As a feminist who supports Barack Obama, I’m constantly confronted with an uncomfortable situation: tense conversations or, worse, heavy silence from feminist friends who feel I’ve betrayed them. Given the historic (albeit fading) chance to send a woman to the White House - at least for this election cycle - they wonder, especially knowing the barriers she faces, how can I not support her? In policy and in person, Clinton has arguably cornered the market on feminism. As former chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, Martha Burke, said in response to the recent decision by NARAL Pro-Choice America to endorse Obama, "I think the pro-choice community should stick by a woman who has stuck by them."
Knee-jerk loyalty to Clinton as a woman, and the tendency to view her as the natural feminist standard-bearer, gets added heft from Obama’s occasional tone-deafness when it comes to women, most recently when he called a female journalist "sweetie" as he deflected a legitimate (if ill-timed) question.
Earlier in the season, his penchant for sports metaphors seemed like subtle strategy to edge out Clinton’s legitimacy: how else to read his February statement that "We're both trying out for quarterback, but we're on the same team" than as a way to highlight the gendered nature of political combat? (In the thicket of boxing metaphors that emerged just prior to the Pennsylvania primary, Clinton cleverly neutralized that tactic with her own adoption of Rockyas a role model.)
Anyone who denies the influence of sexism in this race hasn’t been paying attention. Clinton has faced real sexism on the campaign trail, obvious to anyone who has talked about her candidacy in public or private settings beyond the safe zone of like-minded activists. That’s true even if one agrees with Camille Paglia's argument that the "iron my shirts" heckling incident in New Hampshire was staged "in collusion with [Clinton’s] staff."
Real cultural barriers to women running for office persist, and can’t be discounted just because they take the form of subtle putdowns about pantsuits or a nagging voice.
Negative reaction to women exerting power goes back a long way (see: Eve, or Cleopatra, or Victoria Woodhull). It can even be found in the laments of purists who want a woman as a candidate, but only one who runs on her own strengths (not those of her ex-president husband), or in her own name (ditto), even when we know how varied and insurmountable the barriers are for women to get into and remain standing under the glare of the public spotlight.
Here’s the dilemma. A woman is running for office against a man. Sexist commentary, crystallizing a long, sorry (and ongoing) history of sexism in politics, invites feminist women to be both protective and supportive of the female candidate. Many feel genuinely conflicted. Genuinely. Conflicted.
So I propose that Obama supporters face up to the reality of sexism in politics, instead of dismissing the issue as mere political posturing by the Clinton campaign. Let’s talk about Clinton’s treatment in the media, and bring it fully into the open, make it part of the progressive dialogue this campaign season. Obama supporters can do a lot of positive work uniting the party by uncovering and acknowledging the gendered reality of political discourse.
Fair enough. In turn, Clinton supporters need to face up to her fatal decision to support the war resolution in 2002, a triangulating move that probably doomed her candidacy among progressive voters. For me, the choice of candidate was easy—I eliminated all Democrats who had enabled Bush’s war, and chose the most progressive standard-bearer from those who remained (first Kucinich and later Obama). War, obviously, is hardly a progressive choice. To quote the previous pope, "war is always a failure of humanity." Clinton has never acknowledged how modern warfare targets families, women and children—both as civilian casualties, and as refugees who routinely face poverty, dislocation and abuse.
Open dialogue about the strengths and weaknesses of all the contenders, one that highlights the real gender politics of this campaign season, can only help the progressive agenda. Honest debate and complete openness are the only cure for the craven old political tactics. As Alice Walker, emerging from a self-imposed literary silence of several years’ duration, poignantly reminded us recently,
We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth.