The Latest Gender Politics Nonsense

Linda Hirshman, a controversial* feminist author, penned a piece for Slate in reaction to a piece at Glamour magazine by younger feminist author Courtney E. Martin.

Martin makes the argument that voters ultimately vote based on their feelings and not just based on a rational consideration of issues.  This is not a profound revelation.  However, Martin framed her emotions as not voting for Hillary Clinton because...

Don't get me wrong—I love my mom. But sometimes, when she's feeling that all her hard work is unseen and unappreciated, she can be—as we all can—a little bitter. And I keep hearing that same quality in Hillary—a tired, burned out parent with a never-ending to-do list. I feel myself regressing to a teenage-era eye roll during the debates when she starts reminding us that the country's problems are intractable and require lots of strategic negotiation, compromise, and all-nighters. Thanks, mom.

Alrighty then.  Hirshman expands Martin's impertinence into an indictment and dig not just of Clinton but of the entire feminist movement.

It's not just their mothers these young women are defying; it's all those women who had the effrontery to start the feminist movement in the 1960s.

At the end of Hirshman's piece, in which she goes to great lengths to contort her argument pretzel-like in order to claim she is not arguing what she plainly is (that we owe our unquestioning vagina loyalty to our mother's generation who worked really, really hard for us for, oh let's say, 35 years), she writes:

Before all the commentators reach for their macro buttons to accuse me of shilling for the Clinton campaign, I suppose I must offer the obligatory reassurance that neither all women nor even all feminists need to march in lockstep to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton. But I want to amplify that with the additional caution that just because your mother did it does not make it wrong. After all, she had you, didn't she?

So, apparently the hard won efforts of the second wave feminists amount to, we are not to think for ourselves, in the immortal words of Roseanne Barr we are to "bow to the woman" and either the third wave didn't happen or was very naughty, indeed.

The greater support for Barack Obama than for Hillary Clinton among young women I think does have some roots in a mostly unconscious rejection of second wave feminism.  But I believe it is more rooted in a generational rejection of politics as it has been practiced and a deep desire for a new approach.  Obama is not perfect by any stretch in this regard but he represents our best hope for a significant step forward than we've had in generations.

Oh, and since I am super black militant Maria (envision me thrusting my fist in the air) I have to point out that my grandmother, my mother and my aunts are all voting for Obama.  But, since they and I are all black women, we've been dismissed from the argument.  Hirshman's argument centers squarely and solely around the arguments and concerns about white women.  Just as did her previously offensive arguments about parenting.  No wonder "Everybody hates Linda."

*Hirshman is deeply unpopular with a segment of feminists and parents for her claims about the damage smart, well-educated moms are doing to the women's movement when they leave their high-powered careers to raise their children

Comments

[cynematic]

*nodding head* If I'm frustrated with second wave feminists, it's because more than 40 (100?) years of women of color feminists saying "black/yellow/brown OR woman is a false choice, it's your white privilege that allows you to think gender is the sole lens of oppression" has just been us talking til we're blue in the face with nobody listening. Or so it seems.

So when some women say "we", I'm getting that snippity Tonto-ish kind of feeling, which is to say "Lone Ranger, who's 'we'?"

[Maria Niles]

Yep! It seems to be my favorite rant on this blog and I vow in my head not to write about it and then it keeps coming up in this election and I have to rant again. I am in my bitterness clinging to a hope that because we are at least talking it about it so much we will make some progress. :)