Article 1 - "EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE, YIN STYLE" by Jessica Kuzmier October 2008 edition of First Church of The Streets

      The place of women seems to be some kind of temperature of its society. The United States, while considering it to be a bastion of democracy and human rights, has in recent times appeared to be lagging behind its international counterparts in terms of what Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has called the highest glass ceiling in the nation. Fifty-seven countries including Canada, France, New Zealand, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland and Latin counties known for machismo like Argentina, Panama, Nicaragua and Chile have elected a female as its head of state. The Untied States, lagging behind, has only recently achieved having a woman in the number three position, the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

     When Senator Hillary Clinton was seeking the Democratic nomination, this subject of why the United States hasn't had a woman president before seemed to come up a lot in conversations and the media I heard. Especially in light of the election of Angela Merkel as Germany's chancellor, it really seemed like the United States was too macho for its britches. It seemed like to many who were upset about the lack of female representation in the States' highest office, that we were experiencing a kind of democracy tantamount to before 1920, where one was talking about how free the nation was, but yet half of the adult population was experiencing pre-1776 conditions, namely, taxation without representation. Sure, you could rationalize that daddy or hubby was going to represent everyone, but daddy didn't represent his adult sons and hubby didn't represent his bachelor brothers. So pre-suffrage days amounted to taxation without representation.

     Universal suffrage, of course, has eliminated this most basic of problems and created voting as being an inherent right of all adult citizens who haven't . But representation post suffrage has become somewhat of an issue as well. If all the delegates of a party, or all the legislators, are white males, then how adequately represented are the rest of the people? The amount of women in congress and the Senate has become an issue to some people, as represented by websites such as Equal Representation in Government. Over the years I have heard in various media a call to arms to have more equal representation in the legislative branch. This seemed to reach a fever pitch with Hillary Clinton seeking the presidential nomination: how soon would a woman would occupy the White House as Commander-in-Chief.

     With Sarah Palin potentially occupying the number two spot, this question of executive authority is still in question, although the only way Palin can occupy the White House at this point is through a Geena Davis move. With all the attention on Palin's qualifications or lack of them, it seems in many ways that Republican nominee John McCain has been effectively killed off. There are pundits who speculate about the Senator's melanoma and his age, and assume that Palin would definitely occupy the White House at some time along the next eight years. In all this speculation over Palin, it is best to keep an eye on John McCain, because he may very well retire in the next eight years as our forty-fourth president and swap Navy stories in one of his wife's condos. His making it to eighty after working in Washington, despite health problems, is not really all that hard to imagine.

     But suffice it to say, the United States has acquired another female vice presidential candidate, and this is a good thing. Feminism is something that may have been the spark of this matter. Governor Sarah Palin dedicated her successful nomination to suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Senator Hillary Clinton. In her rhetoric, eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling took place when people decided to vote for the Senator from New York over the one from Illinois.

     How much feminism has to do with Palin's success is up for question, as many have pointed out that Palin's social positions have more in common with Christian conservatives than mainstream feminism. But this statement assumes that all feminists are pro-choice and for gun control. As some pro-life feminists who support Governor Palin have pointed out, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were staunchly against abortion. Very few people seem to doubt the feminist credentials of these heroes. Many outdoorswomen enjoy their guns, and don't see anything wrong with them for self-defense and particularly, hunting. To say that if someone can only be a feminist if they hate guns is to really say in the long run that all feminists must be vegetarians.

     Feminism has gone through many permutations over the decades. From the suffragists, known as the first wave of feminists, to the women of the seventies, known as the second wave of feminism, this phenomenon has taken many shapes in the cultures that surround it. From the right to vote to the right to property to the right of self-determination, feminism is a philosophy that has meant so many things that it is hard to know what this is all means at this point.

     For example, many people equate the privilege to privacy with regards to abortion rights as being a platform of feminists. But Governor Palin, who calls herself a feminist, is anti-abortion in all cases unless the woman's life is in danger. Many people may be surprised that one can be feminist and anti-abortion. However, the group Feminists for Life asserts that not only this is possible, but that "refusing to choose" is the only real option that helps women. It would seem to these people that abortion may actually be anti-feminist, putting a woman in a position to destroy the life she carries and damage her psyche. Feminists for Life feels abortion is patriarchal, giving into the assumption that being non-pregnant is ideal, hence male. They feel a good feminist will stand up to this most female condition instead of caving in and getting abortions to be acceptable to a masculine way of physicality. So even the most obvious platform of legalized abortion is not necessarily a feminist position, at least from this point of view.

     Balancing work and family life has also been an issue that has seen many cycles. Betty Friedan's work, "The Feminist Mystique", unearthed the problem that seemed to have no name. This was the phenomenon of educated women staying at home with their children, the husband the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker. Motherhood was venerated as being the most important job in the world, but in a capitalist society, it was worth nothing. So many women were in effect, working years for free, vulnerable to their breadwinner pulling the rug, whether through death, illness, divorce or abandonment.

     Friedan's work was the first major treatise which explored the disillusionment of women who gave up their identities to be the wife and mother they were supposed to be as women. Thus, a rallying cry of feminism became that women should be encouraged to work and have a family, and that the emphasis for women should be work to express herself and support herself. In other words, a woman should be encouraged as a youngster to focus on obtaining a career rather than a husband. She may not ever find the husband, or he may turn out to be a jerk, but she will always have a career to fall back on.

     This ground seems to have made a lot more consensus, as very few people suggest that women should not obtain education and pursue a career that is good enough for her to maintain an apartment or other some other self-sustaining lifestyle. Those who think this way are considered seriously out of touch by even many very conservative people. Sarah Palin, herself an evangelical Christian, studied to be a journalist and was a sports reporter after she finished school. Even as a mother, she has obviously chosen to pursue an outside career as a public servant. Some question if a mother with young children would be able to be commander-in-chief one day. But this statement is not a universal battle cry, which shows that the tenet of feminism promoting mothers with outside careers has become much more mainstream.

     However, women who try to balance a family life and career still seem to have more uphill battles than their male counterparts. "The Feminine Mistake" cites many of the problems women encounter in the workforce, many times before they even get married. There is some assumption that one day, they will get married and demand some kind of flex time, or at least paid maternity leave.

     It is also seems like a woman will be more likely to put aside a career than a man would, and if it comes down to whose career comes first, it is the man's. What Bennetts explores is the vulnerability that a woman puts herself in when she sets aside her career for family, and the social implications it creates. Still, many women still feel compelled for various reasons that they should set aside their career for family, seeing as whatever they do in the workplace is secondary to what happens in the family. To Bennetts, this shows how little parity has been achieved. After all, most men don't think of quitting the workforce completely just because of family concerns. The fact that women consider their careers to be dispensable seems to her that women still have a long way to go, baby.

     Sarah Palin, obviously, was a woman who didn't quit her job to stay home with the kids. While governor, she gave birth to her fifth child, a baby with Down's Syndrome. With the exception of her oldest child, all of her offspring are minors. Palin then becomes a symbol to either show that women with children can handle the pressures of being a commander-in-chief, or she can't. One might point out that no one is asking if Barack Obama can handle the job because of his minor children. Of course, he has a wife.

     Even this tenet of feminism, that of a woman working to support herself, has taken somewhat of a beating in recent years. So-called second wave feminists are puzzled by what they see as voluntary backlash against the advances they made in the working world by the very women they fought for. The school of "feminism of choice" insists that for feminism to be total in meaning, a woman should have the choice to not work. In this school, to not allow the choice for stay-at-home parenting is not really allowing the full range of freedom. Which then, of course, sets up a divide on a couple of fronts. One is generational, as most boomer feminists are not going to be saying that women should stay at home with no income of her own, thinking of their own Feminine Mystique mothers.

     On another front, there are women who just refuse to call themselves feminists, and this apparent insistence of putting one's personal career over family is one reason why they don't want to be called feminists. Feminists are just too angry and too hard. Perhaps this is a result of what Christina Hoff Sommers calls "equity feminism" dissolving into "gender feminism". Equity feminism is allowing women equal access to the same freedoms that men enjoy. This would include equal access to education, voting right, work, the right to own property, and the right to equal pay for equal work. The original suffragists were these type of feminists, and few people will voice opposition to these kinds of rights.

     "Gender feminists" are people who believe that there is a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women in line, and to keep them inferior. This kind of feminism is the type that finds classic liberalism sexist because women are missing from the picture of literature and history, and find it necessary to get angry. They believe in pandemic violence against women, and find it necessary to teach women that they are victims. Sommers writes about these instances of feminist philosophers in her book, "Who Stole Feminism?", and how some of these people are teachers of higher learning. She cites examples of students who are feminists, including men, who find themselves turned off by feminism when they hear what amounts to indoctrination that patriarchy is plotting women's destruction. Most people want to be able to get a divorce if they are in a bad marriage, but that doesn't mean that they want to hate men. Women I have met in my age bracket scoff at the feminist theory that they need to support themselves just in case of the marriage collapsing sometime in the distant future. This seems like more of the same angry gender feminism, and they want to be able to exercise their right to stay home, not caring if the second wave sees their "retreat" as a backlash of patriarchy reenacting sending Rosie the Riveter back home to be Suzy Homemaker. They see it as a different extension of their professional careers.

     In this culture, one finds people in 1950's situations, where the man is the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker. They live on one paycheck, and she spends her profession as a mother and wife. This lifestyle has become known as working from home, and only an obtuse person would ever suggest that a person who tries to run a household is just sitting around eating bon-bons. Salary.com calculated how much a stay-at-home mother is worth, based on all the attendant jobs that she performs. The figure they arrived at, as of May 2007, was 138,000 dollars per annum. Unfortunately, the reason why one needs to go to sites like Salary.com to find this calculation is because no one really knows what the salary for a stay-at-home wife is, including those in the profession themselves. Simply because, there is no salary.

     In a capitalist society, the "most important job in the world" is worth absolutely nothing. Flipping burgers in a fast food restaurant ranks higher. Waitressing and clerking in Wal-Mart may be part of the pink-collar ghetto, but they at least get a paycheck. Those who call themselves feminists, like Palin, and have power to change policy, should think to change that. Making excuses like it's not our problem, don't tax the taxpayer, is evasive, because individualism is more a myth than anything else. A person is dependent on the environment around him to give him a job and the necessary supplies to survive.

     In this light of so-called individualism, a family going bankrupt and foreclosing because the sole breadwinner lost his job, and his spouse was out of the workplace too long to get any decent job may just sound like someone was using poor planning. But enough bankruptcies and foreclosures happen, and then it affects everyone else, as we have been seeing in recent months. The myth of not my problem is evaporating quicker than a budget surplus in Washington. Perhaps it is not so much that one should hand out a publicly funded check to a woman who stays home with children, but if a family goes belly-up because of the foreclosure crisis or the breadwinner getting laid off, there should be some type of grace note for a woman who thought that being with her family was the highest priority she could have. Perhaps she could receive some grant for education, or internship using the skills she acquired as a homemaker. After all, this was the most important job in the world, right?

     The one thing that may really be a question against Sarah Palin's credentials as a feminist is the treatment of her pregnant daughter, Bristol. Unless you have lived under a rock for the last month or so, it has been revealed that the vice-presidential candidate's seventeen year old daughter is pregnant by her eighteen year old boyfriend. This led to an announcement that the teen, still in high school, would marry the father of her baby. Sounds all swell and family-like, but if Palin is a feminist who ostensibly wants the best for all unwed mothers, there was no mention of postponement of the nuptials until after Bristol finished college. In fact, no mention of college was even brought up. Not even classes in night school. It would seem that if one wanted to be pro-woman in this case, the feminist governor, who obtained a college degree herself before getting married, would have at least brought up the subject to the soon to be blushing bride. Which she may have, but her public record has more or less just shown her pride at becoming a grandmother soon.

     Palin's problem may not necessarily be that she is against abortion rights. There is certainly an argument that abortion is not a true reflection of one's feminist views. One could be a misogynist, think pregnancy disgusting, and expect a woman who is pregnant to get an abortion, thinking that nothing is necessary to assist a woman. One could think that abortion causes violence, and encourage women to stand up for the rights of women and children, no matter what their status. So Palin's record against abortion is not really the biggest problem with her record calling herself a feminist, as long as she does as much as possible to assist those who are going through the situation of a difficult pregnancy. Some may argue that if someone gets pregnant, it's her problem, and she should figure it out herself, not be a burden on the taxpayer. But that is Feminists for Life's point: people have been saying this all along, and this is why women seek abortions whether they are legal or not. If reducing or eliminating abortion is important, this attitude has to go.

     Feminists for Life's mission is in the end, to "eliminate the root causes of abortion". In other words, instead of just making the procedure illegal, they want to address the reasons why females choose abortion to begin with. After all, if the procedure were to become illegal tomorrow, it isn't as though people would all of the sudden never get an abortion. Many people of a certain generation remember stories of back alley abortions. Patricia C. Miller, author of "The Worst of Times", was one of the lawyers who agitated for the legalization of abortion in 1967 Colorado. For her book, she interviewed many people who gave abortions, had illegal abortions, or were doctors who had patients who had aborted. It may seem obvious that simply assuaging collective guilt by making abortion illegal will not magically make the procedure go away. Clearly, to reduce abortion, one must help the women who are making these decisions to not feel cornered to do so. Feminists for Life claims to support policy that will allow women more choice in keeping a pregnancy to term.

     Supporting her teenaged daughter's pregnancy notwithstanding, many question how much Feminists For Life member Sarah Palin has done for women to make it easier for them not to have abortions. The Washington Post has cited that as governor, Palin cut funding for Covenant House Alaska by twenty per cent. This place is a halfway house to help teenaged mothers gain necessary skills to deal with raising an unexpected child. Opposing this statistic are those who say that Covenant House Funding was not actually cut. Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College, claims in his blog the statistics indicate that Covenant House had requested 10 million in additional funding, which Palin cut to 3.9 million dollars. This would be on top of the 3 million dollars that usually was allocated in the budget, netting 6.9 million dollars in funding. This, of course, would lead to a net gain for the organization. Additional funding would appear to be a feminist position, so in this respect this is a feminist position.

     Maybe more in question is taking a hardline against abortion, to the point where a woman who is raped or a girl incested by a relative is unable to have the choice to terminate a pregnancy after trauma. Or for a woman with serious health problems to have the choice to abort earlier in the pregnancy, only to risk complications or a more complicated abortion later on in gestation, or have to go through the medical risks of a caesarian. Certainly it would be more humane for both mother and unborn child if a woman were able to abort early in the pregnancy than to wait until near-viability, when the mother is nearly dying and the fetus is almost ready to live on its own. So physical risk of any kind, as determined by a doctor, should remain as an option for a woman to abort in a pro-life regime.

     The premise of the Human Life Amendment, of which Palin seems to agree with even while there seems to be no record of her supporting it, would stipulate that in cases of serious health problems or sexual assault, while difficult for the woman, it is still not a good reason for a woman to abort, because the Constitution allows for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Self-defense is the only logical reason to kill anyone. A baby is a human life form, so self-defense is the only ground for abortion. Physical trauma from rape or illness that does not put the woman's life in jeopardy in an immediate sense is not self-defense, and hence not legitimate grounds for abortion. Palin seems to agree with this platform of grounds.

     Of course, this premise seems to skim over the fact that one may kill in self-defense when one is unsure if a person was going to kill him first, such as a burglar or a mugger. To find the gray area in these situations is not so hard to find, and a sympathetic story can usually be turned for a person who kills in these circumstances to be under duress. For instance, a woman who has been battered but not in imminent danger who kills her husband can usually find a sympathetic jury and be let off with a relatively light sentence. The case of Mary Winkler, the woman convicted of manslaughter for the firearm killing of her husband Matthew Winkler, is such an example. Similarly, a female with serious health problems or the victim of rape may be in this strange gray area. She could not be literally in danger now, but her weakened physical condition could make the pregnancy all the more dangerous to her. One can give her advice, and she should be able to refuse to have any procedure that doesn't agree with her morality. Any abortion policy that is being pro-woman by prohibiting abortion should include at least these three grounds available when one is confronted to it. Finally, the consequences of eradicating a cultural norm without the input of women as a whole seems a bit of a backlash. After all, feminists have claimed that the problem with society is that they have decided life decisions for women, thinking them too deceived or delicate to handle the choice.

     If rendering abortion illegal is so pro-women, then it needs to be decision that comes before women themselves, not decided by what amounts to eight robed men and one token woman, or a legislative body comprised of mostly men. A public referendum would allow both private men and women to decide what they would prefer, and if one wants to eradicate this law, this seems the only feminist way of going about it. After all, feminists feel that life decisions have been made for women without their personal input. It would be feminist to allow the decision of legalized abortion to rest in the hands of the public, who would include Jane Q. Citizen.

     Whether pro-life or pro-choice, pregnant women should be given the needed protection to get through their pregnancy, whether through shelters or medical treatment. If the government goes back on the abortion law which has been the law of the land long enough for women born during its legalization to hear their biological clocks ticking, it should hold ultimate responsibility in this front. Willing to go public record to eradicate a cultural norm and all of the sudden pulling a bait and switch calling on the private sector is the same nonsense we have heard over jobs, education, and health care. The supposedly necessary 700 billion dollar public bailout of the financial sector is an example of this divided identity. It seems to give lip service to life but will do nothing to protect it in the long term.

     Sarah Palin, a fiscal conservative, needs to show she protects women by allowing the government to protect the rights of pregnant women, and not pull the rug from under them when they are in trouble. Her apparent lack of knowledge that victims of rape had to pay for their own rape kits while mayor of her city does not really help this pro-life feminist image. Nor does ignorance help her; in this case, it seems she is oblivious to what is going on in her administration, which doesn't help her image as a competent executive.

     My choice in arguing these finer points of working women and abortion rights, two common themes on feminist platforms, is to suggest that if one is to criticize Governor Palin, it is important to critique her record and not her personal history. To give some credence to these kinds of critics, Palin does open herself for personal criticism if she cites being a mother of five as being a qualification for veep. With her evangelical Christianity and pregnant daughter, the record becomes skewed. But this is just one ground that she has cited.

     In her interview with Katie Couric, Palin cites foreign policy experience because of her tenure as governor of a state that is surrounded by foreign territory. Criticizing this record is legitimate, though to my amusement I have heard pundits calling this kind of criticism of her being unfair. The fact that Palin felt "mocked" over her foreign policy record is something she needs to get over. As vice-president, she is going to have to become immune to criticism, as there are people who are looking to see if she is tough enough to handle the job. Mocking, Saturday Night Live skits, sneaky journalists, and ranting bloggers are just part of the package. She needs to fit into the job as it is, not expect people be nice to her just because she is a hockey mom.

     Perhaps it is just as likely that she never felt mocked at all. Rather, she is making the emotional appeal to those who can't stand to see a woman attacked, if only verbally and even if it is by another woman like Couric. Playing the cutie-pie sweetheart to garner sympathy, if she is doing this, is not particularly feminist either. Feminists, first or second wave, have worked so that women will stand on their own credentials and not play the seductive siren, whether adorable or sexual. Palin seems to be an intelligent person, and this is the person we need to see on Air Force Two. Not a caricature that is performed nearly verbatim by a comedic performer and writer like Tina Fey.

     Regardless of the controversy, Sarah Palin is an example of how feminism has changed over the years. From the time of Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, when married women couldn't even hold onto their own property, enter most professions, or vote, to now, when even the more traditionally conservative Republican Party is sporting a female candidate, things have definitely changed for the so-called weaker sex. The fact that people are making an issue of Palin being a woman one way or the other shows that total integration of women into all facets of society is still not a given. After all, no one seems to care that McCain is a Protestant. Catholics on the presidential ticket are pretty unusual, but Joe Biden's religion is generally mentioned in passing as being an asset to scoop up certain voters in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. It would seem that if women were really equals, we would only hear about Palin's gender in the same incidental manner, rather than being a lure just because she is a woman for those who voted for Senator Clinton in the primary. This mentality assumes a woman is just a woman no matter what dress she is in. Seeing women as individuals with their own merits and detractions would seem to be a better goal to aspire to.

     Perhaps what would also be indicative of true equality, besides near invisibility of Palin's or any other woman's demographics, would be the ability to focus on critical issues of the individual and their supports rather than what their assigned demographic role should be. In other words, instead of worrying about what women should be doing or whether blacks are acting too white or too black become a moot point, just as few people are concerned that Joe Biden or Chief Justice John Roberts will put the Pope before the good of the country. Certainly, if American culture has gotten over so-called Italian or Irish inferiority enough for it to be something that is nearly superfluous, it is possible to look past gender and race. Worrying about whether "a woman can hold the job" when the job is not even physical in nature seems silly nowadays, but there are people who wonder about that. If sexism is truly overcome, this kind of thinking will be a relic of the past, not part of the job interview. The question will be, can this person fulfill the job due to her resume, not can she handle it as a woman, or a wife, or a mother.

Sources:

Interview of Sarah Palin by Katie Couric, "CBS Evening News", September 24-25, 2008
"Palin Slashed Funding for Teenaged Moms", Paul Kane. washingtonpost.com, September 2, 2008
"Sarah Palin signed a budget increasing funding for troubled youth", Dr. Warren Throckmorton. classifieds.crosswalk.com/blogs/EWThrockmorton/11581311/, September 3, 2008
Bennetts, Leslie: The Feminine Mistake. New York: Hyperion. c 2007
McMillen, Sally G.: Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement. New York: Oxford University Press. c. 2008
Miller, Patricia G.: The Worst of Times. New York: Harpercollins. c. 1993
Rymph, Catherine E.: Republican Women : Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. c 2006
Sommers, Christina Hoff: Who Stole Feminism? New York: Simon and Schuster. c.1994
CNN.com, "Minister's parents balk at convicted mother visiting kids", December 11, 2007, www.cnn.com
CNN.com, "Palin's town charged women for rape exams", by Jessica Yellin, September 22, 2008 www.cnn.com
Feminists for Life, www.feministsforlife.org
Equal Representation in Government, Women Prime Ministers and Presidents www.ergd.org
The Human Life Amendment, History and Background, www.humanlifeamendment.info
Kiplinger.com, "Moms and Money", Janet Bodnar. May 11, 2007 www.kiplinger.com