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  Palin Is Energizing Women—Both for and Against Her

  Posted Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:14 PM | By E.J. Graff

  Yes, Dahlia, you are absolutely right. We should STOP talking about the Lipstick Lady. Madame Governor really shouldn't be treated as a full-employment program for female pundits. (Check out Katha Pollitt's refusal to play this game here.) 
  

  And I will. I can stop. Really. I can!
  

  Right after posting on this small point, which struck me late last night:

  Yes, Palin may have energized and excited a constituency of Republican women who identify with her views and her approach to life. But she has also energized and outraged another entire demographic of women: those who oppose her politics and her approach to life. Lately I have been inundated with emails—some repeats, but most quite individual—from women who are appalled that the nonfeminist Palin could be put up to represent them and who are trying to figure out What To Do About It. From my inbox, it seems that liberal, progressive, Democratic, and feminist women's anti-Palin projects are springing up like mushrooms after a rain.

  It will be interesting to see which group has more votes.

  Filed under: Sarah Palin

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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