Amanda Marcotte: REAL women only care about girly issues!

posted at 8:28 pm on May 10, 2010 by Cassy Fiano
[ Feminist Nonsense ]   

Good news for all of you soul-searching women out there: Amanda Marcotte has come along to let us know just what issues real women care about! In an interview with Feministing (which really should tell you what’s coming right there), Amanda explained why Sarah Palin isn’t a real feminist, and what women are supposed to care about.

For me, women’s rights and liberalism are, in my mind, pretty hard to unhook, and it fascinates and amuses me that you see conservatives complain that feminists are always with the democrats, as if there’s ever going to be a form of conservative feminism. You look at someone like Sarah Palin trying to wear that mantle, and you see the flaw in trying to be a so-called conservative feminist, which is that you’re not very pro-women. Women need things for equality that tailor very neatly to the general liberal agenda: Clean environment, universal healthcare, civil rights, individual rights, bodily autonomy, things like that. I fail to see how the two agendas are all that different. The flipside, of course, is that most liberals I know, whether they call themselves feminists or not, tend to agree with the general feminist goals. The only real opposition that you see to those goals is coming from the right.

… The healthcare battles were truly awful, because Bart Stupak was allowed to run around on television, portraying himself as some kind of morally upstanding icon, whereas, what I was seeing was an idiot who didn’t understand the issues and was being duped by a bunch of Republicans. And I saw no investigation whatsoever into the fact that he had all these connections to Republicans that he wasn’t really talking about – except on The Rachel Maddow Show. That was probably the thing that has made me angriest because it nearly brought the healthcare debate to a close. And I think it’s hilarious that he’s retiring and thinks he’s the target of harassment now. He should take a day at an abortion clinic and find out what it’s really like to be a target of harassment and abuse. And of course, the thing with Stupak is that most of the threatening emails and phone callers that he was getting were from the right. They don’t take well to a perceived betrayal at all.

First of all, on Bart Stupak — the threatening e-mails and phone calls he received were from angry liberals, not conservatives, when they thought he was going to help defeat Obamacare over abortion funding. As I recall, he called it “a living hell”. And what’s funny is how, as per usual with liberals, Marcotte has a problem with a Democrat crossing the aisle to work with Republicans. Unity and bipartisanship is great for liberals, as long as it’s Republicans crossing the aisle to work with Democrats. Democrats crossing the aisle to work with Republicans is strictly forbidden.

But what interested me most was Marcotte’s take on liberalism and feminism, what a “real” feminist was, and what “real” women’s issues are. It’s not often you see someone own up to the fact that liberalism and feminism are, today, one and the same. Feminism exists solely for liberal women today. My guess is that this is probably because conservative women don’t rely on a victimhood mentality to get them what they want. Conservative women don’t want or need affirmative action or feminism to help them through life. Feminists think that women can’t do anything without their wisdom to guide them. Women must think the way feminists think and live their lives the way feminists deem appropriate.

This, of course, brings us to Sarah Palin. One might think that she would be a feminist dream. She’s smart, she’s accomplished, and she’s got a family. She is the epitome of a woman having it all. She’s got a loving husband, even though she’s clearly the one in the spotlight and the breadwinner. She’s got five beautiful children, yet she still has a powerful career. She thinks for herself, took on her own party in Alaska and beat the corruption, and has made her own way in the so-called boys club of politics. But does any of this matter to feminists? No, to them Sarah Palin can’t be a feminist simply because she’s pro-life. You’re anti-woman if you don’t believe in abortion. Be pro-life and don’t toe the feminist line, and you get dubbed an anti-feminist (a title even I received courtesy of Jessica Valenti). It’s funny, because upon a time, feminists despised abortion. Susan B. Anthony was adamently anti-abortion and Elizabeth Cady Stanton rightly called it infanticide. Modern feminists are nothing but extremist liberal harpies who have hijacked the title of “feminist” and are no more pro-woman than Margaret Sanger was pro-black.

You can see this in another part of Marcotte’s statement, that women need certain things, and they all conveniently fit into the liberal agenda. Universal health care, abortion on demand, a clean environment… these are all liberal issues, and it’s what real women are supposed to care about. (We’ve already established, remember, that if you aren’t for abortion then you aren’t a real woman). Apparently, us women are supposed to only care about easy, girly issues like abortion. Don’t worry about stuff like the 2nd Amendment, or national security, or illegal immigration, or the economy. That’s boring, manly stuff, and it doesn’t matter to women. All that matters is squishy stuff like health care and abortion.

Because hey, if you aren’t a liberal feminist extremist, then God knows you aren’t a real woman.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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