From LJ

I've decided to put all of my feminist rants in one place from now on. LJ will be about my personal life, feminist rants here. Here's an entry I wrote on LJ not long ago.

So while I'm on the topic of feminism...I'm going to link to this blog I came across and have been reading, and getting infuriated about...

MANY of her entries are about the evils of Barack Obama...and this woman, who owns the domain name RECLUSIVE LEFTIST was encouraging her readership to vote against the Democratic candidate. She does so under the guise of the higher calling of voting for feminism. And vehemently repeats how Barack Obama is misogynist. I have a few thoughts about this, as I do everything.

For one, I am happy that someone is talking about how sexist Obama's campaign was against Hillary Clinton in the primary. Many people were eager to jump on how racist Clinton was (which is true) but unfortunately, they are both to blame for their respective -isms. This particular blogger is more than happy to ignore Clinton's -ism. Next, because this writer is so thoroughly convinced of Obama's sexism, and because Palin was on the other ticket, she implicitly* endorsed McCain/Palin. This is where she has TOTALLY lost me. It goes to the whole mindless side of feminist policitcs...aka "Let's vote for a woman, because a woman is inherently less sexist than a man." I mean, if she was going to endorse someone, through this route, shouldn't it at least be a third party candidate (like McKinney/Clemente, the Green Party...two women)? And aren't we forgetting a little someone, named John McCain. McCain is NOT (and I repeat) NOT a feminist. Additionally, as I have discussed at length, a vote for Palin is a vote *against* women. Why hasn't this blogger noticed this? She writes at length about reproductive rights, but endorsed Palin? She even writes that if Obama was a supreme court apointee, he'd be in the Scalia block! No mention of McCain again? What??

Now, I am all for not blindly voting along party lines. Just because she is liberal doesn't mean she has to vote for Obama, but with her every word, she just seems to negate any reason in my mind that she should have voted for McCain. She espouses "Democrats for principle before party." What's the principle? I don't get it.

The whole blog just reeks of an out dated form of feminism...the kind that's hyper-focused on the middle aged white female experience. So while, it takes all kinds of feminists to make the movement push forward, and I'm happy she's talking very frankly about feminism in an open forum...it's just not for me. Of course, she'd try to strip me of my feminist badge for voting for Obama, but I won't give it up that easy. NO ONE is perfect...not even Obama. The smartest people are the ones who realize that and who are going to keep asking the Obama administration the hard questions and compel him to be a better leader...and keep his sexism in check. Just like we'd have to do with Clinton's racism, had she been president.


*I have read several of her blogs, none of which openly endorsed McCain/Palin, so I'm going with "implictly" since I don't know for sure. She bashes McCain a little here and there...but because Palin is on the ticket seems to not mind him too much.