On the heels of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference, held in Washington, DC last week) there is forward-looking momentum among young leaders of conservatism. Among the many troubling visions to emerge from CPAC is one to quash feminism. As CBS reported, one first year college woman said that "the female movement has gone on towards feminism and liberalism and really taken the wrong track." Although she wasn't present, Sarah Palin was admired as a leader, and Sarah Huckabee, Mike Huckabee's wife, addressed conference attendees: "Asked if she had experienced sexism in politics, Sarah Huckabee told the audience said she hadn't encountered much hardship working as a political operative out of the public eye, quipping that 'women can do a lot more than any man…We're naturally born multi-taskers.'" To celebrate one's own achievements is laudable, but to presume that socially constructed gender roles are fixed and to conclude that womanly skills are a fair trade-off for oppression runs full circle back to propagating sexism.
Besides the high-level anti-feminist messaging, there was a more insidious sexism lurking. The Daily Caller made a movie featuring some of the young women at CPAC, which, as Salon wrote, was designed to "illuminate The Caller's opinion on their reason for being there: Boys, boys, boys! Also: Looking cute."
In a snarky post about the video, Pandagon wrote, "Attention young losers! Are you sick of hot women running away from you because they see that copy of Atlas Shrugged under your arm and that anti-choice sticker on your backpack? Have you decided all of femalekind is just too simple-minded to understand your incredible intellect, your John Galt-ish superiority? Do you blame your lack of a sex life on the feminists, who have poisoned women into thinking they can just date who they like, and that they deserve men who do emasculating things like listening and respecting their intelligence?...Then come to CPAC, where we round up all sorts of hot ladies pre-screened to make sure they share most of your views!"
Also among the glaringly gendered CPAC festivities: bashing a Nancy Pelosi piñata (for the ladies) and smacking a Harry Reid punching bag (for the gents), according to Think Progress. -TLF
Monday, February 22, 2010
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4 comments:
I'm sorry, but I fail to see this as a roundup of sexism at the CPAC. I do see a decent amount of sexism, I suppose, in the Daily Caller's choice of questions and obsession with "cute, conservative boys," and an even more interesting dose of sexism in the comments on the Salon site responding to it ("I fucked a Republican once... came right in her opera gloves", along with a number of evaluations on how cute the female republicans were or weren't).
But, reading Sarah Huckabee's statements about women on the CBS site, I fail to see that anything she said was terribly anti-feminist. Besides her failure to believe that gender is a purely social construction--a view which, however accurate it may be, is certainly not mainstream--she seemed to be saying nothing much in particular.
Again, I don't doubt there's a plethora of anti-feminist activities occurring at the CPAC. Only, I don't know that these were the best examples of them.
Marshall,
This post was written by Sara, but if you'll allow me to elaborate...I think it's important to name gender stereotyping as sexism. Sarah Huckabee's statements didn't come off as misogynist, per se, but that doesn't mean that her beliefs don't play into divisive, and yes, vicious ideas about men and women. Mrs. Huckabee employs an admirable can-do attitude about so-called women's work, noting that women are born multitaskers, that they're hard-working and industrious. But her words confirm the gendered division of labor in the home. That division, however retrograde it seems, still exists and still serves to screw women when it comes to career advancement. (Actually, I'm going to post commentary by Jean about this very topic later today.) Sarah Huckabee's statements also dovetail nicely with the Daily Caller's video. What struck me most about that video--beyond the scene when the videographer films an uncomfortable woman in spite of her efforts to walk away from him--was that the guy with the camera kept badgering these women, saying there must *must* be some reason for their attendance beyond the fact that they actually enjoy conservative politics (his theory is that they wanted to pick up guys). It's nauseating that these women can't enjoy the conference without drawing the good-natured suspicion of their fellow attendees. The gendered division of labor in the home, as advocated by Sarah Huckabee with her seemingly-innocuous "multitasking" statement, only serves to feed this suspicion. When you believe that women are genetically predisposed to take care of home and hearth, then their involvement in politics or their gainful employment seems, well, questionable.
Hi Marshall, and thanks Naomi for chiming in,
I do agree that there's no explicit misogyny is Huckabee's statement. In fact, it props women up as superior in some ways to men. But this type of reasoning does contribute to reenforcing gender roles, in turn reenforcing and encouraging the accompanying sexism. I definitely agree with Naomi on this point.
I think it's also worth checking out Jessica Valenti's op-ed in The Washington Post that I blogged about earlier today , in which she points out that women's accomplishments don't mean sexism is over. Huckabee talks about women's virtues, which is certainly preferable to talking about women's shortcomings, but it does a disservice to women, suggesting that they have specific, appropriate roles (noting, also, that the address is given not by a pol but by a politician's wife) that are suitable for them.
You know, I understand your point, but I have to say that I'm really uncomfortable with calling Sarah Huckabee's comments sexist. It seems like ideological nitpicking to take that one comment (namely, that women are "natural born multi-taskers") as evidence of her anti-feminism. I see it as evidence that she believes that men and women are "naturally" different and have "naturally" different strengths or weaknesses... of course, I'm adding the fact that I know she's appearing as a social conservative at a conservative conference to the context that allows me to draw that conclusion from her statements.
This argument (that men & women are different), though, isn't necessarily an anti-feminist argument. I've heard my mother (a socially conservative, politically active woman) make similar arguments: men and women are different, and while we shouldn't allow for institutional sexism, many of those old-timey "sexist" institutions actually served to protect women's interests more than the sexual liberation that came out of the 60s and 70s. I don't agree with my mother on this and many points, but I think it's counterproductive to dismiss the disagreement out-of-hand as being inherently sexist and/or anti-feminist. It reminds me to a large extent of an Evangelical Student of mine's insistence that Catholics weren't Christian because they didn't share her beliefs of what Christian should be.
What I find much more interesting about all this is the bizarre reversal of rhetoric that seems to have taken place with respect to women at CPAC. It's conservative women (who are pro-life, generally opposed to what they would call "outcome-based" anti-sexism laws, and probably favor abstinence-only sex education, not to mention forcing young women to dress "modestly") who are adopting feminist rhetoric, while liberal commenters on Salon.com are making the same sexist comments about political women we've all come to expect: they're ugly, unfuckable bimbos.
What a weird world we live in now.
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