I tend to agree with Ampersand when he says that Bristol Palin and her pregnancy should not be part of the national discourse. In fact, I urged him to make the post yesterday in which he argued:
It’s appalling that Governor Palin had to publicly announce her daughter’s pregnancy, apparently to kill some rumors.
The speculation about this has been shallow, stupid, disgusting. It’s not something that political bloggers should be treating as a news story. And it’s completely unfair to Palin’s daughter, who is not a public figure and shouldn’t be subjected to public discussions of her body or her pregnancy.
But I think Amanda has some interesting points when she argues:
I find it interesting how the McCain/Palin campaign tried to shut down the P.R. disaster that is Bristol Palin’s pregnancy by calling for privacy, which was, just short of their invocation of “choice”, about hiding behind feminist values to assault feminism itself, since they wish you and your family have neither privacy nor choice when it comes to management of your life. But what I find especially interesting is that “privacy” was not actually a feminist value until it had to be in order to get reproductive rights established. Which isn’t to say that I’m against respecting people’s privacy (and really, this is the last mention of the Palin thing in this post*), but that rooting reproductive rights in the value of privacy instead of autonomy and self-determination has actually created some massive problems for us.
Privacy is a double-edged sword. Outside of its use by feminists to get what we want (reproductive rights) without scaring people by arguing for women’s equality, privacy is generally a patriarchal value. It shields rapists and wife-beaters. The sense that women are the private property of men is still more ingrained in our society than the idea that uteruses are the private property of women. To illustrate, here’s an interesting story from Jessica:
Another one (apologies, can’t find a link to the original article anywhere) was from a couple of years ago when a woman was grabbed on a crowded subway platform by a strange man who was attempting to drag her away. As she fought him, he pretended that they were having a “lover’s quarrel” – saying things like, “Oh honey, I’m sorry, come on now!” – so that the surrounding crowd wouldn’t help her. The victim ended up grabbing another woman passing by and saying to her, “I don’t know this man.” The woman beat him off of her and held him until police came. (It was a good story!) But I remember asking myself why people wouldn’t stop to intervene even if they did think it was a fight between a couple.
What percentage of people who wouldn’t interfere with a man beating “his” woman would still think a woman doesn’t have a right to control what’s done with her actual uterus?
Privacy is often a wonderful thing. Thank god we live in a society where we can shield ourselves away from the prying eyes of others to make love, pick our noses, or eat a can of beans straight from the can. But it was a compromise position to argue reproductive rights, a way to shoehorn a feminist belief into the pre-existing patriarchy. Instead of arguing that women should control our own bodies because we’re full citizens entitled to autonomy and because the value of self-determination laid out in the Declaration of Independence requires women to have this control, we instead shoehorned it into the pre-existing understanding that men have a right to conduct their marriage (and the sex within) as they see fit. Only after men got a right to sexual privacy spelled out in Griswold did the Supreme Court extend it to women in Eisenstadt and Roe. It’s very fashionable to say Roe was badly decided, but rarely do I see such critics (usually male critics) argue that it should have been rooted in the belief that women have an equal right to our bodily autonomy. Which is really the only argument that I think would have actually help lift the debate out of the muck it’s in. Men have a right to father an actual child who is a living, breathing person with a birth certificate and then refuse to give that child a kidney if it needs one to survive. Surely women have a right not to be forced to donate our bodies to people who aren’t even people yet. I’m not a lawyer, and don’t know how to work that argument into a constitutional framework. But it has much to recommend it from a philosophical point of view.
And finally, here’s another analysis from Pandagon commenter Mighty Ponygirl, which also made me stop and think:
This issue is so complicated, because we have a lot of different privacies to talk about.
There is the privacy of Sarah Palin as a public figure. Her own reproductive decisions are her own choice, and should be respected as a matter of privacy. If she had a clear-cut case of hipocrysy (e.g. having an abortion rather than having a baby with DS because her situation was “special”) while similarly agitating that other women should not have a choice, then her own reproductive decisions should be fair game. She did *have* a choice to have her youngest, but it’s a zero-sum equation to try to go after her for exercising that choice because the net result in both Palin’s world and our world would be the birth of the same baby.
There is the privacy of Bristol Palin, which is absolute. Not only is she not a public figure, but she is also a minor, and her decisions are absolutely her own business. If she was coerced or bullied and she wasn’t able to really call the decision her own (which we don’t know, she could be really excited to live up to the expectations that her family has drilled into her), it doesn’t change the fact that she is not a public figure and is a minor and we need to respect her privacy.
Then there is the privacy of Sarah Palin vis-a-vis her daughter. If there was coercion and bullying when Palin made the decision that Bristol would be marrying the father, and that there would not be an abortion, you could still make the case that this was a “private” family matter because Bristol is still a minor and while it’s unfortunate that her mom is willing to sacrifice her daughter at the altar of fetus-worship, it’s still a private family matter so long as there’s no clear abuse going on.
Finally, there is the privacy of Bristol Palin over the next two months, when she will be referenced again and again, possibly directly, possibly indirectly, by the McCain campaign and its supporters, as an example of how morally upstanding the Palin family is. In an attempt to whip up the fundie base into a foaming frenzy of fetus-worshipping, Bristol Palin will become a poster child-with-child of how awesome it will work out when we yank women’s reproductive rights away from them. And since this is already happening, we are allowed to pick this issue up and carry it. Bristol Palin isn’t responsible for her mom and her mom’s politics, but if her mom is going to drag her pregnant teenage daughter into the public sphere in order to score points with the godbags, then it is absolutely appropriate to dissect the “private choices.”
I’m going to leave this conversation open to anyone for now, but I may close it down to feminists only depending on where the discussion goes.
> But I remember asking myself why people wouldn’t stop to intervene
> even if they did think it was a fight between a couple.
Simple. Because it is a damn good way to end up in jail, on the testimony of both the male attacker, and his victim. I’ve personally dealt with three cases in which I had to arrest men who intervened to help a maltreated woman, only to see her take her husband/boyfriend’s side. In one of the cases, the woman got up from the floor and nearly took the eye of her rescuer out. In that case, there were multiple witnesses, so we left the guy at the hospital, but I would bet money that he will never lift a hand to protect a stranger being knocked around by her ‘loved one’.
Nowadays, when I’m on the other side of the blue line, I would not dream of intervening in a fight between people who know each other, no matter what the genders, unless there are half a dozen witnesses… and even then, I would spend a minute thinking about what I am wearing, and how I have been treating people before the accident.
Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy is a P.R. disaster? How so? What’s the basis for this?
Sure, some of the base won’t like it. But let’s face it, times have changed from my younger days. Unmarried and pregnant is no longer all that unusual, and whether you are liberal, conservative, or of any other political persuasion you likely know someone who you think are just fine people who are in this situation. The media are all up about this, but how many actual voters really care?
Interesting thoughts here. One thing I’d say is that Bristol Palin’s privacy is not a reproductive rights issue; she deserves privacy because she’s a young woman who has never asked for the world’s media to be on her doorstep. She deserves privacy for the exact same reason all the other candidates’ children deserve privacy. We do not need to interrogate Bristol Palin, ever. Whenever the McCain campaign makes propaganda use of her, talks about what a wonderful choice she made, we need to interrogate the McCain campaign and slam them for their hypocrisy and their inhuman anti-choice values.
It is interesting to see who gets the privacy and who does not, though. The Obama daughters have been regularly paraded on stage because so many people in the media, and allegedly in the US at large, had a nervy, perverse fascination with the idea of a black first family, and the Obama campaign felt forced to respond to that. Because America is a racially unequal society those young black girls don’t get the right to privacy.
And now there’s a young mother-to-be in the spotlight; I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard the name of her fiancé, nor read anything related to him. I also don’t know the names of any male children of anyone involved in this election. That Obama and Clinton don’t have any skews that, I’m sure – but I don’t even know if McCain, or Edwards, or most of the VP-possibles have children at all. The only people whose children have been talked about are Obama, Palin, and (to a much lesser extent) single father Biden (and there’s Chelsea Clinton, who was known to us from her father’s time in office. Quick, Britons, what’s the fastest rail route between Bristol and Chelsea?). I haven’t heard the names of Biden’s children. I don’t know anything about McCain’s children, not even how many he has, other than that he has at least one adopted child.
In other words, if you’re a white guy, your family gets more privacy. (Barring extremely odd circumstances like Biden’s – and if I may make an aside, I feel that the single father family I grew up in got too much privacy rather than too little; as Amanda wrote, privacy can be a shield for abuse, and also just for plain poor parenting. Single father families are far interrogated far less than single mother families, even given that they outnumber us by 10 to 1).
RonF – I’d agree with your comment in general, but I’d imagine it’s going to impact on disaffected Clinton voters; not because of the pregnancy itself, but because it brought Palin’s appalling views wrt reproductive rights and sex education to the forefront right after her selection was made. McCain’s just lost every Clinton Democrat – but perhaps he wasn’t aiming for them anyway.
I also liked Amanda’s point that “choice” is similarly a second-rate, ad hoc argument for reproductive rights.
There’s a book that’s been on my wish list for a while, “What Roe V Wade Should Have Said,” which her post reminds me of. In the book, nine legal scholars from various viewpoints imagine different rulings the Court might have made regarding the Roe and Doe cases. Here’s a couple of examples, from the summary post I linked to:
And:
The Obama daughters have been regularly paraded on stage because so many people in the media, and allegedly in the US at large, had a nervy, perverse fascination with the idea of a black first family, and the Obama campaign felt forced to respond to that.
Say what? On what basis can you state as facts that a) the US has a “nervy, perverse fascination” with the idea of a black first family, and b) that the Obama campaign felt this way and found that it was forced to respond?
Candidates always put their kids on stage. They may not have them speak depending on age, etc., but I can’t think of any politician who has kids where those kids haven’t been on stage at one point or another. If you assert that the Obamas’ kids have been on stage more than other kids, I’d like to know how you support this?
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison, to look at the privacy of a man like Biden and compare it to Palin. First off, Biden’s children from his first marriage are adults with their own lives… meanwhile, Palin is a conservative woman whose children still live under her roof, so it is assumed that she is heavily involved in their lives. Personal lives intrude too much into politics in general, but if you’re going to pick on personal lives then Palin’s children are hers.
Besides, isn’t Palin running alongside a man who (allegedly) once made rude jokes about a 17-year-old Chelsea Clinton?
Either way, count on this: it will be the McCain/Palin campaign that takes the first step of dragging her out into public to defend her mother’s arch-conservative views. One day, sooner or later, they will use her as a meat shield.
Ron, I think you misparsed me – I think the Obama campaign were aware of the media fascination and felt forced to act to dispel it, not that the Obama campaign felt that way themselves. I also very deliberately said that the US only allegedly has that fascination – I almost added that I suspected it wasn’t really the case (just like how I suspect men IRL think far more highly of women than media aimed at men indicates), but worried that that comment was coming from white privilege. But the US news media? Oh hell yeah. What other reason would there be for the families of other male candidates to be left so alone? What does the Obama family have that those other families don’t have?
I’ll try and do some google digging on that point later – I have to rush off right now. Wanted to respond to the misparsing immediately though.
McCain’s children are mostly grown and are not around their parents much. A quick search on “McCain children” came up with numerous hits. In summary, The 3 children from his first marriage (note that only the youngest, daughter Sidney is biologically his) are much older (one is older than me, and Sidney is 41 or 42).
Of his children from his second marriage, Meghan at 23 is active in her father’s campaign. Jack is 21 and is at Annapolis. Jimmy is 19 and is a Marine in Iraq. Bridget is 16. Bridget was born in Bangladesh and was brought over by the McCains to get an operation for cleft palate when she was quite young; subsequently, the McCains adopted her.
Here’s an excerpt from a story from the Boston Globe in December 2007.
It makes a lot of sense that the Obamas are going to have their kids around because they are young and live with their parents, whereas the McCains children are older and off living their lives.
It’s legitimate to talk about the pregnancy as it relates to Palin’s opposition to accurate sex education. We’re discussing it over at the CA NOW blog: http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2008/09/sarah-palin-and.html
” In an attempt to whip up the fundie base into a foaming frenzy of fetus-worshipping, ”
i gather that there is no room for measured and intelligent discussion of the security of the unborn. i do not see the need for such animosity.
that religious folks would value and love the unborn as much as a secular person who wants a particular pregnancy to be completed and a healthy infant be delivered should not come as a surprise to anyone. and yet secular folks are not “accused” of fetus worship.
” i do not see the need for such animosity. ”
And you’d be an example of the kind of person who’s contributions are entirely too off-topic and boring. Away from the thread, please.
I feel sorry for Bristol (teen pregnancy is generally no fun, particularly when you’re being attacked by the media,) and I think she deserves her privacy. If I were in that kind of crisis I wouldn’t want it on the front page of the tabloids
Aren’t we all, like, making it part of the national discussion right now? In fact, does each one of these posts not slowly, insidiously, make it a topic of conversation for more people in more venues? Doesn’t each comment erode her personal life and privacy more and more? I realize that it’s a thought-provoking situation, and it’s an easy way to bring up and score points. But wasn’t the whole point of declaring it something that is off the table to actually take it off the table, like pizza for someone on a low-carb diet?
Hm. Juno would have been a lot different movie if Mom had been running for VP, eh?
I wonder if there’s going to be any kind of backlash if Obama’s supporters keep ragging on this kid?
Earlier in the campaign, numerous posters here (and elsewhere) drew a contrast between racism directed against Sen. Obama and sexism directed against Sen. Clinton. Many people held that sexism seemed to be more acceptable and less commented on in the media, et. al. What do you all think of the treatment accorded Gov. Palin so far?
Ron, I don’t think it’s true that many people here said that “sexism seemed to be more acceptable and less commented on in the media,” etc. On the contrary, I’m sure that I argued against making that comparison, and I think others did as well.
Did you read this post of Mandolin’s? It seems to me that would be a more on-topic thread for your comment. For the record, I fully agree with Mandolin — I would have posted a link to that SS post if Mandolin hadn’t done so.
Great post and some great comments.
I’ll admit that I’ve been torn on the issues surrounding Palin and her daughter.
In general, I am a firm believer that candidate’s kids should be off limits.
However, this situation raises some interesting questions for me. I am a gay man and a parent of an adopted son and have long been a staunch feminist.
As a gay parent, I am disgusted that any conservative candidate would be pleading for privacy for their family when the entire GOP machine is fueled by a frenzy of prying into my private family life. Why is it acceptable for them to make me and my family a campaign issue, but not acceptable for me to do the same?
The feminist in me firmly believes that any candidate for high public office needs to understand that in our current culture, there is nothing private. Palin doesn’t get a pass because she is a woman. Presidential and vice presidential candidates do not have any expectation to a right to privacy. For better or worse. So Palin had to understand that her teenaged daughter’s out of wedlock pregnancy would become and issue and that her daughter would be thrust into the national media limelight. Palin knew about the situation and made the decision to put her daughter in that uncomfortable position. For shame.
Finally, as a parent, I am appalled by the decisions Palin has made and is making. Her 17 yo daughter is pregnant. Her life is about to be forever changed. Having a child at any age is a challenge, but particularly at such a young age. She will need so much support and help from her parents as she is suddenly forced into adulthood. And this is the time that one of her parents suddenly decides to try and take on one of the most challenging jobs in the world? Obviously it is possible to be a parent and be a vice president or president. And family situations may change. But here is a parent with a child in a crisis. (Sorry, but I firmly believe that unplanned teenaged pregnancies are a good sign of a kid in crisis.) As parents, we are often given the choice of putting ourselves or our children first. Palin has made her decision. Her own career is more important than helping her children. That should tell us all that we need to know about her.
Agreed. And when Palin’s daughter runs for vice president, I’ll go ahead and get all up in her face about her beliefs and her policies and everything else about her.
Until that happens, though, please leave the poor kid alone.
As far as prying into your family life goes, the situations aren’t entirely parallel — they’re not naming you specifically. But it’s still wrong when they do it. And it’s wrong for you to do it too.
Bjartmarr, I’m afraid that I wasn’t perhaps clear enough.
The point I wanted to make about privacy and prez/vp candidates wasn’t that the lack of privacy is a given in our current culture. When a person takes on the responsibility (which is a choice) of running for office, they certainly must understand the consequences. Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy was going to be an issue. All the wishing won’t make it otherwise.
It was Palin’s choice to put her family in the spotlight. Palin was the one that announced her daughter’s pregnancy. And then the McCain campaign is pretends to be aghast at that it is a media story. Let me state again: Sarah Palin made the decision, knowing that she had a young daughter in crisis, to put her family in the political spotlight.
What parent would do that their child?
Yeah, I’m not buying that one. Good parents do things that embarass their kids all the time, for reasons much less important than the opportunity to lead the country.
It’s not much of a stretch to claim that having a world leader in the family is, in most cases, detrimental to that family’s health. Using your reasoning, that would disqualify anyone with kids from running for president. I think that’s setting the bar too high.
I don’t know if you are a parent Bjartmarr, but if you are, we have a fundamentally different concept of what being a parent requires of us.
If I was the parent of an unwed teenaged pregnant child — girl or boy — my focus would be on taking care of my family. Helping that child.
Being a parent doesn’t necessarily exclude one from any job. The notion is silly.
But having a child in crisis with special needs does require parents to make choices.
I believe that Palin has made some very bad choices in that regard.
I don’t trust her judgment.
Bullshit. I have never seen this argument used against anyone but Sarah Palin. It may be a meme begun with feminist intention, but it’s pure anti-feminism.
Mandolin, you haven’t seen this argument used against anyone but Sarah Palin because, well, Sarah Palin is the first VP candidate in history with an unwed teenaged pregnant daughter.
So, I’ve got to call bullshit on your bullshit.
And I don’t even begin to understand how my comments are “pure anti-feminism” unless any criticism of a woman is “anti-feminism.”
And really, can’t we all agree not allowing any criticism of a woman in the same way that we would criticize a man the worst form of “anti-feminisism?”
I’m looking forward to an education.