I won’t get into another tirade about how these images of disembodied fetuses that apparently hang out in balloons and have more brain power than newborns and, apparently, full grown women are inherently misogynist images that erase the autonomy and labor of women.

I saw that image and interpreted it as a fetus in a hand grenade in some sort of weird anti-abortion militaristic statement… but I think you are right, it’s a balloon.

Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!

Wow. That yard sign freaks me out. I don’t even kno where to begin with how wrong that is. Creepy.

a fetus in a hand grenade

No lie, I thought I saw a trigger.  Very odd shapes.

The knot on the balloon/uterus is definitely the hammer of a gun.

Wow. That yard sign freaks me out. I don’t even kno where to begin with how wrong that is. Creepy.

Yeah…. Wow. It’s almost like an Onion parody.

And what IS up with that thing on the ballooterus?

“And what IS up with that thing on the ballooterus?”

Sperm tail?  Ewwww

themann:

Not only do men have the right to cut off their own arms, they can get praised on talk show and write a hot-selling “as-told-to” book for doing so. Whee.

“She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts.” Well, shee-it. We all agree that’s two steps better than her running mate, but if not always shooting from the hip is really a qualification for being a heartbeat from the presidency, I’m going to have to invoke that almost-four-year-old again. Every single time, he will tell us not to back the car out of the garage unless he’s buckled in. (And yes, I realize that seatbelts and car seats are a socialist perversion without which the species would be much better off.)

The Elaine Lafferty article you linked to is possibly the most pathetic PUMA rationalization I’ve seen thus far.  I believe Elaine that Palin is smart but it was never her native intelligence or lack thereof that was a concern for me.  What frightens me about Palin is her utter lack of intellectual curiosity.  Just like GWB, she is intense ambition married to ignorance, with a hearty dollop of religious certitude on top.  She, like Bush, believes herself to be specially selected by God to carry out His mission on Earth.  She don’t need no stinking learning about SCOTUS decisions or fruit fly research.  Oy.

all the rest of the Internet drivel—the book banning at the Library, the rape kits decision—is nonsense.

Nonsense?

Ex-FUCKING-scuse me?!

Whatever. Feminist my ass. She may have once been an editor at Ms., but she’s firmly anti-feminist now, and entirely not credible.

“And what IS up with that thing on the ballooterus?”

Mark

I kinda read it as a giant overgrown sperm that somehow learned to clone itself…
It’s creepier than creepy.
I wonder if they KNOW how creepy that image is.
Still, could be worse, a foetal hand could be emerging from a va-jay with a flag…
ugh.

“She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts.”

Where is she getting this, exactly?

Because every time I’ve seen Palin appear outside of scripted stump speeches, she comes off the opposite.  Someone who is so sure that every word out of her mouth is made of gold that she’s willing to blab on just about any subject, no matter how little expertise she has on the matter or whether she even understands the question.  And, no, she’s not even good at bullshitting her way out of answering a toughie—she just soldiers on, declaring war on Russia, deciding that when Charlie Gibson says “The Bush Doctrine” he means “Some Stuff Bush Did, Or Something”. 

She also often sounds like she’s reciting memorized talking points, or worse, failing miserably at remembering or understanding the script she’s been given and just blabbing on, trying to recall a word here or there, or if not, well, whatever also. 

I guess you can say that she tries, but, well, if all you can say about someone aspiring to the second highest executive branch office in the US is “she tries”, and this is taken as a level of support of Palin’s candidacy worth publishing, we’re all in much deeper shit than we can even comprehend.

I have no idea where they’re getting the idea that the rape kit thing was debunked.  Their asses, probably.

“We’re superior, we are the earth mothers, they are just jealous and that’s why we’re being cheated, but we’re still super amazing creatures of light and love.” Bleh.

You HAVE been reading the PUMA blogs.

Seriously, on Reclusive Leftist I have seen the following arguments made in all seriousness and presented as “real” feminism: 1) that voting on abortion rights “sends the message that women are just their uteri—and nothing else”; 2) that birth control and abortion would be unnecessary were it not for patriarchy’s hostility to “healthy reproduction”; 3) that enjoying being pregnant with a wanted child is “just part of being a well-balanced, good mother, so why is it different if that fetus is unwanted?” 4) that the lack of good maternity leave policies in the U.S. comes from the “backlash” to abortion rights and the “selfish feminists” who care about those rights; 5) that we shouldn’t discriminate against people based on “geography (in utero)”; 6) that women had great power thousands of years ago because of our ability to give life, and denying that (by, say, being adamantly pro-choice) is rejecting part of one’s own womanhood—and that’s just off the top of my head.

Amanda, I think there are two, maybe 3, posts in that entry, and that separating them would’ve served them all better.

Ok.  Now WTF with an ex-editor of MS. getting in the tank for Palin!!!!????

A great white shark knows exactly who it is, too. Like Sarah Palin, it has fantastic confidence and knows precisely what it wants.

I wouldn’t want to get in the water with either one.

This is just more villagers being villagers - lining up behind the most carnivorous man/woman/thing in the lagoon, singing nonsense praises and hoping they’ll be eaten last.

A popular yard sign around here:  Pray and Vote for the Unborn.  So what popped into my head the first time I saw one?  “Heckuva job, foetus!”

I can sort of see why Lafferty might feel tempted to root for Palin, actually.

I wonder how much of it is the strain within feminism that one of our major goals should be to stick up for women, wherever they are wronged, no matter whether they’re good people or not.  I’m personally not sure how important that particular goal within feminism really is, or whether it’s any more feminist than “infidelity = BAD!” or “Oh Those Terrible Menz!”, to name a few other more knee-jerk feminism lite ideas.

But I can understand someone who sees herself as feminist taking the tack that because Palin has in some regards been wronged, it’s important to stick up for her.  Though obviously that shouldn’t trump her horrible policies or objectionably anti-feminist rhetoric.  Not to mention that one might want to remember which party she represents and what their official platform is.

I’ll also admit that I’ve felt a twinge of regret at some of the misogynistic treatment Palin has received, and especially the fact that a lot of people who agree with me seem to hate her more out of misogyny than because of her politics.

<blockquote.*Sometimes it’s true.  Some right wing women are particularly sharp people, smarter than the average bear.  But the ugly fact of the matter is a lot of those who think they’re extraordinary are just extremely useful, and may even have below average intelligence.  *cough* K-Lo *cough* </blockquote>
*cough* Ann *cough* Althouse

That’s lame that Lafferty, a former Ms. editor, is giving Palin props for “seeing, processing, questioning then acting.”  I can’t think of many creatures that don’t. Toddlers, for all their willfullness, occasionally pause and consider the consequences before acting. Even my dogs at times hesitate before doing something verboten if I’m can see them.

And that lawn sign? Creepy! I’m trying to figure out why a gas pump nozzle is connected to the dwelling space of the fetus. I’d also prefer not to think of fetuses carrying sharp, pointy things that their mothers will have to expel during the birth experience.

Opop but this is a both/and blog. I think we can say it is definitely misogynistic when people criticise Palin using any or all of the standard women-bashing tropes and I think we can all agree that that is not cool and not feminist. But at the same time we can criticise Palin for her anti-women policies and pronouncements. We can also critique the patriarchy and the way it uses women like Palin (and, indeed, the way Palin exploits the patriarchy for her own ends).

I’m all for supporting the sisterhood but that doesn’t mean I can’t also point it out when I see someone who happens to be female behaving in ways which are damaging to all women.

I wonder how much of it is the strain within feminism that one of our major goals should be to stick up for women, wherever they are wronged, no matter whether they’re good people or not.

I think there’s a difference between calling out sexist treatment of a woman who is not a good person and “sticking up for women” because they are women. I first, in my opinion, is important to feminism. I’ve felt more than a twinge at some of the sexist crap thrown at her. Combined with some of the stuff thrown at Clinton in the primary, it was a very sobering education on how we (as a society, not as feminists or women) view women in public life. But the latter is just silliness. And I agree that some people certainly seem to be confusing the two.

I can condemn a t-shirt that shows McCain doing Palin doggy-style over the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!” as misogynistic and demeaning to all women without turning that into a vote for the McCain-Palin ticket. I’m not obligated to vote for her to stick it to the sexists anymore than I’m obligated to buy Ann Coulter’s book to show solidarity with transsexuals who are insulted every time someone makes a tranny joke about Coulter.

3) that enjoying being pregnant with a wanted child is “just part of being a well-balanced, good mother, so why is it different if that fetus is unwanted?”

What the fuckety fucking fuck??!?  Spare me from these douchewipes who believe that all baby recepticles women are washed over with majickal mommy jujus by pregnancy.  Oh, and once they place the squalling mirakul frum Jeezus in your arms that glorious, and universal, maternal instinct kicks in and you forget that you didn’t want or plan for it.  But I can’t help but wonder, where does the forced birther emphasis on adoption fit in with this?  Doesn’t it necessitate at least some percentage of the baby recepticles women being callous unnatural non-maternal harlots, enough to surrender their offspring to “Loving Christian couples eager to provide a good home”?

I has problems with the HTMLs today.  I fail.  :(

What chingona said.  When gender loaded insults are used to denigrate ANY woman, regardless of her ideology, it’s a reminder from Dude Nation to all of us to stay in our places. 

I can hate Sarah Palin’s capitulation to the retrograde sexism of her fundamentalist religion and the GOP without being sexist.

That said, I often wonder how much more obvious George W. Bush’s incompetence would have been had he been female.  I think we all know the answer to that.

Lafferty: “Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts.”

You know who else was supposed to have a photographic memory?  Ronald Reagan, with whom Palin shares an adeptness at grandiose self-mythologizing and a penchant for the creeping lie. 

There’s a lot of different ways of conceptualizing and describing “intelligence,” and certainly Palin is probably well above average in being able to memorize the key points of right wing dogma on foreign and domestic policy and the names of foreign leaders, but isn’t it worrisome that she hadn’t previously thought through any of these things that she’s now learning about?  Because she really seems like someone who, until now, hadn’t thought very hard about policy, read very deeply, or asked very many questions.  Take her steadfast opposition to Roe alongside her agreement (to Katie Couric) that the Constitution guarantees a “right to privacy.”  Someone who actually knows about Roe—the foundation for and history of the decision—and who has a basic awareness of how the Supreme Court works and what it does—would have found it impossible (without lengthy possibly self-defeating explanation) to reject the decision while accepting the principle at its core.

Not to mention her clear record of unethical leadership in Alaska (Troopergate, the pipeline, the rape kits…)  No matter how smart you are, or how astonishingly amazing your ability to “see, process, and act is,” that kind of stuff is just not cool.

Intelligence needs a goal.  Before this, Palin’s intelligence was aimed at wringing out the goodies available in Wasilla, and then Juneau.  IOW, penny-ante stuff.

If she should attain higher office, or even just higher prominence, the goodies available will be bigger.  She’ll be like a cunning but small-time thief who’s been knocking over liquor stores who somehow stumbles into Fort Knox.

Then we’ll see the true range of that intelligence.

What really killed me was her answer to Couric on Ledbetter Act.  It was utterly nonsensical and insulting. 

But I can’t help but wonder, where does the forced birther emphasis on adoption fit in with this?  Doesn’t it necessitate at least some percentage of the baby recepticles women being callous unnatural non-maternal harlots, enough to surrender their offspring to “Loving Christian couples eager to provide a good home”?

Well, the context was a pro-choice woman trying to argue that anti-choice positions can be feminist (big theme on PUMA blogs—young women are out, anti-choice women are in), but the use of terms like “nature”, “well-balanced” and “good mother” really made it look as if she was taking her first baby steps towards forced-birtherdom.  I’m not sure it held together as a coherent worldview. 

Amanda’s right on target with the bit about the erasure of women’s labour.

To me the “balloon” looked like an attempt to show fetus floating in amniotic sac, as in the famous set of Life magazine photos in the 1960s (Nilssen? some Swedish photographer). The fetus fetish folks just love those pictures, despite the fact that the fetuses were photoed just before abortion.

PUMA - a brain-sucking illness.

Opop but this is a both/and blog.

Oh, I know that.  I’m just saying I can see how Lafferty might be confused and decide that it’s important to “stand up” for Palin, just out of sisterhood or whatever.  Which is a noble idea, I guess.  I mean, even my gravest enemies are still human beings and still deserve fair treatment. 

Personally, I hate Sarah Palin with the white-hot fire of a thousand suns, and have basically zero sympathy for he, even when it comes to things like misogynistic attacks, because ultimately I feel that she brought it on herself—she’s running for FemBot In Chief, you know?

But I can see how someone who calls herself feminist might be tricked into having sympathy for Palin.

Take her steadfast opposition to Roe alongside her agreement (to Katie Couric) that the Constitution guarantees a “right to privacy.” Someone who actually knows about Roe—the foundation for and history of the decision—and who has a basic awareness of how the Supreme Court works and what it does—would have found it impossible (without lengthy possibly self-defeating explanation) to reject the decision while accepting the principle at its core.

Not to mention that both she and McCain have trotted out that nifty little “I think Roe was poorly decided” cliche, which is usually code for the person saying that the constitution does not guarantee a right to privacy.

D’oh!

A few quick items:

(1) I absolutely LOVE this blog, and in particular, I’ve become a huge fan of Ms. Marcotte’s work.  I’m only sad that I hadn’t discovered it sooner; it would have saved me a lot of inarticulate inward bursts during critical arguments with opponents of choice in public settings.

(2) I am a student at Widener Law in Wilmington, where Senator Biden has been teaching for quite some time.  I work with a pro bono legal clinic on campus that especially focuses on services to victims of DV, and we have a small, but utterly committed group of attorneys who devote themselves to what is the unpopular, unglamorous and often emotionally difficult struggle to end violence against women.  Our courts are surprisingly not terrible in Delaware, but by any advocate’s standards of decency, they can be downright recalcitrant and cold.  I won’t even discuss commonplace police treatment of targeted women here.  I will say that the belief that marital rape is not “real” rape is still often unapologetically held.

Senator Biden has the respect, support and admiration of every attorney and educator I know who’s worked with him or worked in tune with the his same sincere dedication on this issue; he truly has kept it real and not let women be forgotten.  And because I believe that he is in fact so genuinely goodhearted, I know he’d hate to take all of the credit.  We have in the Delaware legal community a small cadre of what are mostly women attorneys/educators who have made this struggle their career.  They are heroes, plain and simple.  The VAWA and Senator Biden deserve all of the accolades they can get, but while I am grateful for what we’ve got in both the Act and the man behind it, I privately believe that his commitment should be ordinary and widespread amongst men, especially men with power.  He rolled up his sleeves with us; I thank him.  And now I want more men to fling their full bodies into this battle and make it end.  I want them to scream and file motions and not “stay out of it” and risk not getting tenure or risk being disliked or perceived as “angry” on behalf of these women and their children.  This is the work of everyday advocates.

Amanda, thanks again for using your extraordinary talents and energy to push all sex-inequality ideology past its various breaking points.  Today’s debators are tomorrow’s litigators and we’re watching you.

Classic example of somebody who has learned to massively compensate for a nonverbal learning disorder and all the attendant problems with reading comprehension and information processing that it brings, right down to the “photographic memory”.

What kind of nonverbal learning disorder?  I have a mild NVLD myself, but clearly not the one you have in mind.

INTP, get a social worker involved, I think the psychological abuse of witnessing what you described would be enough to get the kid pulled out, and if you live in a state where you’d be considered a mandated reporter(as here in CA), you might just be covering your butt at the same time.

Okay, so, try to overlook the creepy balloon-dwelling patriot fetus in the center. That’s a pretty classy font on that sign. How did that happen? Normally downmarket political material uses downmarket fonts (cf. the 2004 bush/cheney material, with its big blocky wal*mart seeming fonts).