Frank Furedi

Redefining feminism
Have activists morphed into female chauvinist piglets?

Thirty years after second-wave feminism, some of its relics are pursuing a witch-hunt against Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin that would do the “male chauvinist pigs” of yesteryear proud. As Frank Furedi writes in The Australian today, Ms Palin is copping flak for everything from being a working mother of a child with special needs to “living the life of a caricature of the feminist who ‘wants it all’.” Such is the hypocrisy that some of them will soon be telling her to go home and darn her husband’s socks.

Far from celebrating a significant milestone for women, the sisterhood appears incandescent with rage that it is a conservative woman and not one of them who has reached such a position. As Furedi, who is pro-choice himself, points out, many of the feminists who advocate choice on abortion are dismissive of the choices other women make about the issue. In the case of Ms Palin, their reactions have been nothing short of undisguised hatred.

Yet she is, as Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan says, a feminist “not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way.” Most contemptible of all are the personal internet attacks on Ms Palin’s daughter Bristol, who is 17, unmarried and who has chosen to have her baby, and the false claim that Ms Palin faked her last pregnancy. Yesterday’s speech to the Republican convention defused the issue well, admitting “Our family has the same ups and downs as any other.”

Miranda Devine’s analysis in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday was correct. The attacks “expose the elitism, condescension and moral rootlessness of the feminist establishment. It will serve to shore up support for Palin among those who are not so intolerant.” It is early days in her campaign, but Ms Palin’s speech was highly effective. Time will tell whether she, like Democrat candidate Barack Obama, who also remains a largely unknown quantity, has the policy gravitas and political nous to be elected.

Like senators John McCain, Obama and Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate deserves to be assessed on her suitability for office, not her family life.

Unlike the professional feminists who love to wallow in victimhood in their purple ghettos, Ms Palin exuded strength in her first major speech of the campaign. Like Margaret Thatcher a generation earlier, she showed an admirable immunity to liberal-left ridicule: “Here’s a little news flash ... I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

While many sophisticated, big-city commentators sneered, Ms Palin presented a set of values and attitudes to the convention that will appeal to “small-town America” - lower taxes, smaller government and service to the country and American ideals. She was unflinching and unapologetic, and her call for greater US energy independence should also strike a chord with the electorate: “Take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: We’ve got lots of both (oil and gas),” she said as the audience rose, shouting “drill, baby, drill”.

The value of her candidacy could be that she motivates working-class, predominantly white “Reagan Democrats” who do not support Barack Obama to come out and vote Republican, even if they are not keen on John McCain. This is why the American Left has recognised that she is a real danger.

First published by The Australian, 5 September 2008