EAllusion wrote:Unless McCain also misdirected most or all of his campaign, that theory seems out of whack with reports of their unpreparedness that came out after the pick. Heck, Palin's convention speech had to be rewritten because its initial drafts were
written for a masculine voice.
In this age of leaks, there would not have been much potential for misdirection if he'd let the entire campaign know who the pick would be. I think he kept a tight lid on it even within his own campaign for that purpose, and the speech originally being written in the masculine would be no surprise. Writing it in the feminine would have given away the pick, plus if it really came down between her and Pawlenty, it kind of had to be written in one gender or the other.
From above:
One side has been much worse about this than the other.
I agree that one side has been much worse about this than the other. Since this is the sort of thing that's difficult to objectively quantify (quote wars probably isn't going to do it), I think we'll just have to disagree on which side it is.
Here's what I think. You can't directly tell if a person is a feminist without seeing some extensive history of feminist advocacy or agreement to some ideas that form the core of what we are getting at when we talk about feminism. It's a loose term, but there are borders. Normally, we just take a person's word for it when they call themselves a feminist, but I think the circumstances require some skepticism in this case. Unfortunately, simply saying, "I support equality for men and women" isn't enough because people who are anything but feminists have coopted that language to refer to what is essentially separate "but equal" roles for men and women. You're not going to be able to tell where Palin is without more detail than we have access too or some definitive statements lack the luxury of having. It's not especially important, but I think that's where it stands.
That's a fair enough position, but as mentioned earlier it's hard to pin her down as being
not feminist. If folks would like to say "I haven't seen enough from her yet to say she's feminist," that's a lot more acceptable to me than outright insisting she isn't feminist, is anti-feminist, anti-woman, etc.
