch, you’ll call the ambulance for me, won’t you? Please? You’ll defend me, right? You won’t let them murder me, will you? Say yes, right?” Deep down, that’s what this label assignment nonsense meant and still means to women. Will you save my life or will you cheer as I’m murdered. Will you defend me in the court of public opinion, or will you sneer and gossip after the trial. It was and is literally a life-or-death thing for women to be designated as Of The Tribe or not.
And we all live in a world as women where we can’t even go on a date with a man without effectively abdicating every human right we’ve ever had. Accept a date with a man, and he can break both your arms, rape you senseless, and ram your head through a wall if he wants, and no jury will convict him on it. Accept a drink from him and you’ve just allowed him to murder you. And women know it. All women, everywhere. We may try to stay in denial about it, but deep down, we all know it. We all know that the only people who will defend us if we are in that situation are the females of our tribe. So we are terrified right down to the marrow of our bones to be ejected from the Tribe. Because those women will walk past us and spit on our dead bodies when the time comes. And with that 1-in-3 statistic … the time is highly likely to come for each and every one of us, isn’t it?
So the “picking teams and choosing sides” is all that feminism ever was destined to become, once we rallied around a word instead of each other. I am almost positive that the upswing in Republican women coming together (whatever -ism you want to use to refer to it) will result in them doing exactly the same thing to liberal women. It’s all women ever seem to do.
It’s also why I was always so fucking ADAMANT about the term “pro-woman” instead of anything else. ANY OTHER TERM can be jerrymandered, and if it CAN be jerrymandered, it WILL be jerrymandered. Women WILL DO IT. We need to do what the founding fathers did and take human/female stupidity, greed, and venality into account as something new is built on the rubble of the old, or else we’re screwed six ways from Sunday. We’re not going to get anywhere if we keep thinking that we’re all a bunch of happy little team players who share organic casseroles and sisterhood and wub one another. We tried that shit. It failed.
Sandra: That is just mind boggling. You are probably right but I don’t see how the Dems could be so stupid as to not realize that women are the majority and not only that we vote in higher numbers than men. Most voters are women and to be tossing around such ignorant terms is just breathtakingly stupid of the Dems. Frankly I am so put off by Democrats ingrained misogyny that I am pretty much a Republican by default at this point. They are really ugly misguided people.
I like the term pro-woman too. One problem with women uniting is the way we are raised. Boys see another boy and think, he’s on my team. Girls are taught from day one to separate, divide, control, ostracize each other. The goal of feminism far too often seems to be try and be the last woman standing and doing it right. It is frustrating, but there are some moments of hope. In spite of all the ugliness during the last election, Clinton and Palin refused to attack each other. They didn’t let the media play them, they didn’t participate in the ridicule against each other. That’s pretty difficult when the whole world is pressuring you to do other wise.
“What seems to have gotten Levine so agitated appears to be the idea that women might support other women outside the bounds of the feminist mainstream.”
As a result, it removes a very effective weapon that women can and have used against other women, the weapon of female resentment and sexism. When I say that it’s a life-or-death thing to be designated as a member of the tribe, I should have specified that this also gives women an enormous amount of power over each other. We can shut up a “sister” who’s making too much noise or disagreeing with us right quick by insinuating that she’s not our tribe, or starting a whispering campaign against her among other women. And she’s out on her ass — and out of our way — PDQ.
If some of us stand up and say that we’re not playing that shit anymore, then those weapons aren’t as powerful as they once were. Women can’t start smear campaigns against other women who are in their way and get them to work. (When women start smear campaigns, it’s ALWAYS other women that they are trying to convince. If the men buy into it too, they’re just coming along on the coattails, a collateral bonus.)
“What seems to have gotten Levine so agitated appears to be the idea that women might support other women outside the bounds of the feminist mainstream.”
Just read the article and Levine comes across as another agitprop idiot; she has no voice of her own. If she is a spokeswoman for “mainstream feminism” then it is time for “mainstream feminism” to die a natural death due to lack of support.
Both political parties are structurally INIMICAL to women because of lack of representation and that can only be rectified by strengthening and supporting female candidates of both parties. The New Agenda is on the right track, and apparently, threatening to those who are intent on preserving the status quo, who are afraid to be self-determining outside the political and mental confines of “right-left”.
This is more in regards to another post, but posting it here in case the other post is dead:
I love my cousin even though she holds very conservative views on politics and I hold very liberal ones. She’s wonderful as a person, and it doesn’t matter if we don’t agree on everything.
But I would never in a million years vote for her for any kind of powerful leadership position. I disagree with her views–i.e., I’m going to vote for more reliably liberal leaders.
I would never vote for someone who holds such harmful views as Palin, man or woman. I’m voting for Jerry Brown for governor in CA because he supports many liberal policies including (very significantly) gay marriage–which Meg Whitman strongly opposes.
I’m not voting for a homophobe just because she’s a woman. If Jerry Brown were a woman, that would be even better, but he’s not–but he’s still the better choice in this case.
Basically what I’m saying is that I want female leaders, but my first and foremost concern is getting the best leader, whether that’s a man or a woman.
I can understand your sentiments on a level, Kathryn.
My personal philosophy to voting is:
1. vote for the woman if she is clearly the most qualified / has the best policy.
2. vote for the woman is she is equal with her male oppositions in terms of qualifications and policy.
3. vote for the woman if she is somewhat less qualified in terms of policy/ experience, etc.
4. vote for the man if the woman is dangerously unqualified or has dangerous policy.
The caveat with number 4 is this: how often do I let #4 get in the way of me voting for the woman? Is it to the point where time and time again I am voting male over female? I think we must reflect on how we vote and also take the time to analyze our past decisions.
I would love to ask women Obama supporters if they still feel that Obama was the far superior choice over Hillary and I think we should all ask ourselves that same question, in retrospect, after we vote male over female.
“The caveat with number 4 is this: how often do I let #4 get in the way of me voting for the woman? Is it to the point where time and time again I am voting male over female? I think we must reflect on how we vote and also take the time to analyze our past decisions.”
Alison, this should be skywritten over all major cities. This is the question that women won’t answer honestly, and that must be answered honestly if we’re ever to get out of the permanent ditch we’ve been in quite literally since the species arose.
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