First it was Gloria Steinem; now it's Robin Morgan who is calling global feminism to order. It is time to support Hillary Rodham.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama's -- and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she's already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, and because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.
As for the "woman thing"?
Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman -- but because I am.
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So there is a gender gap among Democrats. According to exit polls (certainly, a precise science), older women go for Rodham, white men go for Obama (other gaps: young people for Obama, latinos for Rodham, lower income for Rodham, higher income for Obama, lower education for Rodham, higher education for Obama, blacks for Obama, labor for Rodham). Identity politics 101. Hence the Democrats face two choices with historical implications. Either nominate a woman or a black male. Morgan, picking up Rodham's talking points, finds her more qualified. That's the bottom line; but above the line is the resentment of years of taking a back seat, of deferring, of being bypassed by someone younger, etc., und so weiter...Moreover, the nomination of Rodham is an opportunity to stick it to the Republican hatemeisters. On these points, one can agree with Morgan. But the last sentence sticks in the mind: vote for Rodham because of your chromosomes, not because of Rodham's.
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Is this what Second Wave Feminism has come to? The Second Wave, splintered by the divide between cultural feminists and sex radicals and the divide between "women of color" and "white feminists", has become virtually invisible as a political-cultural force (just the opposite of the presence of feminist theory as an intellectual force in the academy). I once posed a question in an undergraduate classroom: who among you identifies as a feminist? Not more than five hands went up among the sixty in attendance. Are we now in a post-feminist situation in which the recriminations of the 1980s and 1990s, and the decades of anti-feminist conservative backlash, have made the idea of feminism itself an impossibility? The glass ceiling remains and masculinist symbolic and physical violence continues to define and restrict the social space for women. What does a Rodham presidency portend for changing these conditions?
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What is interesting in this season of XX, XY and melanin sufficiency is that presumed "loyalties" have been affirmed and transcended. Black politicos are barracking for Rodham; Women politicos are barracking for Obama. Is this progress? I view it as such. I fall on the side of transcendence rather than strategic essentialism. It is possible to deconstruct gender and racial profiling without remaining within the episteme. Rodham and Obama have mostly sought to do this. It would be nice if their supporters would get this clue.
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Women's Liberation Front 1987 (for Alison)+
Against the grand conspiracy
-- essentialist philosophy of history
Of primordial white-male supremacy
-- got to keep it away from me
Fists punch through the cloudy sky
--I'll seek my salvation
To keep the dogma free of lies
-- in a hormone-free situation
United by anatomy
-- I won't deny the difference
Become the wrath of society
-- but won't inflate its significance
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+ Ascona (1987)
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