"Women's" issues ... admittedly not my forte, so I look to others to keep me informed. First, from Hot Air, Minnesota's Laura Brod:
This self-described “women’s” group and many like it are more interested in litmus tests on liberal social issues than on what will materially improve women’s lives in the real day-to-day world where we are raising kids, struggling to make ends meet, and hoping that we or our spouses don’t lose their job (or will find one soon).
For decades now we have talked about the glass ceiling women once faced, and to a certain extent still do. But I am more worried about the glass box that liberal feminists have placed women and “women’s issues” in, all tied up with a pretty pink bow. That glass box is all about keeping women and “women’s issues” firmly in their place on the left side of the political spectrum.
And Carol Platt Liebau at Townhall.com similarly writes on those looking at women's issues through a very narrow aperture.
All of them seem worried about the power and impact of Sarah Palin, and obviously they're right to be. After all, she's not the one sitting around and obsessing about them.
But they're also right to be worried about the status of their brand of feminism, because -- as a woman myself -- when I see this discussion about whether Sarah Palin is a "real" feminist (or rather, from this crowd, why she isn't), my first reaction is a big WHO CARES? It's all such silly lefty in-crowd chitchat.
[...]
In fact, if feminism were simply about female empowerment and independence -- as its proponents sometimes try to claim -- Palin would be its poster girl. She took on the "old boy's club" in Alaska and won; she's worked and raised a family; she's even had something of a house-husband, for Pete's sake!No, the Palin experience simply reinforces what everyone knew already: "Feminism" as used by the old-school types is nothing more than a proxy for two things: Support for abortion and big government...
Somehow, these women want us to believe that it's advancing women's interests to replace social and economic dependence on a husband with social and economic dependence on big government. (Maybe they'll reconsider their thinking if we rephrase it as "Mr. Big Government"?!)
Read both, you'll be rewarded. However, the principle applies much more broadly. Thus Sarah Palin, who has clearly accomplished a lot in her 45 years to this point, isn't someone that inspires feminists because to them feminism seems to be about a) abortion and b) independence from a man even if dependent on the government. And Clarence Thomas isn't authentic because he refuses to use racial grievance mongering as his weapon of choice.
