Do you grimace when Sarah Palin’s name comes up in discussions? Do you think that might have to do with her evident disregard for facts? With her encouraging a right-wing flight into fantasy?
Or could it be this personal, as Lisa Belkin in the NY Times maintains:
If life is like high school, then today’s educated, ambitious women, on both sides of the aisle, are the student-council presidents and the members of the debate team — taught that if they work hard and sacrifice something along the way, their smarts will be rewarded.This makes Sarah Palin the head cheerleader. (Though, in reality, she was the captain of the basketball team.) Pretty and popular, with no apparent interest in studying, she’s the one who industrious girls were tacitly promised would not succeed in the real world. Whether we voted for Hillary or not, we weren’t about to let Palin breeze in, with her sexy librarian hair and her peekaboo-toed shoes, conforming to every winking, air-brained stereotype, and sashay to the front of the line.
This observation, I’m inclined to say, is utter bull. It is wrong about our take on success in the world, and it is wrong on why we dislike her. But can I speak for “we”? What do you think about the explanation?
Let’s have a poll! In fact let’s have two. The explanation the NY Times article looks like it comes from a particular view about psychological explanations. That view says that the most basic explanations of your beliefs, desires and actions will turn out to be very narrowly self-regarding and even pretty petty, if not fundamentally very erotic. E.g., you may think that you oppose Palin because she further taints politics with vicious lies, but really you feel she just shows you aren’t pretty and sexy enough.
So let’s start with this poll:
And then go to this one:
Feminist Philosophers 