I know I am stepping on toes by writing a diary such as this. As a man, someone might argue that I am not qualified to speak on such a topic. However, I have been consistently floored by "feminist" arguments in support of Clinton, believing that such arguments represent a deeply flawed conception of what feminism is. Indeed, as I'll argue below, Clinton's campaign is a deeply misogynistic or anti-feminist campaign. This thesis requires an articulation of what feminism and patriarchy are.
Follow me below the fold.
Patriarchy as a Social Structure
One story about feminism has it that feminism is a political movement premised on asserting the rights of human beings that biologically have the characteristic of being female. This would be a genetic argument, holding that feminism consists in supporting those who have XX chromosomes. This is certainly a very important part of what feminism is about, but I would argue that feminism also has a far deeper, more profound, socio-structural nature.
If there is one characteristic that defines Patriarchy, it is not biology or the control of society by men, but rather it is a structure of social organization where there is a transcendent dominating term at the top, with subjects beneath that term. This, of course, is the classical notion of the nuclear family. At the top you have the father who functions as a sovereign-- Schmitt famously argued that the sovereign is the person who decides the exception --while beneath the father you have the wife and the children who are to obey the sovereign command of the father (father knows best, and all that).
Now the key point to grasp in this social organization or structure is that it is perfectly generalizable. That is, we 1) discern it in a variety of social contexts and forms of thought, and 2) the gender of the people filling this social structure is irrelevant to this social structure itself. The structure is generalizable in that we see it in a variety of forms throughout Western history. Politically, patriarchy can be discerned wherever you have a leader functioning as sovereign at the top, and people beneath that leader who are to obey the leader's commands. In this connection, it matters not a wit whether the leader is male or female, the structure remains the same. That is, a structure is not defined by the qualities of the terms in the structure, but by the relations. Thus, for example, the following two statements have exactly the same structure:
The ball is red
The song is loud.
Both of these statements have the logical form "S is P" and are therefore structurally identical. Likewise, it makes little difference whether we're talking about Queen Elizabeth, King Louis XIV, Hitler, or Stalin. In all these cases the structure is identical or based on the logic of patriarchy or sovereignity. Structurally Elizabeth is every bit as patriarchal as Louis XIV, despite being a woman.
Intellectually we see this structure in the metaphysics that defines Western Thought (referred to by philosophers as "ontotheology" or "the Great Chain of Being"). At the top you have God as sovereign, while beneath God you have all the creatures that follow Gods laws. This structure defines nearly all of Western thought and science, even down to the current day among atheists. That is, many atheists continue to think of physical nature from an observerless standpoint outside the world, which is identical to the structure of patriarchal sovereignity (the sovereign being the exception).
So this is my first point: patriarchy and feminism are not primarily about biological gender, but about a particular structure.
Democracy is Feminist
What would be a social structure that is not patriarchal? In order to escape patriarchy it is clear that you have to have a form of thought and a social system that is no longer defined by the logic of a transcendent sovereign. That is, you have to have a strictly immanent and social form of social organization. Put otherwise, such a social organization would have to reject any sovereign master, King, despot, God-figure, decider of the law, in favor of the subjects themselves deciding the social.
Democracy meets this criteria. While it is indeed true that we elect leaders or representatives in democracy, it is we who are electing the leaders, not the leaders who are commanding us. A democratic leader is the displaced will of the people. Where transcendent sovereignity is premised on the unconditional command of the master/father/god, democracy is premised on the voice of the people defining their own destiny. It is relational, grass roots, self-governance. Rather than the logic of "father knows best", democracy embodies feminist values of relating to individuals as individuals (rather than according to abstract principles), of situationality (dealing with problems in context rather than according to universal principles), and invention. Rather than obedience, it is premised on mutual respect, understanding, learning, and development.
The Campaigns
If anything I've said here has any plausibility or weight, we can ask ourselves which campaign better embodies these principles. Our knee-jerk, gut instinct might be to claim that Clinton is the real feminist because when we look at her we see a biological woman. But let's look at the facts. Clinton's campaign is modeled on a top-down logic based on not only the party elite, but the "superior wisdom" of both herself and her advisers. It is a campaign that has a high degree of centralization (Great Chain of Being) and premised on the party establishment knowing what's best (recall their earlier defense, months ago, of the role the superdelegates might play). Similarly, when she was seeking to reform healthcare, she did so behind health care, cutting the public out and many legislators, because "father knows best".
By contrast, with Obama we have a viral, non-linear, de-centralized campaign. Obama is not a leader at the top who "knows best", but rather is a fellow traveler and collaborator who works with us. His campaign has been premised on grass roots efforts of organizers throughout the country, drawing on donations primarily from private individuals (now topping two million), and making use of non-linear forms of organization such as the internet to make his case. By contrast, Clinton's donations came primarily from very large corporate contributers and lobbyists, again recapitulating the structure of hierarchy or dominance of masters to subjects. Further, if we carefully examine both Obama's speech at the last democratic nomination and his most recent speech on race, Obama's politics is premised on an understanding and respect for difference, dialogue, and invention, rather than the privilege of identities (a mark of patriarchal onto-theology).
By these premises, the paradoxical conclusion is that Obama, despite being XY or biologically male, is the feminist candidate, and that Clinton is the patriarchal candidate.
Fighting Patriarchy and Feminism
What then does it mean to be a feminist (for me). Feminism doesn't simply mean fighting for equal wages, reproductive rights, mutual respect, equal treatment, and so on. All of these things are, of course, of crucial importance. However, more profoundly, the struggle of feminism means fighting patriarchal structures as they occur in intellectual thought (science, philosophy, the other disciplines), politics, and our day to day social relations. It means rejecting sovereign transcendence in favor of relationality, the voice of the multitudes, difference, the striving for mutual understanding, and the resolute rejection of any and all authoritarianism. A vote for Clinton, in my measured opinion, does not advance this cause.