On Women & This Week's Primaries

Rachael Larimore over at DoubleX is bemoaning the lack of excitement among feminists over the recent electoral victories for Republican women.  She writes that “it is disappointing that many liberal women don’t even seem to want the GOP to have strong female candidates.”

I don\’t think she’s got it quite right.  It’s not that I don’t want the GOP to have strong female candidates, it’s that I’m not going to get giddy over candidates whose platforms I totally disagree with, regardless of their gender.  Just like Sarah Palin doesn’t get points in my book for being a woman, I’m not enthused about any of this week’s major female vote getters.  Good for them for running and getting votes, but it’s not a triumph for womankind to get women on the ballot or in office who clearly wouldn’t support the issues that actually matter to women (this woman, at least).

Still, I don’t want to be completely dismissive of the progress they represent.  I’m very much looking forward to the day when women are truly represented equally in politics, in both parties, and I can’t say I didn’t feel some surge of positive seeing all those women’s names in the headlines.  It’s just frustrating to see women who are clearly the beneficiaries of the feminist movement repudiating most of what feminism is all about.  But some day we’ll get to the point where it’ll be a given that women are running for and winning office in equal numbers as men, and then we won’t have to worry about whether we’re betraying our sex if we don’t stand up and cheer for every female candidate that comes along.

Oh, and as far as sisterly camaraderie?  Seems the bitch fighting has already taken off in California, where Carly Fiorina was caught on an open mic dissing Barbara Boxer’s hair as being “so yesterday.”  Really, Fiorina?  You couldn’t wait just a week before devolving into exactly the kind of high school cattiness and petty superficiality that women are so often wrongfully accused of?  On the other hand, it’s bound to be an entertaining election.