Hillary's problems aren't all coming from men, not by a long shot.
I picked "gal" for this headline to be symmetrical with my last HuffPo column, "Guys, Get Over It," where I took on men whose visceral opposition to Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy has little to do with her qualifications and lots to do with their terror of losing most-favored-gender status.
I didn't say "girl", though among women the term is becoming one of endearment, or "ladies" because it's so retro, or "women" because it's too serious to parallel with the vernacular "guys" which I didn't think twice about using for, well, the guys.
Just as women in the Western world have a choice between wearing skirts or pants, but only a man who's truly fringy would show his hairy calves in a skirt, the fluid language choices for the female gender mirror women's fluid social roles as we approach a presidential election with a woman in the lead.
Fluid leadership roles, where women compete in what has previously been a man's world, cause ambiguity and confusing, even contradictory, reactions to Hillary from a substantial group of women too, just as suffragists a century ago drew opposition from women who feared women voting would upset the God-ordained order.
Four Fears as the Race Began
In a Women's e-News commentary, I described four reasons why women most like Hillary--middle aged, progressive, college educated professionals--have been most resistant to lining up with her. I suggested these fears are, as they are with the men, more about themselves than about Hillary:
'Not Ready for One of Us': Donna Brazile, Al Gore's presidential campaign manager and now a political consultant, observes that despite much progress, oppressed groups still tend to assume the rest of society "isn't ready for one of us." That's why more whites than blacks say America is ready for a black president and more men than women say America is ready for a woman president.
'I Love Hillary BUT': But she carries Bill's baggage. But she's polarizing...Many say she's a great senator, forgetting how she overcame the same "buts" in 2000, yet are dead set against her run for president. These women worry that if Clinton loses, they lose--that it will set back their accomplishments for women; they are clearly wary of that risk.
'Media Fears': The national media tends to trash any leading candidate. Still, women are singled out for criticism if they appear too "feminine" on one hand or too tough on the other.
I call this the Maureen Dowd effect...About Clinton, Dowd wrote that as first lady she "showed off a long parade of unflattering outfits and unnervingly changing hairdos" and that when Clinton "expressed outrage about Iraq," she "ended up sounding like a mother whose teen-age son has not cleaned up his room."
'Fear of Identification with Imperfection': [Arianna] Huffington criticizes Hillary for doing what every politician who ever got elected does; crafting positions that attract a broad spectrum of voters. Huffington characterizes this as being inauthentic and she has a point. It's similar to how Rudy Giuliani, the Republican front runner, is trying to assure the Republican Right he really hates abortion and didn't mean it when he appeared in drag.
Paradoxically, though, Huffington reserves her fiercest vitriol for the candidate of her own gender and her own party. Perhaps the author of Fearless fears being defined by a female leader she doesn't like more than throwing the election to men with whom she agrees even less.
Progress Made as the Race Continues
By being credibly in the race, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson are together dispensing with the "not ready for one of us" excuse in one fell swoop. Thank goodness.
There's great progress in generational reactions to Hillary. Young women have from the start been highly positive toward her candidacy and attribute almost rock star status to her. And as many who watched her win over wary Upstate New Yorkers in her Senate campaigns predicted, with time and hard work she's brought her favorability up with older women too. She's appealing to women through "Ambassadors" who host meetings and speak as surrogates on her behalf around the country. Activist Susie Stern leads a new National Council of Civic Leaders that reaches out to prominent women leaders "who share a passion to change the direction of our country" and "seeks to use the power of the word of a trusted friend to communicate why Hillary Clinton should be the next President of the United States".
Now, Maureen Dowd can't help herself. She's got a column to fill every week, and snark is her specialty. Plus, if you remember how she filleted Al Gore when he was in the lead, and only after he "won" did she harpoon Bush, it seems she keeps a target where each week the face of the putative winner is put into the bulls-eye space. With Hillary, Dowd especially loves to use misogynist venom--most recently "dominatrix," who "flick(s) the whip"--in the same paragraph that she let slide Barack's typical male way of diminishing women with his adorable wink that would have made warmer blooded women "melt" but not the "unapproachable" Hillary. Go figure that these things come from someone who would never have column space on the New York Times op ed page were it not for women a decade older who broke through that glass ceiling for her.
As to imperfections, a Democratic party leader (a woman who asked not to be named) told me, "How many far less than perfect male candidates have I worked for over the years? The first female president will probably not be perfect in every way either."
Get on with It
Not that imperfections shouldn't called out and subject to public scrutiny, or that every woman should vote for any woman just because she's a woman, as writer Courtney Martin points out in "Does Being a Feminist Mean Voting for Hillary?" Nevertheless, when the U.S. ranks 68th in women holding national office while so many other countries are breaking that gender barrier, it is high time to get on with breaking our own.
Perhaps the first woman president won't turn out to be Hillary. But gals, let's get a grip and get on with creating the tipping point for women seeking high public office.
Activist Sherrye Henry wrote a book in 1994 called The Deep Divide.That's how she described the discrepancy she found between the equality women said they wanted and how they voted. Does this divide still exist? Are women our own worst enemy, as those who would like us to be claim?
It's time to ask those hard questions. Why do many women shy away from acting in their best interest by erring on the side of voting for one of their own when given the chance and a qualified candidate? Other groups do this all the time without being negatively judged. Is it that we've simply always been the caregivers rather than the leaders? That we still take the boniest pieces of the chicken, serve others first, and put ourselves last? That we don't yet see ourselves as worthy of the highest office in the land?
Hillary Clinton's candidacy as the first viable woman candidate for President makes her not just the possible tipping point, but also the inevitable fulcrum. Win or lose, the fact that she's running a viable candidacy is a huge leap forward toward normalizing women's leadership opportunities. And there's hardly a doubt that if she wins, women will be catapulted more quickly to that elusive equal playing field.