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 would be thrilled to support a woman for President. However, I strongly believe in my heart that Hillary Clinton is the WRONG WOMAN.
Hillary does not want to serve America. Hillary wants America to serve her.
As soon as the right candidate happens to be a woman, I'll be in full support.
Hillary is not the person that we need to unite and transform our country. If I wanted a bridge to the past, I would call upon Bob Dole.
There are only very few moments in each lifetime that a wave of inexplicable energy sweeps across our consciousness, intuitively causing us to be swept up in its flow. I believe we are looking at one of those moments with Barack Obama and try as they might, this intangible force is inexplicable simply because it goes beyond the intellect. Our society has been so externally focused and obsessed with body image defining who we are, where one's words carry more substance than one's deed, where we've been fed such garbage from our politicians we are no longer collectively outraged enough to affect their course of action. Many of us have become mummified and our cynicism cuts us off from that place deep within us that intuitively responds to these rare moments of "something special". For those of us whose internal pulse still beats, we get the phenomenon and we trust our Universal instinct that this is the real deal... the once in a lifetime wave that symbolizes the advent of profound change.
Right now there are a LOT of conflicted progressive women out there.
Their ovaries cry out for a woman POTUS...bu
The admirable Susan Sarandon is a case in point. An Edwards supporter, she told TIME magazine the other day that she'd like a woman, but she's just not sure that Hillary is the one.
For any woman who is not an identity politics gender voter, voting for Obama is going to be compelling - especially after the MoveOn endorsement.
Republicans bitch about Democrats who have money and do not vote their interests. People like Andre 3000 make a mint and vote Republican just as some feminists ride a feminist agenda to success and hold to a strict ticket of women. Fine.
Others, like P Diddy make a mint and vote Democrat so they can help others rather than consolidate their own personal wealth.
As strained as this analogy is, it's not too far afield from feminists who insist that Hillary is the real coin and that Obama is counterfeit.
The truth is Obama is a feminist and he's likely to prove the better leader. When other feminists agree, it's as useless to argue or deprecate them as it is to deprecate rich folks who vote Democrat.
Actually, it's admirable when people cross gender politics, racial politics, or any other special interest politics to choose the best man or woman for the job.
It's not so admirable to haul out some of the decidedly ad hominem arguments the Clintons have put into the field.
On the day of battle, it's the slender horse, not the lumbering ox that wins the day.
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As for the comment "Haha, women are confusing disdain of Hillary for disdain of all women. I would love to see a woman president, but just not this particular woman." If a Clinton supporter said that he/she would like to see a black man as president but not this one. Those words would be deemed as racist code words a la Biden....
Well don't tell that to Marcia Pappas of the NYS NOW! She was practically frothing at the mouth on MSNBC the other day touting Hillary.
Glad to see some of the feminists in this world are also realists and realize that Obama would be just as much an advocate for them as Hillary would be. Maybe more. Hillary would have to guard against the "see I told you so - only for women" folks.
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I always love to read the Obamanistas when they blog at Huffington Post.
Nobody ever elucidates Obama's actual political agenda.
Next to right-wing kooks, Obama supporters are by far the most self-deluded people I have seen in the political areana.
Instead of attacking the Clinton folks for saying "there is no there there", how about actually telling us what Obama will do for the country in really terms rather than conjure up some utopian fantasy that you think may happen based on an empty "hope and "change" mantra which mean nothing in the real world.
Obama is so in touch with his feminine side! Bravo (feminist?) would love to see a woman as president but not Hillary. Talk about butch code words.
Sexist treatment of Hillary? Haha, women are confusing disdain of Hillary for disdain of all women. I would love to see a woman president, but just not this particular woman. Do you get it now? She would do more harm than good to the feminist movement. She isn't in it for women, she is in it for Hillary and Hillary alone. Wake up and smell the BS already. Wanna know why feminists are changing sides, my bet is that they stopped thinking of her as the woman candidate and starting looking at what she would actually end up becoming for the feminist movement and for the Country. Every woman candidate for office in America would suddenly become the local "Hillary". Yeah, like that is a good thing.
Barack has given me hope and I feel like I am having the first breath of fresh air when I think of what he represents, real change. The Clintons are a set not one but two people running us backward. Same as before is what they are selling and after Bills foray into nastyville I have no doubt where they stand. I sincerely doubt he would say so much without it being a scheme to get vote. Barack has been working behind the scenes with people who might be able to influence the killing in Kenya. I do not see Hillary ever giving privately of herself. It all has an angle to get what they can out of everything they do.
What has Obama DONE for Women's issues?
What has he inspired others to DO? Dream?
"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"
Did those "many" feminists write articles here on HuffPo supporting Edwards or Kucinich? I think I missed those, so links would be helpful.
beyondken: voting/not voting for anyone based on something other than the issues is foolish practice of your constitutional rights. why not state why you're supporting hillary instead of why you don't support barack?
Taylor Marsh, Gloria Steinem on the left and Ann Coulter on the right....Y
nice article. I am reminded of the ex head of NOW in Illinois that changed her vote to Obama after learning the Hillary distorted his voting record. As a woman our issues are too important to let anyone distort the issues or the persons who assist us. Not even if it is another women!!! Shame on her for that. And the head on NY NOW really jumped the shark with that crazy letter about Ted Kennedy. She did not serve Hillary well at all.
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