Shame on the Trig-truthers' Sarah Palin hate

The flipside of Obama birtherism is the Trig conspiracy theory about Sarah Palin. Liberals must disown such creepy misogyny
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Sarah Palin, with her daughter Willow, holding her brother Trig, campaigns at a rally in Henderson, Nevada. Palin is giving the American sign language hand sign for Sarah Palin, with her daughter Willow, holding her brother Trig, campaigns at a rally in Henderson, Nevada. (Palin is giving the US sign language hand sign for 'I Love You'.) Photograh: Eric Jamison/AP

At the bitter heart of Trig birtherism, its adherents cling to one major assumption: former Alaska governor Sarah Palin should not be elected to higher office. On that they and, if polls are to be believed, a majority of Americans apparently agree. But from that starting place, it all goes terribly awry. For Trig birthers don't believe that Palin's minimal governing experience, divisive political persona or her array of deeply conservative policy positions on everything from drilling to abortion to equal pay to healthcare should inspire their opposition to her. Rather, they believe that what did – or, in their ill-informed opinion, did not – once emerge from her mysterious and hidden womb should make the rest of us nervous enough to disavow her.

Trig birthers? In the stubbly nether regions of the internet untouched by Occam's razor, a dedicated group of (mostly) men seeks to prove that the Palin family drama is more soap operatic than the family has already acknowledged. That is, they seek to convince the rest of the world that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sarah Palin wasn't really pregnant in 2007 and 2008, and did not give birth to her son Trig three years ago. Many of them believe Palin's pregnancy was a ruse designed to shield her teenage daughter, Bristol, from the consequences of a teenage pregnancy – conveniently ignoring the fact that Bristol's actual teenage pregnancy culminated in a live full-term birth a mere eight months after her brother Trig was born. Oh, those mysterious lady parts! How do they ever work?

If the best "reason" one can come up with to oppose a national Palin candidacy would have regular soap opera watchers snarking about unbelievable plot lines, then one is just not that interested in politics beyond the "personal destruction" part. Palin's rightwing politics alone ought to be enough for liberals; her "blood libel" video and the defence thereof garnered her a new share of critics among independents; and her political persona – and popularity – is built around appealing to her fan base and not those who are unsure about her. One doesn't even have to debate the issue of her womb to oppose her politically … and yet, some critics continue to insist that, without a full accounting of her gynaecological records, they won't be convinced.

No one is asking for the results of President Obama's prostate exams or his urological records, even if a bunch of nutjobs don't feel that they've seen enough of his birth certificate. No one ran around in 1984 asking to see Geraldine Ferraro's gynaecological records, and it definitely didn't come up during then Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency, even if there were plenty of jabs about her supposed cankles and gossip about the supposed state of her marriage. No, somehow, Sarah Palin has inspired a bunch of nominally liberal men to spend a heck of a lot of time speculating about her female organs, and now they want the records – and let's not kid ourselves about the headlines they'd write if they got them. Gynaecological records aren't just an account of what one's uterus has done, after all – they're also a regular look into one's vagina.

Yes, Palin's most vociferous opponents want to look into her vagina – with a guide, of course, because it's all mysterious and scary. Sarah Palin, apparently, couldn't have just gotten pregnant the way the rest of the world does and she couldn't have delivered a baby the way the rest of the women of the world do. She couldn't have had and recognised a few Braxton Hicks contractions after bearing four children, and gotten on a plane to have the birth of her fifth, special-needs child in her hometown, and had it all be perfectly above board. Nope, it has to be something more mysterious, more nefarious, more … gross. What she's done with her vagina just has to disqualify her from office.

And that's really what Trig birtherism comes down to: misogyny. They can't just oppose her positions or personally dislike her (not that any of the Trig birthers apparently know her personally). No, her very femaleness and what they consider her subversion of it must disqualify her from office. And no firsthand accounts or doctor's statements are going to change their minds that the highly improbable fantasy is more compelling than the mundane truth – not without being able to put their grubby little hands on her private gynaecological records. Though, like Obama birthers, they probably wouldn't be satisfied with those alone, either – unless they found something else in them with which to demonise her.

There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Sarah Palin, plenty of reasons to dislike Sarah Palin's political persona and a plethora of reasons to oppose a potential Palin candidacy in 2012. And while Trig birthers clearly don't suffer from a lack of a certain kind of imagination (one rooted in her identity as a woman and a mother), it's perfectly fair to suggest that they just aren't interesting enough or imaginative enough to come up with any actual good reason for voters to oppose her – which is why they settled on this conspiracy theory. Maybe, when it comes down to it, if this is the most important reason they can come up with why Palin should be disqualified from office, they're actually kind of her biggest fans: they certainly spent more time thinking about her nether regions than seems appropriate.

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