Cross posted from Motley Moose on behalf of Sarah Churchwell

Be careful what you wish for. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was an earnest neophyte feminist at Vassar, earnestly debating the meanings of feminism, sexism, and choice, I used to wish, earnestly, that we would have a political campaign that actually discussed these issues. And this year I finally got one. Sort of. Only the disingenuousness of the conversation we're actually having is something that I, in my actual ingenuousness then, could never have envisioned. But democracy being what it is, and Republicans being what they are, it's turned into something very twisted, indeed.

Most of the time, it feels like a parody of the conversations we used to have, as when Camille Paglia argues in Salon.com on the basis that any woman who has power must ergo be a feminist, regardless of trivial bagatelles like her policies and principles, otherwise known as "requiring an ideological litmus test for membership". So Palin's feminism is just unorthodox? Since I'm quite the hetero-doxy myself, let me just say that I'm not taking this crap from Camille...

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