*rubs hands together*

Oh, Sarah Palin! She never disappoints me. She's always got a little something to distract us from, oh, 210,000 gallons of oil that are gushing PER DAY into the Gulf of Mexico for the past MONTH. My idea? Soak it up with all the jerks that chanted Drill Baby Drill along with who? Oh yes, Palin.

She's oddly silent on the oil spill, but lately Palin did declare herself a feminist and set the (actual) feminist blog-o-sphere a-fire with mighty chuckles and reminders that, no, you can't just CALL yourself a feminist and make it so, just like I can't call myself a vegetarian and eat meat for dinner.

If you've been following along, you'll know that Meghan Daum in the LA Times wrote, "... I feel a duty (a feminist duty, in fact) to say this about Palin's declaration: If she has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she's entitled to be accepted as one." Well, sure, I might have the guts to call myself a size 2, but I will never be accepted as one.

So, Palin calls herself a feminist, for who knows what reason. Maybe she's confused about the meaning of the word, or maybe she's co-opting it for political reasons or whatever, but, by most people's definition, she's clearly not a feminist. She doesn't fight for women's rights, she actively fights against them. Done. Not a feminist. Meanwhile, in response to this, true feminists are calling her out on it. And then the types of asshats who troll feminist blogs pop up and say, Hey, lady, who are you to say who is and who ain't a feminist? And that's the part that makes me rub my hands together. It's a simple lesson but it gets forgotten: Words Mean Things.