The purpose of this piece is to demonstrate how some apologists for Hillary Clinton have unintentionally undermined her qualification to be president. The thrust of these defenses is to tacitly acknowledge that Hillary’s candidacy does not, in and of itself, merit support, and then to assert that this candidacy cannot be properly judged on its face, but must be in effect graded on a curve that takes social gender bias into account.
DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE
As Courtney Enlow puts it in her All Caps Explosion of Feeling
“A WOMAN DOESN'T GET THE FUCKING OPTION *NOT* TO PLAY THE GAME. NOT NOW. NOT YET. WE ALL WISH THINGS WERE DIFFERENT BUT THEY DON'T BECOME DIFFERENT WHILE WE'RE ATTACKING THE FUCKING PERSON WHO CAN MAKE THAT POSSIBLE.”
Because of gender inequality, Hillary hasn’t had the option not to get rich off Wall Street, or something. Frankly, I don’t see how to present this argument separated from the emotionally charged way it’s framed. I doubt the author, even, could demonstrate how Hillary had to, for example, PLAY THE GAME and vote to invade Iraq because she’s a woman.
I don’t believe that women don’t get the option not to play for a couple reasons:
First, we have what seem to me pretty clear examples of women in politics not playing THE GAME as Clinton does. Elizabeth Warren is certainly the most famous example, but I’d add to that congresswoman Marcy Kaptur from Ohio, whose speeches in the House during the financial crisis of 2008 were brilliantly powerful and certainly won her no friends in the Establishment. I’d add Tulsi Gabbard to that list, who resigned from her high office at the DNC to support Bernie Sanders.
Second, the power structure is coercive to all who participate in it, regardless of gender. Not playing THE GAME always comes at a penalty relative to the Establishment. There is no gender exemption card.
But putting aside what a strange and specious assertion it is, let’s go along with the premise that no woman even gets the option not to play THE GAME, and as Hillary is a woman, she must have been coerced by structural pressures into living the life she’s lived and making the political decisions she’s made.
In her Tumblr piece picked up by Slate.com, Sady Doyle presents a similar lens for properly viewing Hillary, spelling out in greater detail just how not responsible HRC is:
“Hillary Clinton is the impossible woman. The pressures she lives under, every moment of her life, are all-encompassing. She doesn’t have an inch of leeway, a single safe option; there is no version of Hillary Clinton that won’t be attacked. So the version of Hillary Clinton we get—this conflicted, conflict-inspiring candidate, the woman who has a genius-level recall of global politics but has to assure the world she’ll spend her presidency picking out flowers and china, the lady who books a guest spot on Broad City but can’t pronounce “Beyoncé,” the woman who was decades ahead of the curve on women’s rights but somehow thinks it’s a good idea to throw in a Bush-esque 9/11 reference at a debate—is the inevitable product of these pressures.”
Before getting to the substance of this paragraph, I want to point out the way the author’s description of “conflicted, conflict-inspiring” Clinton doesn’t contain any of the truly conflict-inspiring issues. Rather than mentioning trade deals, speaking fees and the invasion of Iraq, Doyle offers a list of items ranging from completely trivial to of minor importance at best. No one worth listening to seriously cares about Hillary’s pronunciation of “Beyoncé.” Similarly, the idea that Clinton “has to assure the world she’ll spend her presidency picking out flowers and china” grossly inflates a single trivial moment in one debate. In a paragraph that pretends to explain why Hillary is so conflicted the author doesn’t mention a single serious conflict.
But, again, let’s put aside the problems with the case and accept the premise. As with Enlow’s ALL CAPS Hillary, Doyle’s Hillary is free of responsibility for her own character: “the version of Hillary Clinton we get … is the inevitable product of these pressures,” with “these pressures” being widespread sexist criticisms over her appearance, age, emotional affect, tone of voice and the like.
Hillary would never make such arguments in her own defense. She would never say she was the inevitable product of external pressures. But, what if these apologists for Hillary are right? What if she’s so circumscribed by “all-encompassing” pressure that she’s driven to such lapses of judgment as throwing “in a Bush-esque 9/11 reference at a debate”? And let’s not stop at relatively trivial, if cringe-worthy, lapses in judgment. Let’s extend this reasoning as far as is necessary to deal with actual opposition to Hillary and say it was the all-encompassing pressures on her as a woman that caused Hillary to vote to invade Iraq, and all the rest. What if we accept that through 40 years of professional life Hillary has learned that, as a woman, she “DOESN'T GET THE FUCKING OPTION *NOT* TO PLAY THE GAME”?
Doesn’t this absence and distortion of agency severely diminish her as a candidate for president, given that independent agency is exactly the quality called for by the office? Moral agency is the essential qualification. By turning her into a victim of gender bias, Hillary’s apologists have explained away the disturbing parts of her record at the cost of undermining the fundamental character requirement of the office she’s running for.
CHRYSALIS OF FREEDOM
Perhaps the idea is that once Hillary gets elected to the presidency, she’ll finally have broken through the last barrier of oppression, the glass ceiling that had trapped her within THE GAME. Like a butterfly emerging from her chrysalis, Hill will suddenly fly free, the empowered moral agent we could only dream of all these years of watching her. Even better, the example Hillary provides, publicly resolving her own contradictions on the world’s biggest stage will spark a revolution in gender relations, as all those people who’ve pegged Clinton as just another politician who campaigns with one face and governs with another will have to bow before her unparalleled example of patience, fortitude and essential goodness. Vast numbers of people will suddenly realize that what we were seeing wasn’t the mote in Hillary’s eye, but the beam in our own. It’ll be our patriarchal society’s come to Jesus moment, with hundreds of millions struck into ecstasy on the metaphorical road to Damascus. Hillary’s liberation from THE GAME will be our own.
It’ll be just like the last time, when the election of Obama ended racism in America. Such is the thinking expressed in Enlow’s identification of Hillary as THE FUCKING PERSON WHO CAN MAKE [IT] POSSIBLE for women to have the option not to play THE GAME.
JESUS H CHRIST
I’m struck as I write this how Christian this thinking is, in that it mirrors exactly the structure of the old religious idea that we humans gained liberation from death by Jesus’ triumph over it. Jesus beat THE GAME and in doing so opened up THE FUCKING OPTION for the rest of us to live lives of authentic moral agency, lives not distorted by slavish submission to worldly powers.
I’m not going to criticize this as magical thinking, which it is. I think there’s some psychic validity to magical thinking; and even if the election of Hillary will no more end sexism than the election of Barack ended racism, it’d be a step on the path.
Instead, I’ll point out that the presidency isn’t outside THE GAME, but is instead just another role within it. The idea, then, that if elected Hillary can finally stop playing THE GAME is fatally flawed. Even if Hillary wanted to resolve her contradictions (and it bears remembering that she has repeatedly denied their existence), even if she wanted to step up to full, conscience-oriented, agency (and she has repeatedly asserted that she’s already there) as President, Hillary will be subjected to all the same pressures she is now, only more so. The “inevitable product” rule will still be in effect. The Hillary we see now, conflicted and conflict-inspiring, will be the Hillary we get.