As the Democrats’ talking points remind us ad nauseam, Hillary Clinton put eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling. They’d love to see a woman in the White House. They care about women’s issues. They would never hold a candidate’s gender against her.

No sir, no sexism here.

Of course, their real problem with Palin isn’t that she’s a woman. Pawlenty, Ridge, or Romney would have come in for the same vituperation from the progressive blogosphere: the issue is…well, the issues. Palin is against abortion and for guns; she supports abstinence-only education and “teaching the controversy.” And yet the attacks focus on her sex.

From snide comments about her second-place finish for Miss Alaska, to Daily Kos arguments about whether she’s a good mother (now, in a shocking display of good sense, apparently deleted — but Google never fails), Sarah Palin’s sex is never far from the fore. Is she inexperienced? It must be because she hasn’t worried her pretty little beauty queen head about politics. Can she be President? But she has a baby!

Sarah Palin stands outside the left-wing consensus about women’s issues, so she’s forfeited the courtesy of soi-disant feminists. Her stances disqualify her from women’s hard-won refuge from sexism — if she doesn’t defend our issues, the progressive mainstream seems to say, she doesn’t get the benefits either.

She’s a woman, but she doesn’t think the things that women are supposed to think, so they don’t have to treat her with the respect and equality that they say women deserve. By being “anti-woman,” Palin has become an Anti-Woman — so, ironically, sexist and anti-woman attacks are acceptable.

Forget about listening to women’s voices: maybe we should just put a man in charge.

Tags: hypocrisy, Sarah Palin, Sexism

Posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.