SATURDAY MORNING COFFEE QUESTIONS ON WOMEN AND VOTING POWER
I’ve been interviewed many times over the years by AP reporter David Crary, and he always does a great job of capturing sensitive and complex cultural issues that many other journalists can only simplify into polarized extremes.
His byline article today, in which he also interviews several of my most esteemed colleagues and fondest friends-with whom I don’t necesarily agree on this issue–is no exception.
Feminists sharply divided between Clinton, Obama
By DAVID CRARY –
NEW YORK (AP) — No constituency is more eager to see a woman win the presidency than America’s feminists, yet — despite Hillary Rodham Clinton’s historic candidacy — the women’s movement finds itself wrenchingly divided over the Democratic race as it heads toward the finish.
At breakfast forums, in op-ed columns, across the blogosphere, the debate has been heartfelt and sometimes bitter. Are the activist women supporting front-runner Barack Obama betraying their gender? Are Clinton’s feminist backers mired in an outdated, women’s-liberation mind-set?
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
Read the rest of the article here… and tell me a) what you think and b) so what you think women ought to do, not about this disagreement necessarily but about using our voting power?
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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I don’t think it’s fair to assume that women who vote for Obama are betraying their gender- I think that’s an outright put-down to those who may have actually policy differences with Hillary.
There are some among feminists who believe that Obama’s policies are actually more in line with their feminist beliefs. One example- when I heard Hillary respond to the obviously red-herring question about Iran, saying that if they moved on Israel, she would ‘obliterate Iran.’ I did a double take thinking, she’s too smart for this, so who is she trying to appeal to with this very Bush-esque texas machismo? It was a stupid response to a question which presented a situation that is unlikely to occur. My first question was “Hillary, will we obliterate Iran with nukes, including the tens of millions of innocent women and children who have virtually no say in the actions of their govt?” and “how do you expect we fight a war on three fronts (afghanistan, Iraq and Iran). Many feminists I know, including myself, do not think trapsing around the Middle East invading other countries and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, is exactly helping us or anyone else in the area (Israel, Jordan) in any way. In fact, our intelligence agencies say the exact opposite.
I also found it strange that Hillary has been very vocal about how pleased she is to have garnered the votes of “hardworking white people”- what does that mean? That Obama is popular with the lazy, out of work black people? I certainly don’t like the sound of that.
Not that Obama doesn’t have his own problems- I don’t like how he has pretty much ignored a key constituency- gays and lesbians- Hillary has certainly done more to shore up their support and I can’t help but wonder why Obama has not.
You’re certainly right, Stacy, in pointing out that both candidates have either ignored certain key constituencies or otherwise said things easy to disagree with. And of course, in an interview, one never gets the entire quote cited if it doesn’t fit with the reporter’s story. In this case, I led off my comments about why I’d choose a woman candidate if she’s so obviously qualified by saying I wouldn’t vote for a Phyllis Schlafly. So I think each of us hs to find our place on the continuum of the issues that matter most to us. I too feel that her use of the word “obliterate” was over the top; nevertheless, I know that any president has to take a strong stance in order to say that we won’t allow Israel to be obliterated which is what Ahmadinajhad threatens over and over. In international diplomacy, each situation has to be approached individually, and when it comes to Iran and other such bullies, there’s hardly a question that the best way to prevent war is to show we are not afraid of it, that we won’t be bullied. Then we are in a position to sit down with the leaders and negotiate toward peace, as Obama will soon learn. I imagine that his ethnicity will buy him a short grace period in which he might be able to inject some different approaches but it won’t last long.
All that said, I do also favor Hillary because of some key policies.Health care is one example where her experience with trying to increment us toward universal coverage without breaking too many of the health care establishment’s eggs taught her it can’t be accomplished that way, that we must bite the bullet and get everyone into the insurance pool if we are to bring down costs and still improve access for everyone.
A difference that I can’t help but believe is gender based is in the two candidates’ response to questions about the Supreme Court and their relative sensibilities about women’s rights as civil rights that include reproductive rights rather. Hillary’s statement as quoted in Medical News Today:
Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor said that Obama “has always believed that our courts should stand up for social and economic justice, and what’s truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves” (Eilperin, Washington Post, 5/7). Obama’s campaign also said that McCain would choose judges who represent a threat to abortion rights and to the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance law (Quaid, AP/Google.com, 5/6).
Clinton Campaign Policy Director Neera Tanden said, “In an effort to pander to conservative voters, Sen. McCain has signaled his intention to appoint right-wing judges who are committed to rolling back women’s rights and civil rights, elevating the interests of big business over the rights of workers and consumers, affirming executive branch power grabs and undermining our common core freedoms.” She added that Clinton “has a different vision. She will appoint judges who respect the separation of powers, are steadfast in protecting civil rights and liberties, including the right of privacy, and who cherish equal justice under law” (Reuters, 5/6).
Hers was much stronger in my opinion.And my personal experience with both of them as senators is why I think she would be much better for women in regard to any policy with gender implications–she just gets it and places higher priority on it. And I think it’s high time we women had that advantage after over two centuries of governing through a male lens.
WHAT’S FEMINISM? HOW “AMERICAN CATTINESS” IS KILLING HILLARY CLINTON!
At thirty-seven years old I consider myself a young man. For certain I have little recollection of the height of the Feminist movement. The few memories I do hold are tinged with the dark perceptions that resemble the White, Republican, Evangelical pastors that pervaded my nuclear and extended families. Interesting enough, however, this same family included strong female role models. Both my mother, and her mother before her, was listed among these family pastors. As a child born and raised by such women I evolved into a young man that believed woman were different (albeit different because of doing “stupid things” like “burning bras in public”) but they were also equal in the eyes of God! “If the Holy Spirit moves a woman to preach,” I was often told, “who are we to tell God ‘no!’”
I quickly learned that many people felt even less appreciative of women than I was taught. When I began the process of “coming out” as a gay man in the mid-90s of rural Central Pennsylvania the world made the sexist-reality abundantly clear. I was told, time and time again, that I was a man “choosing” to be a woman by being gay. And to “be a man who chooses to be a woman” is an absurdity, an anathema, a sin! “Why would you choose to deny your birthright as the powerful, dominant and holy man and become one of the powerless, submissive and evil women?” Sentiments such as these took my path of self discovery deep into the realm of the Feminine, far into the academic study of Feminism and boldly into the sacred spaces of women. I learned, and identified with, the struggles of women, the misogynist tendencies of the U.S. that harm us daily and the in-fighting that remains in our dying “Sisterhood of Women” which now merely lingers in the backdrop of the third millennia.
I spent years engaged in academic research regarding the roles of gender in our society and I both attended and taught courses dealing with the various “isms” that curse our world. For certain I became (and remain) an educated, enlightened, liberal and progressive adult. I often concluded that sexism appears to be our deepest divide. While men (often heterosexual men) spent much of human’s history fighting each other over differences of power, religion, economics, geography, ethnicity and race; women consistently remained their positions as domestic prisoners and/or second-class citizens. Whether “this group of men” won this battle or “this other group of men” won this war, women were subjected to the powers of the patriarchy and did not make significant advancements until the 20th century. Even the most simplest review of our recent American history shows us a clear pattern of our misogynistic world: a man of any non-white race (often African-American) will receive a social status or privilege DECADES before a woman of ANY race will receive the exact same status or privilege: the right to vote, the first US senator, the first governor, the first to join the military forces or the first to join the national sports scene. Time after time women are placed in the “least” and “last” categories.
Today, and as we increasingly watch the opportunity for our first woman president slip by, we must ask ourselves why the issue of “race” has dominated campaign coverage and the issue of “gender” has become almost non-existent. We were told that is was suppose to be a “historic race” for TWO reasons but the one historical precedent quickly overshadowed the other. To even find commentary of the issue of gender in this “historic race” one needs to Google effortlessly among less publicized sources. Some blogs are faithfully examining the role of the United States ’ first woman presidential nominee. Some second- and third-tier papers continue to suggest modest mentions of Hillary’s gender and woman voters are routinely mentioned as one of the many characteristics of voters following each primary.
After Hillary’s landslide victory in my home state of Pennsylvania Susan Shapiro Barash wrote the following words for the website that accompanies NBC’s TODAY show: “If ever there was an example of a deficient sisterhood, and a show of female rivalry, it has been threaded throughout Hillary’s campaign.” Ah…here lies the rub kitty-kitty! While the diverse and multifaceted African-American communities have effectively put aside their differences and solidified their support around Obama, and while the predominantly White Democratic party wisely began to consider the consequences of denying the first African-American person the nomination, women (of ALL races) have merely spent these past months fighting with each other…fighting about Hillary’s worth. The overarching question of how all women would feel if their candidate was denied the nomination quickly became an irrelevant question for America . “Feminism?” the Democratic party and national media sources asked, “what’s feminism?”
While I began a year-long journey as a Hillary supporter I’ve been frequently amazed, and appalled, by the “catty” remarks that soon characterized my sisters. The young women would often speak in a manner that revealed their lack of appreciation for the sweat and tears of their mothers and grandmothers saying: “Why should I vote for Hillary simply because she’s a woman?” or “I would vote for a woman but I just don’t like her personally” or I don’t like her on this issue or that issue. The old women would attack Hillary’s character in textbook precision of the symptoms of internalized misogyny and oppression: “I just can’t trust her!” and “She acts too confident. She thinks she’s a man!” A third set of remarks stated the tensions of competing loyalties among many Black women of all ages: “I care about the possibility of a first woman president but I also care about my blackness and the pressures from my family and community is too great,” many shared with me. “In the end my ethnicity is simply more important to me than my gender.” For those who missed this latter sentiment on the personal line of sisterhood our mother Oprah made it all too clear on the national scene. So much so that the list of sisters, divas, actresses and female politicians who have been supporting and/or endorsing Hillary got strikingly little media attention. But why bother, right? As the cat-like women of Saturday Night Live told us: We don’t need to choose Hillary just because she’s a woman. We’ll just do what Oprah tells us to do.
Quickly the once magnificent and solidified Sisterhood of Women was overcome with “cattiness,” or worse yet, victim-induced apathy. Middle-aged sisters, lesbians and gay men of all ages appeared to be left alone on the front lines to defend our Feminine hopes and dreams – hopes and dreams reflected and symbolized in one “Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Over the months we’ve watched with dismay and horror as the “White males voters” bloc increasingly became the stronger supporters for the first woman president. “Feminism? What’s feminism?” some dared to whisper. “Let’s just have some one metaphorically give her testicles during a press conference. We don’t mind if you completely de-feminize her. The media does, after all, have a lot of Rev. Wright reporting to do. They don’t have time to report our society’s sexist need to give Hillary balls!”
And now, two days after Hillary’s significant loss in North Carolina and narrow win in Indiana , the men of the world ironically beckon their call for “the woman” to stop acting like “the man,” and a wo/man who dares to play it to the 4th quarter no less! And the women? What do they say now? Well, let’s just say these “catty cats” were let out of the bag a long time ago and they’d rather enjoy their disillusioned sense of equality that provides them with a false sense of independence then to get back into the bag of sexism with their community of sisters, mothers, grandmothers and even gay friends — even if it is for a bold, powerful, talented, beautiful, educated and experienced sister such as “my girl” Hillary who just happens to be where NO woman has EVER been before!
In the end, I fear, America ’s own catty women have killed Hillary’s chance to be our “Madam President.”
In the end, and as an enlightened man who proudly embraces his “womanness” on a daily basis, I can only come to one conclusion: Women can learn a lot from the African American community, or more precisely, the African American communitIES! This past year their incredibly high numbers (as a voting bloc for Obama) have reminded us of EXTREMELY valuable lessons: put aside your differences and opinions (even the valid ones!)when the time calls for it, realize when its time to just be loyal to the cause and then simply support the one who symbolizes it (with imperfections and all)! After all what’s wrong with supporting the symbol of your cause even if that symbol isn’t 100 percent perfect? Who is? I’m sure not!!!
If we’re just waiting for the perfect woman to come along…someone who will somehow manifest every women’s view of feminism and someone who will magically align with every women’s view on all of the stated policies…I fear we’ll be waiting for a Madam President for a long, long, LONG time! I, for one, mourn at the thought that this is our present state as feminists and women today!
In Peace and Blessings,
Gaypastor (Hershey, PA)
Two things- first, in response to Gloria, I agree that Hillary is obviously strongly pro-choice and the last thing I want on the court is another Scalia. Reproductive rights and gay rights are key issues for me.
With respect to Israel, I think that at this point, all three candidates see Israel as a key ally and will do everything that can be done to help protect them- and Israel knows this too. For a potential President to say she will obliterate Iran under certain conditions is reckless- I don’t see how down the road it brings anybody to the table to discuss anything or convinces them they can work with the US, particularly after our invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, Iran has been talking nonsense for years- they constantly bait israel and portend it’s destruction, but it doesn’t mean that we fall for the trap they have set and threaten to destroy the nation and everyone in it- that is EXACTLY how they want us to respond and at times I see a hawkishness in Hillary that wories me. Pres. Amadinajah is hateful and provacative, but not outright stupid- he is trying to inflame the passions of not only the US, but his extremist allies in the Middle East.
As for gaypastors comment- I dont think anyone is waiting for the perfect woman/feminist to run for President- I don’t think such a thing exists and often some of the greatest feminist activists never run for office because they know they can probably achieve a great deal more without compromising their principles by remaining activists. That said, I feel that I have every right to hold the candidates to a higher standard than simply, “well, he/she is better than the other guy,,,” as if that is enough. I don’t like how Obama handled the fall-out from the Rev. Wright scandal and that gave me pause but I still resent the implication that supporting a certain candidate is somehow setting women’s rights back decades.