Christine M. Flowers: Lock-step feministas

LET'S COIN a new word:

Insufferable-gettes.

Unlike their bloomer-wearing grannies, who respected all women, these modern-day equality warriors practice an odd form of divide and conquer.

According to them, unless you toe the party line (foremost on abortion, but in so many other areas as well, each of them inviolate), you can't be a real feminist.

This is their manifesto to any woman, no matter what other credentials she has, who dares to dissent on the issue of life:

You're a fraud. You should stop appropriating the "f-word." You might talk the good talk about women being equal in all things, but you really think we're human incubators designed to pop one out every couple of years.

And that especially means you, Grizzly-Girl Sarah Palin. Just shut up, and stop pretending that you're anything other than a pea-brained conservative pinup. You betcha.

The Moaning Monas refuse to believe that a woman can be strong, independent, accomplished - and socially conservative.

The most recent example of their insufferance, if you will, is a New York Times op-ed penned by two true believers, Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister. The gals, one of whom belongs to a blog fittingly called Jezebel, are very clear about their position: Palin is "an antichoice, socialist bashing Tea Party enthusiast."

You get the idea they're not really all that upset about her bashing socialists. (That's so "Dr. Zhivago" anyway.) And they're careful not to take on the whole Tea Party movement, given the fact that the original suffragettes harnessed grass-roots power in an eerily similar manner.

What gets their bloomers in a twist is the fact that a woman would dare insert herself into the national conversation, one they have co-opted for several decades, by actually saying it's OK to value unborn life more than a woman's prerogative to "choose." (To be fair, they do care about some babies: Baby moose. They hate that hunter-chic thing Palin has going.)

It's offensive the way they use Palin's family against her, writing that "as an adult, she enjoyed a professional life made possible by the involvement of her load-bearing husband Todd, entering Alaska's governor's mansion at 42 with four children in tow and giving birth to a fifth while there."

Let's dissect that.

First, Palin's success is seen as dependent on her husband's willingness to act as free day care. And she herself is described as some Mother Goose with her brood trailing "in tow." Would they have described House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that way, mother of five and wife of a millionaire who probably bought her all the day care she needed. Bet he didn't stay home with the toddlers.

And that's the point of this ridiculous jeremiad against conservative women, and Palin in particular. When it comes to their families, the only difference between the former Alaska governor and San Fran Nan is their view on abortion.

That's what annoys me about these Emily's List feminists who talk about the big tent and female empowerment but brook absolutely no dissent on reproductive choice - up to and including partial-birth abortion.

They're happy to embrace pro-choice Republicans like Alaska's Lisa Murkowski but turn their noses up at pro-life Democrats like Pennsylvania's own Kathy Dahlkemper.

Speaking of which, you can just imagine how upset they were when pro-life moose-shooting Palin managed to get Princess Murkowski bumped from her GOP Senate race. Sure,

they'll try to say Palin had nothing to do with her loss. But the tea sippers know otherwise.

They also know that feminists aren't really into the whole "tolerance" thing when it really counts. After all, what is tolerance if it only works on unimportant issues, like what color you like for your Pill dispenser?

But if you choose to fight for your profoundly-held belief that abortion is anathema, you're clearly something less than an independent thinker. That choice, apparently, is off-limits if you want to march in lockstep with the feminist monopoly, er, majority.

I refuse to call myself a feminist - pro-life, grizzly or otherwise. In my view, Palin is actually wrong to co-opt symbolism based on a myth of tolerance and equality.

AT BRYN Mawr, that feminist band camp, we didn't have a pro-life group. It wasn't that we were prevented from establishing one. It's that no one was really interested in the first place, other than a few naive freshman Catholics too intimidated to raise their voices.

As far as I'm concerned, intimidation isn't the best recruitment tool. Calling yourself a pro-life feminist is like saying, "Look, I can be in favor of human life and still walk upright."

To me, no excuses should be necessary. That's the real grizzly roar. And Murkowski won't be the last to be pushed off the stage by it.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.

E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.