Greet­ings read­ers! I am a new author to the site and as such I would like to take a few min­utes to intro­duce myself. I am a junior at Gon­zaga Uni­ver­sity and as you prob­a­bly have noticed from the fem­i­nine spelling of my first name I am a woman. Because of the nature of my gen­der and my pol­i­tics I am highly sen­si­tive to all forms of sex­ism. Whether that be bias toward men or women. Before delv­ing to deeply into this topic I would like to pro­vide a clear def­i­n­i­tion of sex­ism. The Oxford Uni­ver­sity Dic­tio­nary defines sex­ism as: the assump­tion that one sex is supe­rior to the other and the resul­tant dis­crim­i­na­tion prac­ticed against mem­bers of the sup­posed infe­rior sex, esp. by men against women; also con­for­mity with the tra­di­tional stereo­typ­ing of social roles on the basis of sex. Sex­ism is a means of jus­ti­fy­ing social, pro­fes­sional, and sex­ual lim­its on indi­vid­u­als because of their gen­der and this applies to both men and women.

Before the intro­duc­tion of Sarah Palin to the Repub­li­can ticket it seemed that ques­tions about race and eth­nic­ity would take front and cen­ter in the minds of Amer­i­cans as they cast their vote this Novem­ber. The choice by John McCain of Palin to run on his ticket as the Repub­li­can pick for VP has done much to rein­vig­o­rate the 2008 cam­paign with ques­tions about sex­ism in Amer­ica after the exit of Hilary Clin­ton on the Demo­c­ra­tic side. To many mem­bers of the GOP Palin’s per­sonal life has been under fire pri­mar­ily because she is a woman. Head­lines about her unmar­ried 17-year-old daugh­ter Bristol’s preg­nancy have marked the pages of news­pa­pers across the coun­try. Since the arti­cles about Palin’s daugh­ter hit the print Repub­li­cans have time and time again said that the preg­nancy was a “fam­ily issue” and would not even be ques­tioned in the media were Palin a man. Repub­li­cans are also quick to blame the Obama camp for sto­ries about Palin’s daugh­ter despite the fact that recently Joe Biden, the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee for VP, was quoted as say­ing “chil­dren are off limits.”

What the GOP is neglect­ing to do is take hits on Palin as a result of her pol­icy deci­sions and ultra con­ser­v­a­tive social views. Instead of fight­ing back and empha­siz­ing Palin’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions attacks are being rebutted by the Repub­li­can camp with accu­sa­tions of sex­ism toward Palin by the lib­eral media. Iron­i­cally enough, dur­ing a Newsweek Women & Lead­er­ship event in Los Ange­les last March Palin said this about Hilary Clin­ton and accu­sa­tions of sex­ism: “I say this with all due respect to Hillary Clinton…but when I hear a state­ment like that com­ing from a woman can­di­date with any kind of per­ceived whine about that excess crit­i­cism or you know maybe a sharper micro­scope put on her, I think you know that doesn’t do us any good – women in pol­i­tics, women in gen­eral want­ing to progress this coun­try.” In no way am I sug­gest­ing that Palin is “whin­ing” about sex­ism in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics because it cer­tainly exists how­ever, as a seri­ous can­di­date for VP, Palin should be silenc­ing crit­ics on the left and right with clear answers about why her poli­cies are bet­ter for the United States of America.

Palin should be explain­ing to the Amer­i­can peo­ple why she believes that abor­tion should be out-lawed com­pletely in this coun­try, why the war in Iraq is part of “gods plan,” why in the air hunt­ing of wolves is a pos­i­tive thing for the envi­ron­ment, why tax cuts for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans stim­u­lates the econ­omy, why health care should not be social­ized to cover all Amer­i­cans, and finally why she is more qual­i­fied than Sen­a­tor Barack Obama and Sen­a­tor Joe Biden to be in one of the most pow­er­ful offices in the world.

I truly hope that the addi­tion of Sarah Palin to the Repub­li­can ticket suc­ceeds in push­ing women in pol­i­tics for­ward and not back­ward in the spirit of Hilary Clin­ton, Nancy Pelosi and Bar­bara Boxer. My chal­lenge to Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin, my fel­low woman and Amer­i­can, is to show me what you got girl. Show us all.