Sarah Palin Sexism Watch, #16

Why, Margaret Cho, why?

It's not funny when doodz go on about how they want to fuck Sarah Palin or sniff that she's probably frigid, and it's not funny when ostensibly progressive women do it, either.

Fuck, that's just twenty-seven shades of disappointing.

(And lest anyone be inclined to argue that it's somehow ironic, that Cho is appropriating the voice of sexists to make a point, there are 150+ comments that don't see it that way, and she hasn't disabused any of the commenters of the notion. So, um, yeah, on the irony?—not so much.)

And aside from disappointing, it's also bloody unhelpful. Feminism/Womanism does not advocate treating with dignity only the women deemed deserving by Margaret Cho (or Gloria Steinem or Angela Davis or every individual feminist/womanist), but treating all women with dignity.

The reason for that is not because all women are similarly principled or admirable or even likable, but because of how sexism works, i.e. against the collective.

Which makes using sexist attacks against one woman, in addition to disappointing and unhelpful, quite pointedly self-defeating, too.

And while Cho, like many women who have brazenly lived lives in the public eye, might reasonably argue that she doesn't care if she legitimizes attacks like that against her, because it's all so much water off a duck's back, I wish she'd consider that she's also legitimizing attacks like that against women and girls who don't have her gumption, her chutzpah, her safety net provided by fans who love and respect her even if some asshole publicly reduces her to nothing more than her fuckability (or lack thereof).

I wish she'd consider what allying herself with anti-feminist bullies really means, given how sexism works.

[H/T to Shaker Lina. Sarah Palin Sexism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen. We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]