Not okay.

I am not Sarah Palin's biggest fan. Her policies are not supportive of women, their equality or their freedom of choice. In fact, it's pretty fair to say I think she is the worst.

But more than I hate Sarah Palin, I hate the sexist treatment she has received during her vice presidential run. I'm not about to document all the sexist commentaries on the wannabe V.P. since she joined the campaign trail, as there are plenty of blogs out there already doing a great job of that. I just want to mention what I witnessed on election night '08.

 I spent Tuesday night at the Bloor Cinema, an old movie theatre in Toronto which was screening CNN's coverage of the election as well as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Indecision '08. The queue stretched down the block and far around the corner, hundreds of people wanting to congregate to watch history happen. The vast majority of the crowd were of course, Obama supporters, with a small number of McCain fans up on the balcony, and we took turns cheering when our respective hope-fulls won over a state. This election has been a pretty passionate affair, so I admit I was a little impressed that no insults were hurled at McCain supporters, or vice versa, even in good nature. But halfway through the night, during a commercial break we were told we were about to get a special treat. A woman in a red coat, high heels and a wig takes to the stage, and begins a short and rather tame burlesque performance, that involves her stripping down to a corset and then transforming into Sarah Palin, skirt suit, specs and all. The crowd cheers. I'm quiet.

Twenty minutes later, we have another novel intermission. It's time for the Sarah Palin look-a-like contest. Apparently, the website encouraged attendees to dress up. The winning contestant was given Hustler's new 'Who's Nailin' Paylin?' DVD, a pornographic tribute to the governer herself. You know, I'm all for political parodies but I'm starting to see one very clear pattern here and I don't like it.

Around 10pm, polls close and it's announced, Barack Obama will be the next president of the USA. The whole theatre leaps up, clapping and cheering and celebrating. I'm pretty moved myself, it's a historic moment, and my faith in American politics and the American people is briefly restored. So a little while later, McCain delivers his speech and as soon as Palin appears on screen some guy in the back yells out "WHORE!" met by a lot of laughter from the crowd.

Wow.
You know, Palin is an awful vice presidential candidate. She does not have near enough experience, she doesn't support sex education in schools even when her own daughter's pregnancy should be enough to teach her abstinence-only approaches do not work, she has made rape victims pay for their own rape kits.. I get it! She's a horrible person! She should be the subject of as much criticism and lampooning as the next underqualified candidate! But ridiculing her based on not only her gender, but also because of her conventional attractiveness, her sexuality? The burlesque dancing impersonater, the porno, and of course the branding of 'WHORE' on a woman who is simply doing her job...not neccessarily a good job, but her job nonetheless.
It really disheartens me.
I mean reallly, whore? A married woman with children who doesn't particularly exhibit any tendencies for promiscuous sex... it's not like she doesn't provide a lot of fodder for insults. I'm all for calling her out on her ignorance, her stupidity, her lack of compassion...
I guess when it comes down to it, when you want to put a woman down, why criticize her for anything legit when the easiest way to defame a woman is to imply she likes to have sex. Because that's so dirty and bad remember? [Here I shall refer you to my previous post on the word Slut..)

Clearly, Palin is not the first woman to be subject to so much gender based abuse. Senator Clinton recived immense sexist coverage, perhaps more negatively so. [Not that I deem sexist commentary of Palin more positive or acceptable just because it at times appeared more "flattering".] While Palin was championed as the hot soccer mom, Clinton was mocked for not being hot enough. Apart from the day she wore that scandalous shirt..

I don't dream of the day a woman becomes the president of the USA. I support people based on their policies, not their race or the gender. But I do dream of a day when a woman can run in a presidential election and be respected as much as any man in the same campaign. When she is not judged for being too attractive or not attractive enough, when the media is not cracking lame between-anchor jokes about how her speeches sound like 'nagging' and her laugh is more of a 'cackle'. When she is neither commenly referred to as a VPILF or the idea of having sex with her is the punchline. When she is insulted, hell, even ridiculed based on her politics, her character and her skeletons in the closet rather than her gender, body and sexuality. Because that is what distinguishes good political satire from tired, cheap shots..