I think it is probably safe to say that recently Sarah Palin has become one of the more hated women in the United States. I personally think that she is a very mean person. I believe that the smiles, the winks, and the “knowing” nods all serve to obscure the deep cruelty that is in her heart. I think that she is both hateful and hate-filled. I have no love for her. So I do not mind it at all whenever her political star fades a little bit.
But in the weeks since the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several others in Tucson, Arizona, there is something that has disgusted me more than anything that Sarah Palin and her school of fellow barracuda have said. And that is the fact that on-line and in the twitterverse many people have, in their angry criticism of her, been calling Sarah Palin a “cunt.”
Radio shock jock Howard Stern sullied an otherwise-interesting and somewhat surprising critique of Palin by using the c-word. While Stern is known to be outrageous, I found his casual decision to use that word disappointing, and it immediately alienated me from anything else he had to say.
I have been more surprised, and a good deal more disappointed, to see would-be progressives using this horrid word in their criticism of Palin. It is the English language’s most misogynist term. When said in anger, it declares that a woman is nothing more than her genitals, and that her genitals are in fact disgusting. The word “bitch,” which many people also use against Palin, Hilary Clinton, or any other powerful woman who pisses them off, is less bad, but only marginally so. These two words attack women as women, and convey that their merely being a woman is itself a large part of the problem.
If Palin and Clinton were men, these words would not come into play – and our male supremacist society has no equivalent words that attack men for simply being men.
C’mon, people! Can we not come up with other words to use to criticize Palin? Or Clinton? Words that do not attack their humanity? Words that do not attack them as women? Words that do not qualify as hate speech?
Palin’s angry politics and her questionable logic have nothing to do with the fact that she happens to be female. When we call her a “cunt” or a “bitch,” we provide no information at all about why we don’t like her, and we imply that we probably don’t much like any woman. And when it is men who are uttering these slurs, we are just reinforcing misogyny and male supremacy. We are no better than the hateful men who dogged Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President with cries of “Iron my shirts!”
(At the time, I thought those guys were just extremely traditional men whose sexist world-view was threatened by the possibility of a woman becoming President. But seeing the misogyny with which some people are going after Palin shows me that contempt for women can transcend political affiliation. Men on the left are just as capable of hating women as are men on the right.)
Since the shootings in Tucson, a good deal of the criticism of the conservative political establishment has focused on the fact that they failed to reign in the far right polemicists and their violent rhetoric. Where were the conservatives who insisted on a civil debate? Where were the decent Republicans who were willing to stand up and say to their more rabid allies: “Even though you and I may agree politically, your tactics are a disgrace!”?
I think these criticisms have merit. And we need to expect the same sort of demand for decency from ourselves that we expect from others. So here goes:
To anyone out there who despises Sarah Plain’s politics, yet who uses words like “bitch” and “cunt” in your attacks on her, let me say that while I may agree with you politically, your tactics are a disgrace! And while I intensely dislike Sarah Palin, I will work to protect her from this misogynist, male-supremacist hate speech. We need to stop criticizing Palin – and any woman of any political stripe – in ways that attack her for simply being female.
When we do this we diminish her humanity... and our own.