Why So Many Feminists Are Deciding to Vote for Barack Obama
From a national women's media training to my local women's book club, from exchanges among long-time feminist activists to conversations with my feminist son, I hear a buzz about why so many feminists are deciding to vote for Barack Obama. Count me among them.
Almost without exception, we'd love to see a woman president. Anyone who thinks gender doesn't matter hasn't seen Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin or Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton before a room full of women hungry for solutions to low pay, unfair treatment and lack of time to pee, much less care for loved ones. To paraphrase Eleanor Holmes Norton, we're well aware that the under-representation of women in political positions has nothing to do with talent or merit. A woman in the highest job would inspire many more women to push against the barriers. And we're outraged at the sexist treatment of Hillary throughout the media.
But we know the Big Boys have also excluded people of color of both genders from the halls of power, and constructed a massive set of racial roadblocks and indignities. We won't allow ourselves to be pigeon-holed into choosing which matters more, sexism or racism. Both hurt women. Both profit the Big Boys and allow them to maintain the status quo. Justice matters.
In Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, voters have a choice between two smart, capable and energetic candidates, either of whom would be far preferable to the current occupier of the White House who has made our nation an occupier in Iraq. Both stand for many of the changes we want to see, including fair pay, living wages, workers' right to organize, and new standards like paid sick days and family leave insurance, so family values don't end at the workplace door.
So what's tipped so many feminists to Obama? For some, it was when the Clintons began treating him as women are treated -- patronizing him as merely a "good speaker," trivializing his accomplishments, minimizing the importance of his early judgment and risk-taking in opposing the war in Iraq, and using surrogates to demonize his morality.
For me and many others, the key attraction is Obama's vision that people need to be eager, desirous for and participants in the change we want to see (the very strength the Clintons either don't get or deliberately misstate). Barack Obama doesn't just make people feel hopeful about the possibility of change -- he inspires them to become part of that change, makes them feel it's the only way we'll get there. And in doing so, he's motivating the base, reaching independent and swing voters, and perhaps most important, inspiring young people and many undecided-whether-or-not-to-vote voters -- people most affected by injustice who often feel their votes, and their lives, don't matter in elections where money has so much sway.
This public mobilization is precisely what Hillary failed to do with health care reform in 1992. She owns that failure but not the reason for it.
As long as money determines elections, we won't have the perfect candidate. Many of us wish the two leading candidates took stronger stands, like Edwards and Kucinich have, against the role of lobbyists and corporate greed and the continuation of poverty. As activists, we know that whoever wins will be subject to huge pressure from the Big Boys and will go only so far as organized movements of people demand that they go. It may take a president to push through a law, but it takes a movement to say, "Ignore us at your peril."
I believe Barack Obama has the best chance of helping to galvanize that movement and to stay connected with it.
Ellen Bravo is a long-time feminist activist and author who teaches women's studies at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her most recent book is Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation.
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I've thought from the beginning that it would be
women, white liberal women who would do in Hillary.
I've seen working in offices over the years, women often treat other women much worse, than men treat men.
If you look at a reality tv show like survivor women can never stay true to an alliance they often turn on themselves.
I believe we see here women sadly turning on there own.
I'm not saying Barack should not be the next Pres.
But really you educated center left women,
Hillary is not this unelectable choice , that many of you are making her out to be.
I hope you understand the ramifications of your taking her down, when your daughters ask you why?
What will your answer be?
If you are black the same is true in Baracks case.
I just want to see a Dem in the Whitehouse again.
Our country needs a Dem. Adminastration.
I hope when the dust clears we don't see Pres.McCai
Bravo!!
Bravo, Ellen, for a well stated post. Just don't tell Erica Jong. She'll get upset!
I would like to see a woman in the White House..Mic
For president: Barbara Boxer.
But not the Clintons again..the
Wasabi is posting the same old garbage that the do-nothing Illinois NOW has been trying to push for months. Everyone from real pro-choice leaders in Illinois – like Pam Sutherland and Tracy Fischman of Planned Parenthood – to NARAL President, Nancy Keenan, have said that these attacks on Obama’s “present” votes are false and misleading and should stop. Period. The present votes cast by Obama and other state senators were part of a strategy devised by the pro-choice community in Illinois. Illinois NOW claims they were against the present votes strategy, but why is it that they endorsed Obama after the present votes were cast, but then decided not to in 2004 after one of Senator Obama’s opponents in the Dem Senate race gave them lots and lots of money before they endorsed him over Senator Obama? Curious, isn’t it…I wonder how much money Clinton’s backers in Illinois have given Illinois NOW this time around…
Lorna Brett is a profile in courage – she’s speaking out for the truth and doing it even though she’s probably facing tremendous pressure from the Clinton people back in New York where she now resides. The fact is she was the president of Chicago NOW in the late 1990s and remained very active in the community afterwards. Her You Tube video is filled with honesty and truth, which those at Illinois NOW have no concept of whatsoever. See the Lorna Blog video for yourself – just as 130,000 others have on You Tube: http://my.
Also, see what others have to say about the present votes strategy and the false attacks on Senator Obama’s record:
Tracy Fischman, formerly of Planned Parenthood in Chicago wrote this blog on January 22nd in Huffington Post:
http://www
Check out NARAL president Nancy Keenan’s January 24th statement on these false attacks by visiting this website:
http://www
Thank you for bringing up Shirley Chisholm. She said that she'd experienced FAR more obstacles because of her gender than her race. It's interesting that Obama never mentions Shirley C and Barbara Jordan who ran for president before Jesse Jackson et al. They are the ones who deserved the kind of press that Obama is enjoying now.Big difference is that they EARNED it.
I attended an Obama event yesterday and it was full of feminists. This notion that all feminists support Hillary is nonsense. Just another one of the Clinton campaign's propaganda.
The women who support Clinton are less educated overall than are the women who support Obama. And the more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to be feminist.
Let's stop this nonsense.
My 25 yr old daughter said it best - "Hillary is demanding that she be allowed into the old boys club. Obama is saying that it's time to close down the old boys club. I agree with Obama."
I loathe the Gloria Steinem and NOW form of feminism. They whine about everything. If you want to do something then just do it! Look at Nancy Pelosi or Fienstein of California. They have the right attitude. When you are good at something you rise to the top period. Being about gender is a bigoted point of view.
"So many feminists"? Bravo lists exactly one: herself. Argument would be stronger w/ more facts.
Well said!
Could it be because the feminist orgs. lost legitimacy when they gave Bill a pass on his womanizing? Hillary was busy controlling the IRS, FBI attempts to control Bills bimbo erruptions. Strong, intelligent women don't need sell out organizations to tell them who to vote for. Vote who you want to vote for, it's nobody's business but yours.
Men will vote for Obama because he is a man. Blacks will vote for Obama because he represents their aspirations. Women, including the feminists and the non-feminists - be it Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Claire McCaskill, Scarlett Johansson, or the Obama girl - will vote for Obama because as women they use their emotions to make decisions, not their heads. They are smitten by his charisma and eloquence. Obama's vision? How do they know for sure that he has a vision and that he is not just plain ambitious? Vision based on what he says or several decades of his public service? The Iraq war was a huge mistake no doubt, but does anyone who questions Hillary about the Iraq war ask how Obama would have voted if he was in the Senate with the intelligence that was given to the Congress? Vote “no” and face the possibility that Saddam, as the “intelligence” then showed, had WMD and would attack the US? Vote “present” and sidestep the issue? He was not in the Senate and he was not given the choice, so it is easy to stay out and proclaim that he had superior judgement. We all were against it and we all had superior judgements, let us just use our heads in choosing the candidates as well. Everyone who voted for the war thought this was going to short term, no one would have anticipated the colossal mismanagement, the miscalculations, the faulty intelligence, no one would have thought this would take the administration’s eyes off the real terrorists. The more important question is what do we do now. Obama would no doubt make a good leader, but we cannot afford to have someone learning on the job while so much needs to be done. A good VP perhaps, and in due course he could be a great president, but not now. Women should not vote for Hillary because she is a woman, they should vote because she would make a better leader (aside the scary part of having Bill around).
Good article, however the term "Feminism" is as dead as they get.
Ellen, there is real wisdom in your words: Indeed...
"a rising tide lifts all boats".
In the end, the priciple that will do the most for women, men, blacks, whites, and all colors of people is the very essence of the Democratic platform:
FAIRNESS.
It's a priciple that's easy to understand, but nearly impossible to produce. It takes more than a strong, intelligent, experienced leader to make real progress towards this goal: it takes a vision, and a movement.
Thank you for your understanding and dedication to priniciple.
Obama in '08
Barack - You are not superior to Hillary. I heard you say, "I will get the people who voted for her. Now the question is, could she get the people who voted for me?" I'm smart enough to realize your "new democratic coalition" of voters does not include me. I will vote for Hillary because she will represent me. She is better on health care, immigration, energy and national security policies.
She offers a bridge - You want to tear it down!
Barack - You do not have better judgement on national security. The whole country believed as Hillary except for the pacifists. Hillary was right. The persons to hold accountable are Bush and Cheney. Shame on you for blaming Hillary. For you to claim superiority on national security issues fails. It will not be proven the right strategy against the republicans.
Barack - You are attractive to me when you display courtesy to Hillary. Your speeches or sermons do not. Your Obama girl does not. Beat up on Bush and Cheney.
Barack - You are clever but Hillary is smart. We need smart right now.
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