I have tried to hold my fire on HRC, but I cannot sit and listen anymore without saying something. And no I am not talking about the Bobby Kennedy comment, even though it was crass and idiotic.
I want to talk about sexism. Day after day, I hear complaints from HRC supporters about how sexism is the reason she lost. I find this both sad, laughable and frustrating. The reason she lost is because her campaign was not well executed.
HRC has undoubtedly been the subject of sexism, but guess how much sympathy I have for her, none, zero, zip and nada. Politics is a hard. In politics, there is no excuse for losing, not sexism, not racism, only incompetence, bad strategy, bad message, a bad candidate or circumstances beyond your control (these are all reasons, but not excuses). While I am sure there are people that will not vote for her simple because she is a woman, there is a much larger group of people that are voting for HRC because she is a woman, but I don't hear too many complaints about that. That brings us to her biggest problem with voters (her 45% ceiling): Most of the people who will not vote for HRC are doing so because she lacks ethics, moral fortitude, has a problem with the truth, has very little concern for her party, very little concern for her country, her personality is grating, she has an unquenchable quest for power and offensive sense of entitlement.
I have to say that I do not like Hillary Clinton, but it has nothing to do her with being a woman. I also no longer can stand the sight of Bill Clinton. When I don't like HRC I am accused of being sexist, what does it mean when I don't like Bill Clinton? How about Joe Lieberman (Anti-Semitic)? What about condoleezza Rice (sexist and racist)? There is a large difference between feeling aggravation and anger because of a persons actions and disliking them because of a genetic fact.
Every candidate has built in advantages and disadvantages. HRC has more advantages than most candidates. Please stop complaining about how the media has treated her. Every candidate in every race in both parties is treated unfairly by the media. It is part of politics. Suck it up and get over it. She has lost... In the parlance of my grandmother, she is showing her ass and she needs to stop it (will you say my grandmother is sexist too?). While you are at it, NARAL has no obligation to support a losing candidate when the very existence of Roe v. Wade is on the line if McCain wins.
One last note, this goes out to white, upper middle class, middle aged, second wave feminists that think that sexism is the last acceptable form of discrimination, please spare us. Not a single one of you would trade your privileged existence for that of a black person (or any person of color), nor a gay person, nor an atheist (and the list goes on...)
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Hillary didn't lose because of sexism, but the media was one disgusting display of sexism and malice aforethought from the getgo.
It isn't and either/or -- either sexism or not. It's both/and. I believe she lost for three reasons: a lousy campaign, a tin ear, and sexism in media coverage and among some percent of the primary voters.
You wrote: "One last note, this goes out to white, upper middle class, middle aged, second wave feminists that think that sexism is the last acceptable form of discrimination, please spare us. Not a single one of you would trade your privileged existence for that of a black person (or any person of color), nor a gay person, nor an atheist (and the list goes on...)"
I don't know who you are, but your knowledge of the 2nd wave is skewed and may actually be second hand. A lot of us who actually WERE the second wave were also black, gay, atheist, bi, Hispanic, Native American, working class, prostitutes, married women, mothers, single women, ex-military, physically challeged, etc. And as it happens, nearly all of us in the radical end of the movement who were from the privileged classes were also downwardly mobile as well. We didn't just live poor for the hell of it. We tried to learn the limits of our perspective by stepping out of it because we wahted walk the talk. Ridicule it if you like, but not until you try it yourself first. It's not easy.
If your view of the second wave is defined by NOW and Ms. Magazine, then you're missing about 75% of what was going on. You're missing the millions of us who worked in small, local projects and small projects with national or international reach. You're missing the entire radical end of the movement.
In other words, it's not that the second wave was elitist and white. It's that NOW and Ms. were elitist and white, and the media wanted the public to believe that they were 100% of the movement. Not.
If you want proof, go to any leftwing second hand bookstore and look at the shelves and shelves of books published by women of color and working class women. If you find a few books, check the references. Get them and check their references. Snowball. Or see some of the more inclusive archives online. Magazines, newsletters, alternative presses, credit unions, women's shelters, rape crisis centers, job centers, alternative healthcare centers, residential alternatives, on and on -- these were authentic grassroots projects of, by, and for women of all ethnicities and classes.
Cordially,
Pico from Wild Chihuahuas http://www.wildchihuahuas.blogspot.com
I don't think I have a skewed view of second wave feminism. I have been in around feminism most of my life, from being raised by a feminist mother, to taking women's studies classes to working for organizations fighting for the rights of women.
I would agree that second wave feminism did contain greater diversity. However, my experience was that it was still overwhelmingly white and privileged. I was personally involved in trying to get organizations I worked for to do greater outreach to minority communities. Sadly the response from the board (all privileged, white, upper middle class white women) was usually that black women or Latinas don't care about any of these issues. I was told often that we have to do it for them.
There is a big gap between theory and my personal experience. Part of the reason I left that part of the political world and worked directly on political campaigns was that I was sick of the ever present sense that everything that went wrong was cause by a paternalism and sexism.
I found that rather than admitting to tactical errors or bad strategy that most of our failures were chalked up to society being against us. I did not believe that then and I do not believe it now.
Any -ism you can think of can be a challenge or a barrier. The hallmark of a strong movement is not feeling victimized, it is being unwilling to accept ignorance and prejudice or failure.
The anger in my post really comes from the poor me mentality that many HRC supporters espoused. Most annoying was the oft repeated canard that "Sexism is the last acceptable form of prejudice". I find that to be both not true and a little whinny, thus my comments about 2nd Wave Feminism.
I could be wrong, but I doubt that a gay, black or Latina feminist would repeat the statement above precisely because they know that our society has plenty of prejudices and that sexism is one of many.
Part of the reason I like Barack Obama is because he is unwilling to accept defeat because of whatever prejudice there is against him. I think his goal is persuade. Changing minds is how you change society, not through complaining or feeling like a victim.
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