Sarah Palin: "Mama Grizzlies" Are Anti-Choice

Sarah Palin spoke for the anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony List this morning, adding to her limiting-women’s-choices-is-feminist message some exceptionally divisive bullshit about “mama grizzlies” and “Western feminists.”

Palin hastened to remind her audience that she’s from Alaska (“Some left wing feminists didn’t know what to think of some Alaskan chick out there”), where the people speak in animal metaphors:

The mama grizzlies, they rise up. You thought pit bulls are tough. You don’t want to mess with the mama grizzlies. And I think there are a whole lot of those in this room.

Driving home the point that she’s not like those weak-willed lefties who want to preserve reproductive rights, she added,

For a long time when people thought of feminists they thought of some faculty lounge at an East Coast women’s college. Our pro-woman sisterhood is telling young women that they are strong enough to handle an unplanned pregnancy and give their children life in addition to pursuing a career and pursuing and education.

Palin also praised her “feminist foremothers,” believers in “Western feminism” who “had dirt under their finger nails” and “could push a plow and shoot a gun and raise children all at the same time.” At this point, I’m used to Palin’s bizarre restriction-is-actually-freedom doublethink. What makes me angry about her recent speech is its implication that pro-choice feminists are insular (they hate her because she’s Alaskan), elitist (they sit around in — horrors — some women’s college), and above all, weak. I am a “Western feminist” (although Los Angeles may not count as the West in Palin’s worldview). I can’t shoot a gun, but I sure as fuck am “strong enough” to defend my own rights and those of other women, rather than letting Sarah Palin tell me what to do with my body and my life.

Sarah Palin Says ‘Mama Grizzlies’ Will Help The GOP ‘Take This Country Back’ In Midterm Elections [LA Times]
Sarah Palin Issues A Call To Action To ‘Mama Grizzlies’ [Washington Post]
Sarah Palin Boosts ‘Mom Awakening’ [Politico]