"I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell." - Harry S Truman

***

Whatever you might think of the nomination of Sarah Palin as Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, you have to agree that (besides giving Progressives a taste of their own medicine with repeated charges of discrimination, justified or otherwise) it exposes one of the conflations of feminism: of the politics of entitlement and the importance of feminist views (cf. Black Conservatives like Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell).

If, as feminists claim, it does not matter whether you are male or female, and that males can be feminists too, then as long as there is no discrimination (no, the miasma of "patriarchy" does not count), there is no reason to press for quotas or other action to remedy statistical gender inequalities.

Nor should there be reason to cheer for "milestones" like Yuriko Koike, Japan's first potential Prime Minister or some of the faintly more ridiculous ones like "first female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby" (seriously). Even if these proves that it is *possible* for women to do such things, it doesn't prove that discrimination of some sort does not exist, so their only value is questionable symbolism (indeed, if strong discrimination persists, these "milestones" are counterproductive, but nevermind).

Contrariwise, if the feminists also claim that women deserve representation in higher management, corporate hiring, educational admissions, politics (and other areas) by virtue of their gender, then the views of the women who do get into these posts should not matter.

If what they want is people who are both female AND share their views, not only are they feminarchically silencing women who do not agree with them (e.g. Feminists for Life), but what they are saying can be translated very simply as: "Since we're incapable of getting elected/in on our own merits, we will protest until we are parachuted in".

And what could be more anti-democratic (though perhaps not anti-feminist) than that?