However, I am beyond sick and tired of the way she is being treated. If you have a beef with her stances on the issues, please debate and show her ideas/positions up as being false, selfish, uninformed, extreme, unrealistic, and destructive. This takes brainwork, but there is plenty of fodder by which to bring Sarah Palin down. What is not called for is reducing her to an object or sexual outlet. First of all, its too easy and second, its just plain "not right."
I expect many members of the Republican party to have sexist views, for them to talk, act, and vote in ways that suppress women or take away their liberties and freedoms. I expect that party to feel entitled to make chauvinistic derisive comments. Its who they are. They, too often, are filled with animosity, disdain, and resentment. Those feelings spill over onto "others." What I was not quite expecting was for fellow democrats to take on the once conservative mantra of "at all costs" and "whatever it takes." I have been disheartened with each belittling, misogynist phrase uttered each week by Bill Maher on his HBO series Real Time. I was disheartened by the throngs of democrats who laughed along and added their own hateful diatribes. And now, I learn that some democrats are purchasing and proudly wearing shirts with words describing Sarah Palin in such "hate speech" ways. None of us would stand for shirts that reduced Obama in such racist ways, why would we buy or condone shirts with such anti-woman slogans?
I have two ways of thinking about this sexist travesty. First, if we want to call ourselves true democrats or progressives, we do not condone the wearing of shirts which demean, objectify, and dehumanize more than half our party. When you call a woman a "cunt," you really call all women "cunts." Just like most feminists do not believe you can be anti-choice and still be a true feminist, the same holds true for democrats. You cannot vilify one gender and still be a democrat/progressive. If you want to make fun of, leer at, demean and degrade women, then coin a new party. Call yourselves "The Assholes," because you certainly do not belong in the party of humanism, the party of "we."
Now, the more cynical side of me wonders: Why was I so shocked? Come on, why be surprised? There is one fact, honest and true, that crosses party lines: Women are not valued in our culture unless they are selling "the man" what he wants. Sex. People are not so enraged by Palin because she is so far to the right of most in our party. No, what has so many men's goat, is that she is a woman. How dare she! How dare a woman think she can leap from male fantasies and be taken seriously? How dare women think they have a place anywhere but in men's masturbatory thoughts? Afterall, millions of women are spread across the web highway showing men what they really are, what they really want. Men move from their computer terminal where every Tori, Daisy, and Holly is being stuffed full of cock. So, they walk to the television and see Sarah Palin. Who the fuck does she think she is?
She is just a hole. She should shut up, go back home, take care of her kids, or put back on that pageant sash. Right, guys? Is that it? And let's not forget the women who don such repulsive shirts thinking they are so "hip" and "cool." None of you are. You are destructive to our party and to women in general. I could get into a big long discussion about why women take part in the fellow destruction of women, but I will save that for another day.
For now, enough is enough. If you act like a pig, you are a pig. With or without lipstick.
