Sarah Palin has been drawing attention to herself again lately, this time by calling herself a feminist. Although I think it’s usually best to ignore her, in this case, I have to respond. Writing a dissertation on Nazi propaganda, I discovered — to my utter surprise and horror — that there were women in the National Socialist party who by the standards of their day would have been considered feminist. Seeing Palin in the light of their history ushers us into a better understanding of this controversial figure.

My dissertation, was entitled “Motherhood for the Fatherland,” and it concerned propaganda about women and their place in society written by Nazis of many stripes. In my research, I unearthed Die deutsche Kämpferin — best translated as The German Woman Warrior — a magazine published by a group of Nazi women. These writers were conservative, racist, anti-Semitic, and had bought into the Social Darwinist understanding prevalent among the Nazis, but they disagreed with their bosses about women. They believed that women like themselves should have a piece of the Aryan pie. According to the articles in this publication, the Nordic “race” had a tradition of equality between the sexes, something this group wanted to re-establish as the basis of Nazi society. Without women’s contribution to the fatherland, these female militants believed that the German people wouldn’t flourish.

With the possible exception of their racism — and only in some cases, because there were other conservative feminists in the 1920s and 1930s who were also anti-Semitic — these positions put the Nazi Women Warriors very close to the conservative women’s movement of their day. In fact, many of them published in Die Frau (The Woman), one of the oldest feminist journals in Germany, as well as The German Woman Warrior. However, I never called this group feminist, because from my perspective in the late 1970s, racism and elitism were not part of the feminist equation.

Like Sarah Palin and other conservative feminists then and now, these Nazi Militants saw their strength in the qualities of motherhood, traits they believed were needed to offset the masculinization of German society. When Palin called herself one of the “mama grizzlies” recently, this is exactly the contemporary American tone that corresponds to this perspective in Nazi Germany. In fact, Palin’s complete quote could almost have come from one of these Nazi women: “The mama grizzlies, they rise up,” Palin said, adding that such women “can give their child life (i.e. not have an abortion), in addition to pursuing career and education and avocations.” One of Sarah’s apologists even said that she brings “a maternal instinct to her politics.”

If it weren’t for the invocation of “instinct” and the implication that no real mama grizzly would consider abortion, I think many of us spiritual progressives could agree with this position. We want greater caring, non-violence, and love — stereotypically maternal qualities — as a part of our politics. But I believe that both women and men need to cultivate these traits, in the political sphere and elsewhere. I also think that in taking on the masculine trappings of status quo politics, many political women have given up an image that may appeal to women voters. I don’t think women politicians have to appear completely “rational,” wear power suits, and talk just like the big boys. In fact, I think part of Sarah Palin’s appeal is that she seems like an “everywoman,” a down-to-earth working mom who loves her kids and makes mistakes as she does her job. Of course, part of this image is Palin’s feisty anti-intellectualsim, but that’s a blog post for another day.

Like the Nazi Militants, Palin is both anti-gay and staunchly anti-abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. For the Nazi feminists, the reason for these positions was the possibility of losing “eugenically sound genes.” For Palin, it appears to be her Christian fundamentalism. This contemporary woman’s conservative agenda carries on from those earlier positions to include issues that didn’t exist 80 years ago: opposition to stem cell research, same-sex marriage, and sex education if it doesn’t include the recommendation of abstinence.

On the feminist side, both the Nazi Militants and Palin share an understanding of the need for equal rights in the workplace, as well as supporting female candidates in the political sphere. The Nazi Women Warriors spoke out against the sexual double standard, just as Palin recently complained about being judged on appearance when reporters suggested she’d had a boob job, saying “It makes me have to waste time figuring out, What am I going to wear so that nobody will look in an area that I don’t need them to look at? I want them to hear what it is that I’m saying.”

The Nazi Militants supported women’s sports and railed against the decrease of athletic opportunities under the Nazis. Similarly, Palin’s persona is “the jock” — former sports anchor, out hunting and fishing on the Alaskan frontier — a role that wouldn’t have been possible without the access to sports that feminists opened up with the passage of Title IX.

As you can see, Palin’s new “feminism” seems pretty old to me, including her support of a party that hardly acknowledges her or other women. In fact, in the fall of 2009, Republicans launched a new webpage called “Republican Accomplishments” that didn’t include a single female senator, representative, governor, cabinet member, Supreme Court justice, or vice presidential candidate. Much worse, the National Socialist party ignored women OR objectified them, mostly in terms of how many children they could produce and raise.

Although both the Nazis and contemporary American conservatives like Palin have portrayed themselves as “pro-family,” in the case of the Nazis this resulted mainly in restrictions on women’s employment and inducements to increase population growth. The “double earners’ campaign” ordered the dismissal of all female civil servants who were married or supported by their father. The Nazi government also imposed a 10% enrollment ceiling for female university students. At the same time, women’s traditional role as housewife and mother was celebrated as women’s true vocation. The “Mother’s Cross” was awarded to mothers of large families — bronze for four kids, silver for six, and gold for eight. And marriage loans as well as family allowances were instituted for each child born, providing material incentives for giving birth.

The Republicans certainly aren’t as bad as the Nazis, but their voting record tells us that they’re anything but feminist. Women’s rights are not very high in their policy statements. Remember the ERA? Could you imagine Palin supporting it, when the GOP eliminated it from their platform in 1980? No, I believe that Palin’s “feminism” is part of a new strategy to lure women voters towards the right. As one Australian feminist notes

This is not an academic battle; at a time of anti-incumbent, anti-Washington sentiment, and in the lead up to the congressional midterm elections, this is a fight over who best represents American women…Three groups have been formed to help get Republican women elected. Palin’s endorsements have become crucial. She backed the South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, the Californian Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, and the Tea Party pin-up Sharron Angle, who ran for the Senate primary in Nevada. All three won. Angle was touted as a ”frontier feminist” by a woman’s group who said it was time to put the ”feminine” back in ”feminist”!

That final proposal hasn’t made it very high on my list of feminist demands. But it must be a selling point among conservative women. What seems clear to me is that conservative “feminism” may improve the lot of a few, elite women — and even more so the situation of the GOP, if they can entice women to vote for them — but it won’t actually help women as a group. And in order to qualify as a feminist in my book, you need to work for the advancement of all women, no matter their race, color, religion, sexual orientation, or age.


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