Times are strange.

 Sarah Palin, a right-wing politician, pro-life, pro-abstinence, pro-arms, pro-capital punishment, and creationist is supposedly a...feminist? A model to follow? Representative of many women in the US? a future leader of her country?

Palin seems a character escaped from John Water's film with her college beauty queen allure, her pregnant teen daughter and her arms fetish. She defines herself as an average hockey mom, which is something that if you do not come from American suburbia, you risk having to check out in wikipedia. Its usual form soccer mom refers to white, married middle class women who live in the suburbs and have school age children they drive back and forth to school and soccer training. The hockey mom reference is part of the pitbull with lipstick joke, referring to her fierce yet always feminine and coquette stance. And finally Palin is member of Feminists for Life, an organization that "believes in women" but refuses them the right to choose.

The first thing that surprises me in Palin is how contradictory her discourse is. Women are the pillar of their homes, but the position she reclaims for herself, vice president of the US, is one where she will probably not be able to take care of her sweet daughters and sons. Or will she decide to bomb Afghanistan on her mobile phone while taking her daughter to singing lessons? and hasn't the fact that her eldest daughter is a pregnant teen, convinced Mrs. Palin, that her abstinence before marriage campaign is not really giving the right results?

 
Politicians, like the Santanche in Italy or Palin in the US bring out the flaws at the very core of feminism. These women are powerful, opinionated; they manage careers and are in every way equal to their male peers. If that is what feminism was about, then these right wing extremists might be showing us the way....but then again, is that what we wanted? Should women content themselves with being "just like men". It seems the whole revolutionary potential of emancipatory discourse is lost. What good is feminism if women presidents are going to drill herself through Alaska, destroy the environment, go to war, preach abstinence and close the borders?  

Two videos on the issue: cute Feministing's Fuck No, and one I laughed to: Palin/Hillary Open