A Feminist Focus Includes Everybody
Feminism is a failure. Just ask Linda Hirshman, who used a hefty chunk of real estate in last Sunday's "Outlook" section of the Washington Post to tell us why: we feminists are just too darned concerned about things that, according to Hirshman, aren't the oeuvre of "white middle-class women." Things like civil rights, war and peace, and the fate of the planet. And how does Hirshman know that feminism has failed? Well, Hillary Clinton failed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination. Time to pack it in.
As we sat, marooned by weather in the Atlanta airport, we scratched our heads as Shireen scrolled through her Pocket PC, reading Hirshman's essay. Hirshman's target, she explained, was "intersectionality," the notion long embraced by feminists, at least in theory, that feminism stands for the empowerment and rights of all people, and touches upon all movements that seek rights for the oppressed. In other words, Hirshman has met the enemy, and its names are Shireen and Adele (and most who deign to call themselves "feminist").
Taken together, we're a "walk into a bar" intersectionalist joke. Shireen is African-American and heterosexual; Adele is white and queer. Shireen grew up in a Harlem housing project; Adele grew up on a New Jersey, whites-only cul-de-sac. Shireen is a tech wiz; Adele prefers to work with pencils. Adele belongs to what is known as the second wave of feminism; Shireen hails from the third.
The Imus lesson
The two of us began working together because of our roles in organizations that belong to the National Council of Women's Organizations -- an umbrella organization for groups ranging from the League of Women Voters, Feminist Majority, the National Congress of Black Women, the Women's Media Center and the National Organization for Women. (Shireen leads the non-profit Digital Sisters; Adele was doing a project for the National Women's Editorial Forum.) And though we like and respect each other, we don't hang together simply for the good times; we know that together we're much more powerful than we are apart.
When radio personality Don Imus made his infamous attack on the Rutgers University women's basketball team, NCWO's intersectional assemblage of institutional players proved its strength in keeping the heat on the media -- not just on Imus's bosses, but on the talk shows covering the controversy, most of which initially covered the incident solely as a race story, discussing it on panels composed completely of men. The Women's Coalition for Dignity and Diversity in the Media, led by the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, maintained pressure on television radio producers until the cable TV and radio producers began booking more women on their panels, results that have sustained themselves through the presidential primary season. So much for the failure of intersectionality in advancing the interests of women.
What history book are you reading?
Assessing feminist history, we find ourselves wondering of what feminist movement Hirshman writes -- surely not the one we know.
Hirshman claims the women's movement was started by "white middle-class women," conveniently leaving out the middle-class black women, like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who helped found the women's suffrage movement, or the second wave's Flo Kennedy, the first black woman to graduate from Columbia Law School. Despite the racism of some of the white leaders of feminism's first wave, feminism has always been a movement of "intersectionality." Many of the white founders of the women's suffrage movement, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were abolitionists.
The movement really began to go downhill, Hirshman contends, when middle-class women allegedly became disinterested once their early demands for more egalitarian workplaces were met. (After all, women are fickle.) Hirshman asserts this happened around 1987, when polling showed that only a small proportion of college women called themselves "feminist." Nowhere does she note that the term had been demonized by the right, and that many women who avoided describing themselves as feminists still believed in the fundamental equality of men and women. (You'll recall that in 1988, during the presidential election, the word "liberal" received the same treatment, and most liberals stopped calling themselves "liberal". Now we're all "progressives".)
Blaming black women
To illustrate the perils of intersectionality, Hirshman points to a recent dispute between bloggers Amanda Marcotte and two women of color who blog under the names Sudy and Brownfemipower. The topic was immigration, and the dispute was over whether Marcotte took her ideas, without attribution, from the other bloggers. Hardly the meltdown moment of a dying movement.
Throughout her essay, Hirshman writes in an exasperated tone, essentially blaming black women and young women for what she perceives to be feminism's failures. Clarence Thomas, she tells us, got confirmed to the Supreme Court because of the "yea" votes of four Southern Democratic senators from states with large African-American populations. This myth has been debunked by researchers from the University of Mississippi, who found that social class and cultural values had as much to do with race among the constituents of those senators and others in their attitudes toward Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, the former employee of Thomas's at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who accused him of sexual harassment.
Implicit in Hirshman's critique of electoral behavior in the presidential primary is the notion that black women somehow failed feminism by voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.
White women short-shifted?
In Hirshman's argument against intersectionality, one finds an opening for a single-minded, gender-lens imperative when eying the candidate for whom one would vote. In her live chat at the Washington Post Online the day after her piece appeared in the paper, Hirshman said, "...the feminist movement should stick to female concerns..." Hirshman dismisses the idea of war defined as a woman's issue; therefore any feminist should presumably feel comfortable voting for Hillary Clinton despite Clinton's vote to authorize the president to make war on Iraq. Never mind the tens of thousands of civilians (including women) killed, the plights of the women deployed overseas, the mothers who will never see their children again. All that matters is the feminist imperative to put a woman in the White House.
Perhaps most telling is the red herring Hirshman throws into her poisonous brew of white-privilege feminism: that somehow an inclusive, intersectional feminist movement deprives white women of their place in the movement. "A movement that uses intersectionality as a lens but banishes white, bourgeois, corporate older women might be a vehicle to glue what remains of feminism together, but it will struggle to achieve social change for women."
Huh? Who said anything about banishing anybody? (Some of Shireen's best friends are white, bourgeois, corporate older women -- who happen to be feminists. Adele's, too.) Just look at the investment of countless pro bono attorneys in employment discrimination cases on women's behalf. Look at the joy and dismay, respectively, with which feminists met Lily Ledbetter's court wins and ulitimate loss before the Supreme Court when she sued for discrimination after learning that for most of her career she had been paid far less than men who held the same job at her company.
Hirshman also contends that feminists don't do enough to pursue a right to affordable day care, attributing this need only to middle-class career women -- as if the poor women we intersectionalists care about have no problem finding affordable day care. In her piece several months ago about feminists, like Adele, who support Obama, Hirshman accused us (intersectionalists that we are) of being overeducated elitists who don't care for working class women. In this essay, she decries our caring too much for the poor and non-white, and not enough for educated white elitists.
Empowerment, not entitlement
To equate Hillary Clinton's failure to win -- this time -- the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party with the failure of feminism insults both Clinton and the movement. Sure, sexism played a role in Clinton's defeat, but so did the simple fact of the peculiar moment in history at which she made her bid -- one on the brink of generational transition and of weariness with war. Clinton played a hand based on an old map of the U.S.; even so she advanced further to the goal of becoming Madam President than anyone before her. Barack Obama played to a new and shifting set of demographics and won the bet. At a most unnerving time in American history, Obama offers hope and inspiration. And that matters.
Most disconcerting, perhaps, is Hirshman's admission that she only came to be an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton's campaign after television commentators made sexist remarks about her. We believe that you can take on sexism against a candidate without signing on to that candidate's campaign. We came to feminism for empowerment, often a messy process -- not for the easy imperative that says the enemy of my enemy is my leader.
If we learned anything from the remarks made by Don Imus about the women of the Rutgers University basketball team, it's that where there is racism, there is generally sexism, and so, too, the reverse. In a single phrase, "nappy-headed 'ho", Imus demonstrated how the two are inextricably intertwined. We prefer to take part in a women's movement made strong by the diversity of its membership its fundamental unity of purpose: to improve the lives of women throughout the world.
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when you wrote, "Sure, sexism played a role in Clinton's defeat,..." you, as so many other sisters who are feminists, are perpetuating the notion that "if not for the unfair sexism hillaty would have won". it's ludicrous to think that hillary was singled out for attack. sure the attacks she endured were sexist ones, but obama has to endure racist attacks, mccain ageist attacks. a polititian will always be smeared in some fashon. the sooner we learn to expect that our method for being smeared *will* be sexist, the sooner we can either confront it effectively or use it to our advantage when running for office.
there is even a valid notion that hillary benefited by the sexist attacks because they galvanized thusly outraged women to be her supporters.
why didn't i vote for a sister? well, i like to think that women have come of age in politis and we are now strong enough to succeed on our own merits without having to rely on the "if you're female you must vote for the female" ploy.
i voted obama because i thought his policies, voting record , and demeanor.were preferable to hillarys.
It's no surprise to see Linda HIrshman attacking women and trying to tell everyone else how to be a feminist. First she attacked at-home moms, now she's turning on young feminists.
Real feminism is about fighting the oppression of women, not trying to make other women conform to your vision. It's too bad organized feminism didn't denounce Hirshman when she first started attacking women.
Jeeze Louise! I am not going to vote for someone because they have a vagina, or a penis for that matter. I chose Obama because he best represents how I feel the country needs to change. And I didn't vote for the woman who stayed with her husband for political reasons. And I am flat out embarrassed that white women are making such a big stink about this. 'How can a black person of any gender do something BEFORE a white woman is 'allowed' to do it? This is what I hear and it makes me so angry. White women have been treated like queens for centuries, in the USA, compared to the way African Americans have been treated. I am 44 white and female. I do plumbing and electrical repairs for a living. My vagina has not gotten in my way, in fact it helped me slithering under a pipe under a house this morning, if I had protruded where I did not, I might not have made it. Get over it. Sit down on that 'figurative' back of the bus, shut up and let Obama do his thing. And next time send up a woman who is a little more positive.
What I find annoying is the lack of context. It wasn't a choice bewteen a woman or a caveman who thinks women should be bare foot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. We had a choice b/w a woman and a man who obviously appreciates strong, intelligent women. He was raised by two and he married one.
I appreciate the challenges that early feminists faced BUT men aren't ALWAYS the enemy. This shouldn't be a default position. I've benefitted from having male mentors who've helped me tremendously in pursuing my education and career goals. I also have a husband who thinks that I can do anything and is my biggest cheerleader in pursuing my dreams.
Equal rights doesn't mean women will inevitably win. In an equal world sometimes you loose and when you do...you've just gotta take it like a man.
No, we need to give all women an extra four days to concede, As I said, Jeeze Louise!
"essentially blaming black women and young women for what she perceives to be feminism's failures"
this is not "essentially" what the writer is doing... the writer is interrogating the usefulness of intersectionality as a conceptual tool for the feminist movement on the national stage... she is not blaming women per say, but intellectuals who churn out politically weak ideas...
this statement belies the problem: "as if the poor women we intersectionalists care about have no problem finding affordable day care"
note the distance between the interesectionalists and the women that they care about...
note there seems to be a more general issue confronting women and the economic role they are compelled to play in a marriage...
we may infer then that daycare is a specific political issue that is of interest to those women who may not also be interested in critical race or queer theory...
so it's easy to see what Hirshman is talking about...
Thanks ladies. Fighting for the true and proper spirit of feminism everywhere.
Fight fundamental Islam America...elect a woman president!
I guess you're voting 3rd party this year.
That doesn't make any sense.
There's a sexist assumption inherent in the idea that electing a woman is the best thing for women. I happen to consider myself a feminist, and I'm a man. Having a vagina doesn't make you the best choice for women's rights and having a penis shouldn't disqualify you. Obama will be better for feminism than McCain and some token GOP woman who still views America as a caste system where those who have deserve and those who have not, deserve to have not.
Women allowed a most awfully flawed feminist more like an anti feminist to become "Hillary Clinton" to become their poster person and vehicle.
Apart from being a woman what is feminist about Hillary Clinton?
Is it her denigration of women who stand by their husband (I am not the stand by your man Kind of woman) and what did she do when it was proven beyond all reasonable doubt that she was living with a "giggolo" for a husband?
What did she do about all those women or for all those women her husband used and abused?
When she was getting all that "experience" or after she became a senator what did she do for women rights in terms of laws or other such things?
Now feminist success is being judged using Hillary Clinton. In my take Hillary Clinton in her abuse of women by usurping the movement is no better than the sexism some have shown and also the sexism of her husband should should not be called out because of what Hillary benefits by being associated with him. What Feminism!!!
I've heard that the Clintons have an open marriage, and in any case I've never been comfortable with the coattails argument against her. She is a compelling and skilled politician in her own right, regardless of who her husband is. Their personal lives, in my limited view, simply are not our business. I voted for Obama, but I would have been almost as pleased had Clinton won the nomination, and would be very happy with her should she be nominated as VP.
"Implicit in Hirshman's critique of electoral behavior in the presidential primary is the notion that black women somehow failed feminism by voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama."
Exactly. I voted against HRC because she was acting like a man.
And a man on steroids, evinced by her, we can obliterate Iran, comment. I won't vote for someone who can easily toss off the threat of totally destroying another country. That's not feminism in my book.
so, the reason that Michelle Wie's failure on the PGA tour was not a failure for feminism was because she was an ASIAN woman.......
Are these people serious, a candidacy for Phyllis Schafly (sure a white middle class woman) would constitute a victory for feminism?
Remember this ladies, 48% of women (and I doubt that they were over represented by women of color ) voted for George w bush in 2004 AFTER rtthey knew exactly who he was. And they ensured the nominations of Roberts and Alito to the supreme courts with their votes. To contnue to view feminism through such a narrow window, they will continue to win tiny battles while losing big wars (ie. voting for McCain in the fall). Perhaps feminists like these NEED be excluded from the movement, as their only concerns are for themselves and for their white middle class daughters , and not women, or society (as I thought) as a whole.
HRC's candidacy was, in fact, a victory for feminism, becasue she lost not because she was a woman, but in spite of it. No male politician with those votes, those campaign blunders(especially financial), would have ever gotten the attention or the votes that she did.
Selecting a black man over a woman does not show "how little they think of their own" - it does show that women of all ages, races and nationalities actually made their OWN choice, and not based upon the candidates gender...we voted for the candidate we thought was BEST for the job - novel idea, isn't it? That women have minds of their own?
the simple fact is women are so brainwashed that they don't believe they can lead the country--they selected a black man over a woman which shows how little they think of their own--it brings a sigh of relief to the male sexist to know women will never stick together out of their own petty jealousies and ignorance!!
Wrong woman.
Many of us believe that the RIGHT woman can indeed run the country - and, by the same token, also believe that Clinton was the wrong choice.
It is a fallacy to say that women are brainwashed. Women are not monolithic. We have different needs, wants, desires and are looking for different attributes in the politicians that we elect. You belittle women of every political persuasian by suggesting that not voting for Hillary means that we are brainwashed. Not that it matters at this point but I actually was very conflicted about which candidate would get my support in the primary. I liked Hillary, still do, but she didn't move me. She didn't inspire me in the same way that Barack did. It really came down to who I believed would do the hard things instead of the politically expedient things. But again, we all are looking for different things from our candidates. I believe both of them are equally capable of doing the job. But I think between the two of them only one could do the job and inspire the nation at the same time.
So the race for the presidency is not about the best candidate, not about repub vs. dem, not about conservatives vs. progressives (liberals, if you prefer), not about hawks vs. doves, corporations vs. employees, rich vs. poor, and certainly not about issues like the economy or Iraq, it's all about boys vs. girls?!?
Maybe our candidates should just arm-wrestle or see who can hold their breath the longest?
I have no desire to "stick" to HRC, dr4. There was nothing in what she SAID, as opposed to her gender, that made me want to vote for her.
You know what? I'm really tired of hearing about feminism no matter what side of the issue you are on. Give it a rest....please?
AMEN!!!!
Waddaya doin in this blog then?
Ain't that the truth! If feminists hadn't made such a big joke out of feminism, they wouldn't be in the position they're in.
You know, I wonder whether Linda Hirshman sees men as a generic. African American men are not white men. We have never "enjoyed" such a privilage. Even though we got the vote before any women did, it wasn't until 1964 that we could actually use it. Did any of you hear the Black member of the DNC talking about going to the 1964 Democratic Convention and being told he could not be a delegate because he was Black?
Black men were the ones who swung from trees, got burned alive or were beaten to death just for looking at white women like Linda Hirshman.
Back to the here and now. Both Clinton and Obama destroyed the glass ceiling. It was just the two of them at center stage in this race. Not a single white man in sight. Losing in a close race did not make Clinton a loser. I have said this before on this site -- whichever of them won the primary, both were winners. Both broke new ground. Both are to be commended.
I only wish the junior senator from New York truly understood how much she has really won.
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