The Rhetoric of Choice and 21st-Century Feminism: Online Conversations About Work, Family, and Sarah Palin

Abstract

Critical exploration of online discourse concerning Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy and role as mother reveals the rhetoric of choice is predominant when it comes to how women approach and understand work and family as well as interact with feminism. With strong roots in cultural narratives, the rhetoric of choice draws upon an understanding of individual rights and responsibility and obscures the operations of oppression and patriarchy. As the analysis demonstrates, choice is highly lauded yet often employed in a postfeminist framework or as a metonym for feminism.

Keywords:

• feminism
• motherhood
• online discourse
• rhetoric of choice
• Sarah Palin

Notes

Former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women and prominent feminist writer Tammy Bruce (2008) publicly endorsed Palin, while Gloria Steinem (2008) opposed Palin in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece titled, “Wrong Woman, Wrong Message.”

The names of Palin's five children are Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. In December 2009 baby Tripp, Bristol's son, joined the family.

Julia Woods's 1996 Quarterly Journal of Speech book review of Roiphe, Hoff Sommers, and Wolf's work thoroughly addresses and explores the postfeminist discourses of the writers and the neoliberal narratives from which the authors draw.

I began actively gathering data on October 10, 2008, and continued to gather data until mid-May 2009. I retroactively gathered data in the time period between August 28, 2008, the day McCain announced his pick of running mate, to October 9, 2008, via Google searches, ProQuest, and LexisNexis. I focused on data collected between August 28, 2008, and December 1, 2008, a few weeks after the election, but continued to include relevant data beyond December 1 if it contributed to earlier conversations.

The issue of abortion was also an interesting component of Palin's campaign for the vice presidency. News outlets reported McCain selected Palin as his running mate in part to appease anti-abortion Republicans; Palin's hard line regarding abortion (she opposed it even in cases of incest and rape) countered McCain's own “softer” stance (Bartholet & Breslau, 2008; Cooper & Bumiller, 2008; Grunwald & Newton-Small, 2008). Palin in fact embodied anti-abortion politics: in April 2009 she admitted considering abortion when she learned she was pregnant at the age of 43 and the baby had Down syndrome but decided she had to “walk the walk” when it came to her own views on abortion (Franke-Ruta, 2009). Further, days into the McCain–Palin campaign, the public learned that Bristol, Palin's 17-year-old daughter, was pregnant. The Palin family released a statement praising “Bristol's decision to have her baby,” a sentiment echoed by pro-life supporters across the nation.

Excerpts from online sources are represented as they appear in their original form except when that form impedes readability. In such cases, I have corrected spelling or grammar to ensure understanding. Parenthetical citations provide the blog or Web site title and the year in which the post or comment was published. Sometimes year could not be determined; in those cases, the citation refers only to the blog or Web site title.

The label pro-choice, however, was not picked up in abortion debate until after the legalization of abortion and in response to the “pro-life” discourse of the anti-abortion movement (Staggenborg, 1994). The Roe v. Wade decision helped solidify choice as a concept, a practice to be protected and supported, and one that was an individual's alone, distanced from state interference. Like conceptions of choice before 1969 within labor and civil rights movements, the term choice in the abortion debate called upon notions of individual freedom and autonomy.

In 2009, 59.2% of women, aged 16 and above, were in the labor force, according to U.S. Department of Labor (2011), and workforce participation for mothers of children under the age of 18 has increased dramatically from 43% in 1975 to 75% in 2000, although numbers decreased slightly since 2000 and were at 71.6% in 2009.

A woman's time spent on housework goes up an average of 17% when she gets married, while a man's decreases by 33% (Moen & Roehling, 2004).

The examples of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan may present the opportunity for discussion of a Career First script. Neither woman has children, and both have prestigious careers (see Ashburn, 2010).

Young (1988) argues that the concept of oppression cannot be strictly defined because all oppressed people do not share one attribute or a set of attributes. Instead, Young posits five criteria or categories of oppression useful for exploring the oppression experienced by a group: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. These criteria provide insight into the various ways oppression operates and how facets of oppression may overlap to create unique experiences.