Banking off what I blogged about this morning, I feel like I have to add a few words about Bristol Palin choosing herself over her supposed inborn obligations to sacrifice for the patriarchy. There’s a lesson in all this for the Republicans, though I doubt they’ll pay attention to it. The louder they wail and moan about how people aren’t sufficiently self-sacrificing to bullshit ideals that serve no purpose, the more extreme they get (like Ken Blackwell just condemning sex outright and suggesting on national television that people who use contraception are animals), the more people are going to be turned off, and the more hysterical the base will get as they get more isolated from the rest of the country. One thing that’s interesting me is that they’re not being able to keep a lid on the most politically damaging implications of the pro-patriarchy worldview—-it’s easy enough to get ordinarily sexist swing voters on board with your agenda if they think women are the only targets, but since women and men’s lives are so intertwined, it’s pretty hard to hide forever that the Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.
This Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston situation is unmanageable for just that reason. Right wingers have gotten a lot of mileage out of demonizing female (and gay male) sexuality and wailing about single mothers, but it’s only effective as long as men can be painted as the victims of evil liberated women. But when a genuine white daughter of Republican privilege turned up pregnant at 17, and they had to put their money where their mouths were, it all went to hell. Because it’s not as simple as the woman fucked, the woman must pay. There’s a man in the picture, and he’s not so easy to classify as the victim of women’s liberation. “She” who did the wrong is now “they” who did it, and it’s really exposing how ugly and anti-human the whole pro-patriarchy movement that’s keeping the Republicans afloat is.
Take, for example, this response by Lisa Schiffren (hat tip):
I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid. If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around.