Being a guy, I thought it might be better to have a woman going through the difficult process of choice talk about it.
So this is Nina Darnton in HuffPo, who posits the key question to Hillary supporters who accuse other women of being ‘traitors to feminism:’
What happened to supporting your sister’s freedom of choice? It turned out it was often only evident when she chose what you chose.
It got me wondering why it’s no problem for so many guys to support either a woman or an African-American without having to go through all this self-examination?
An obvious answer is that patriarchy allows us guys to shift gears without having to justify ourselves, since our freedom to choose is never in peril.
And yet, while that might be the book answer, there’s more to it than that. Sure guys do have to deal with the social approval of their peers. And I bet there are some guys who support Clinton or Obama who are lying about it to their social peers who, say, may be Republican.
At least, it seems, women are more willing to broach difficult subjects like politics with their female friends than men are. And yet, they seem to pay a greater social price for it, even to the point of losing friends.
An example - it was easy for me for many years to sublimate my social and political positions while a member of a fantasy football league that included some of my very longtime friends from high school.
But as I aged and got more bothered by what I was seeing and experiencing in my society, their barbs against gays, casual pot smokers, liberals of all stripes and those that didn’t support the Iraqi War (the deal breaker at last) were harder for me to stomach.
Finally, I dropped out and closed the door on some near 30 year friendships. It was remarkably easier to do than I thought it would be.
I think women, from what I have experienced, have a harder time letting go of friends. Again, it might seem a sociological point - men may tend to make more friends of convenience than women who seek friendships for life.
So I think it may be a far more serious point for women to have sharp disagreements over fundamental social issues and remain friends than perhaps, for men, who I believe, find it easier to play the game for social advancement.
If I’m wrong, tell me.
But it seems, as Darnton writes, that the Obama-Clinton dichotomy among women has become another battle front from the ‘mommy wars’ that she helped start with her 1990 article about choices women had to stay at home or seek a career.
I think that Hillary Clinton may have assumed more of the women’s vote than she realized and I think this was a big mistake on her part. It seems that the desire among many first and even second-generation feminists to have a member of their cohort in the White House was regarded as a given that would lead Clinton to victory.
But there was another divide Clinton didn’t consider - generational.
It’s been a big debate in the feminist community - how much do the first and second generation feminists really have in common with women under 30 now? There have long been grumblings among over 50 feminists that the younger sisters take too much for granted and fail to appreciate the sacrifices and hard work of the women who laid the groundwork for what they enjoy.
But I believe that it has been exactly those open doors - both physical and psychological - that have made the candidacy of Barack Obama such a hit among younger voters.
It may be as simple as this - when younger women look to Hillary Clinton they see their mothers. When they look to Barack Obama, they see a person they went through college with.
But there’s even more to it, which brings me to Marie Wilson’s column, also in today’s HuffPo (fancy that coincidence!):
How else could we arrive at such a moment when the male democratic frontrunner for the presidency is likened to a woman — and is celebrated for it? Feminism has not only made inroads for women into the worlds of business and politics; it has challenged long-standing assumptions regarding masculinity, significantly expanding the box in which men and boys experience and display their maleness.
More and more men are taking an active part in the raising of their children — and loving it — thanks to both the policy shifts and cultural shifts brought by feminism. Workplaces are more family-friendly, gender roles are more flexible, and even the most masculine of institutions — the armed forces — boasts beneficial changes because women have entered the ranks. These transformations are palpable and positive, and have led me to wish for a major ad campaign spanning television screens, radio waves, and the sides of buses nationwide depicting how greatly men have benefited from the women’s movement. Its caveat would read: “This Opportunity Has Been Brought to You by Feminism. “
This revelation, of course, will do little to salve the hurts of Clinton fans who feel, not without some justification, that even though Obama has benefited from feminist zeitgeist, it still robbed a qualified woman from leading the nation.
Wilson ends with this:
Our country certainly needs to incorporate feminine styles of leadership — cowboy diplomacy has left us in quite the dire domestic and global state — and so I applaud our nation’s approval of Obama’s feminine approach. Yet this endorsement is a product of hard-fought feminist fights, many of which are far from won. And so as we honor this new era that we find ourselves in, and as we celebrate Women’s History Month, I hope that the disparate and unfair situation in which women leaders often find themselves in is acknowledged and rejected as well. I hope Obama’s rise is accompanied by a new movement on the part of male leaders to ameliorate their leadership — and that we can learn, as a nation, to truly accept women leading alongside them.
Which also begs two questions:
Had Obama not run, would this Democratic nomination race been a cakewalk for Hillary Clinton?
and
Will the feminine qualities Wilson ascribes to Obama be shot to pieces by John McCain’s campaign proving that America is still not willing to accept a ‘non-Cowboy’ type of leadership?
On the first point, one might well ask if Obama was more of a problem for John Edward’s otherwise fine campaign that Clinton was? That is, the male vote could not have been split without guaranteeing a Clinton victory - given the belief that women were voting in a bloc?
Apparently that didn’t happen and now we are dealing with a crossover youth vote from both sexes and races flocking to Obama’s candidacy. And they’re doing that, in part, simply because Hillary Clinton didn’t speak to them. This is something that perhaps should give the first generation feminists some pause - many of them will be able or have retired with nice pensions. But the under 35 crowd, say, has some serious issues with the current structures of society and the economy. And Clinton never seemed to stop talking to her own cohort enough to give the young people a reason to believe. If you don’t believe that - ask them.
This jaded generation flocked from Clinton to Obama precisely because he gave them something to believe in other than policy papers. He genuinely inspired them in a way that left the Mark Penn and company reeling, trying to figure it all out. And they more they and the press call it a ‘cult’ the more this generation rally around Obama.
In a roundabout way of saying it, I think Clinton may have made short work of the rest of the field without the figure of Obama in the hunt. And I think you can definitely make the case, as Wilson does, that his form of leadership wouldn’t have gotten him this far without the feminist movement.
And on the second begged question, will Obama’s kindler, gentler form of leadership survive the reactionary dragons of the general election?
If I were a betting man, I would say no. After all, remember how war hero John Kerry was slimed by the swift-boaters.
The difference may be that Barack Obama is no John Kerry and that as long as he sticks to the JFK playbook, he just might pull it off. Being virtually unflappable helps enormously in a country where showing any kind of emotion, extreme or otherwise, on the campaign trail, is as good as death.
Edmund Muskie couldn’t cry, neither could Hillary Clinton. And Obama knows this. Nor can he scream like Howard Dean or in any other way, show anything but a calm reserve.
Of course, its not fair. The reactionaries and their media friends will forgive McCain any slip-up. Obama, or Clinton, for that matter, will have to be twice as reserved and steely to make a difference.
So it seems that feminism has not changed everything. We’re still Cowboy Nation, for the most part.
But in the end, regardless of what happens today in Ohio and three other states, one can say we really have come a long way from two white guys being the obvious candidates. And as Darnton and Wilson point out, that’s something all feminists and progressives can point to with pride.
As long as we respect our freedom to make the choice between the two of them.
