I haven't seen this diaried yet, but I thought it was important. Laura Flanders has a blog piece up at The Nation called Which Womanhood? written in response to Robin Morgan's Goodbye To All That (#2) which takes its title from Morgan's very important 1970 essay, Goodbye To All That, a feminist declaration of independence from the male chauvinist New Left.
Morgan's piece is a feminist polemic in favor of voting for Hillary Clinton. Much of it echoes the style of her original essay with a litany of the truly outrageous sexist treatment that has been directed at Clinton. Morgan then concludes with a segue to a call to action and her own endorsement of Clinton:
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.
As for the "woman thing"?
Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.
It is a passionate piece and, independent of whether one agrees with her support for HRC, a valuable reminder of exactly how foul many of the attacks on her have been.
Flander's response, however, is an equally valuable reminder of the seamier side of Clinton's record and what it has meant for the lives of women. A few quotes should convey the point:
Morgan recalls how Clinton defied the US State Department and the Chinese Government to speak at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women. I saw Hillary Clinton speak that rainy day in China and her defiance was something of which to be rightly proud. But even as Clinton called for the recognition of women's rights as human rights, the rigged-for-profit trade policies that she supported then and continues to endorse were encouraging a global sweatshop economy that has all but eradicated the right to unionize in most of the world -- a working woman's best protector. (It took her six years to get off the board of the anti-union giant Wal-Mart.)
Clinton writes in her autobiography "Living History" that she would have opposed her husband over welfare reform if she thought it would hurt young children. (One wonders what she thinks happens to kids in poor working and over-working families.) On the campaign trail, she recalls her dedication to Marian Wright Edelman's Children's Defense Fund. But I can't forget Peter Edelman's resignation from the Department of Health and Human Services in protest. In 1996, welfare "reform" cut almost 800,000 legal immigrants off aid entirely and even denied them food stamps, but no one denies that it helped get Bill Clinton re-elected. "Welfare reform became a success for Bill" writes Hillary in "Living History." It was all about politics, not poor people, said Edelman.
I'd like to believe a female president would be good for the advancement of "womanhood" worldwide. But so far Senator Clinton's votes have not been good for Iraqi, or Palestinian, or a whole lot of global womanhood. One million dead in Iraq alone. (US forces killed another nine civilians including a child today.) At what cost does one woman prove she's ready for the White House?
Flander's then concludes by indicating her intention to vote for Obama "with fingers crossed."
This is one of the more substantive exchanges I've seen on the question of what a Clinton presidency would mean for women and I think both pieces deserve more attention than I've seen so far.
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