Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Absolutely true. However, that's not necessarily the way Palin presents it, which is really the issue here. While there's certainly nothing wrong with the "Mama Bear" archetype which she invokes- indeed, it can be quite empowering!- she is using it in the service of a broader movement of social conservatism, which, while far from innately incompatible with feminism (conservatism is traditionally pragmatic, and as such, the majority of Western conservatives have fully reconciled first-wave feminism) is unlikely to be anywhere near the cutting edge of feminist thought. Her positions generally betray a certain incompatibility with much of second-wave feminism (and I mean the sensible bits, not the Dworkinian lunacy which so soured it in the public image), let alone the far more progressive thought of the third-wave.
Feminism, after all, is more than simply being a woman in the public eye and making a self-concious point of it, which is all Palin is really doing. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, and her "movement" may even prove to be quite beneficial to a certain kind of conservative woman, but to paint it as a form of feminism is perhaps simplistic.
Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, neither of us could say for sure; what is important is that they are given the choice. Personally, I think that we act differently now when compared to fifty years ago, and at least some of that is due to the slipping grasp of the binary system, and I see no reason why that wouldn't continue. Put it this way: could metrosexuals have existed in the 50s? As much a joke as that trend was, it represents the fact that the binary model of genre lacks the strength which it previously had, and that a limited amount of what would traditionally be seen as genderbending could attain mainstream acceptance, albeit without fully deviating from the binary model. It's all too easy take the present and treat it as a reflection of innate human behaviour, but it doesn't actually give you an effective guide to humanity.
They are outside of it in the sense that they do not adhere to it, but they still dwell within a society which is ultimately governed by it (even if they themselves represent the slipping authority of that government), and so are not free from it. Furthermore, the system naturally places certain limits on one's ability to deviate from it, which is why those who do break tend to break hard- hence the traditional stereotypes of the flamboyment gay, butch lesbian, girlier-than-the-girls transexual, etc.- either because those who would not naturally adopt such an unconventional identity may be less motivated, or because those who do break feel obliged to break "properly", or some combination of the two, often depending on the individual (the acceptance of the "straight gay" in mainstream culture has been a significant part of the LGBT rights movement in recent years). This reflects the strength of the binary and the difficulties involved with breaking from it, as well as suggesting that many who are "within" the binary may not be in their natural comfort zone, but lack the ability, motivation or self-awareness to break from it; essentially, that Rand's "98%" is a load of old cobblers, because the binary system naturally mask the innate personal tendencies of it's adherents. Human gender and sexuality are both increasingly proving themselves to be rather more fluid than we have traditionally realised, so to presume that all deviations must, in some way, reflect the binary (the common presumption that non-traditional sexual orientation that you are either purely homosexual or purely bisexual, the presumption that non-traditional gender-identity necessarily takes the form of transgenderism) or must represent an incredibly drastic departure from it (that you can either be male, female or "other") is over-simplistic.
EDIT: Just going to leave this here, sort of illustrates my point:
Spoiler :
