Feminists just can’t get past the shock that women throughout the country view Sarah Palin as a role model. It’s fascinating to watch all of the soul searching, navel gazing, head spinning and venom-spewing. I’m frankly getting tired of writing about it. Can y’all collectively get over yourselves and stop repeatedly asking the same damn questions?

That lovely blog that started the maelstrom against Taylor Swift decided to go interview women waiting in line for the Palin book signing in Fairfax, Va. and incorporate the cover article on feminism in Newsmax this month. The author, Amanda Hess, forgot to mention that the Newsmax article was written by S.E. Cupp, a young female conservative. Since young, female conservatives don’t exist in feminist-land and are only the creation of old, white men in the GOP, she had to  snidely attack the women waiting in line:

In “newer feminism,” every woman’s choices are valued—no matter what those choices mean for other women. Schlessinger isn’t an enforcer of rigid gender roles; she’s a facilitator of women’s choices. Palin’s opposition to abortion rights and comprehensive sex education isn’t anti-feminist; it is her choice to deny reproductive choices to other women. Under this model, Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis isn’t an exploiter; he’s a liberator of women’s breasts.

Umm…no. Joe Francis is a pornographer and will be to the vast majority of conservative women. But ladies — and I sincerely hope that Amanda Hess and her colleagues find this post– let me spell it out for you. Sarah Palin is simply a marriage of conservative values with the watered-down version of feminism that you gals sold in the 90s in order to save a crippled and dying movement. Until Palin appeared, no one on the right had represented a liberated woman “making choices for herself,” successfully balancing the family and a career, and enjoying a modern marriage with her not-so-metrosexual husband. You were operating under the assumption that the Gloria Steinem vs. Phyllis Schafly dynamic still worked.

Despite my staunchly anti-feminist upbringing, I’ve gotten familiar with the f-word. I worked for a quasi-feminist organization. Well, it’s an organization determined to train little feminists, but it gave me a solid crash course in all things liberal women. After I left that job, I decided to get to the bottom of this feminist issue. I had been blogging anonymously for nearly a year but had danced around the subject. After I moved back to the DC area, I dove into reading feminist theory, history and anything from the women’s studies genre. I was determined to understand what feminism was. The only problem was that feminists were asking that too.  Sadly for them, Palin arrived on the scene before they could reach an answer.

To understand it, let’s go back to the beginning. Hopefully, this history is familiar to most of you.

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After finishing Going Rogue, I immediately delved into You’ve Come A Long Way, Maybe by Leslie Sanchez. After reading a few critical reviews of her book on feminist blogs, I was intrigued.

Bottom line, this is a definite read. Sanchez takes a much more nauanced view of feminism and modern electoral politics. As a Republican Latina and DC insider, she has a unique take on the role of women in politics and examines the quest for getting a woman in the White House. Unlike many other conservative books, she doesn’t waste half of it continuing the “feminists are the cause of all that is evil in this world” mantra. Instead,  she analyzes Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the effect of Sarah Palin and compares Michelle Obama to other First Ladies. She also asks key questions that I’ve been wondering, such as why do feminists hate conservative women like Palin who represent views such as mine and what will it take to get a woman elected POTUS?

Throughout the book, I scribbled and highlighted notes. She provided some perspectives that I’ll be thinking about for a while. She wrote a grownup book that doesn’t take potshots at disagreeing sides. I rarely find books like that. While she does disagree with liberal policies that feminists take, she doesn’t demonize them.

I spend a lot of time attacking feminism on this blog, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with some of their positions or value what they’ve done for women in society. I am thankful that I had an opportunity to play sports in high school, vote, pursue my education and a career, and I don’t fear being a victim of sexual harassment. I’m thankful that I earn the same as my male peers and didn’t find my job under the “female jobs wanted” section. I appreciate that I can sit in a meeting with other men working in politics and my opinions and talents will be respected. Those are the positions of feminism which I agree. What I don’t understand and what I spend so much time writing and Sanchez devotes a significant part of her book questioning, is “why do feminists hate conservative women?”

After examining a number of polls and surveys, interviewing advisers and pundits from all across the spectrum, Sanchez wrote a statement that deserves further study and gets at the essence of the women’s movement problem:

However deep into Clinton’s psyche these voters may have wanted to go, what I am taking away from all the polls and comments is that women want to vote for other women who reflect their own life experience — perhaps a bit chillingly — are suspicious of a woman who has opted to follow a path too far departed from the one they themselves have chosen. And they are particularly unforgiving of a candidate who would go so far as to disparage the lifestyle that they  themselves have chosen: it’s my contention that Clinton has never really been forgiven in some quarters for the “cookie” comment. It lost her the support of women who actually had stayed home and baked cookies –and enjoyed doing it.

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