Traister: 'Cry me a freaking river'

Rebbecca Traister, yet again, nails the Sarah Palin sympathy game:

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.

I admit that occasionally I feel bad when I see disgusting shit like those horribly sexist t-shirts. No woman should have to go through that. But to sympathize with Palin because she gets beat up on the national stage -- like any candidate does who runs for national office -- it's an insult. The point of all those years of feminists fighting for equality wasn't so that women get treated preferentially. It was so that women could be treated equally.

That means that when someone isn't qualified and people point that out, it's not sexist just because that person is a woman. Very few of the criticisms leveled against Sarah Palin these days are sexist, especially those leveled in serious political writing. The criticisms are more that she doesn't seem prepared to take office, that she spouts incomprehensible answers, and that she accidentally agrees with her opponents because she can't keep all the talking points in her head. This doesn't mean she's a bad person, but it does mean that she's not qualified for office.