Both Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright made headlines for shaming millennial women for overwhelmingly supporting Bernie Sanders. On the Bill Mahar show, Gloria Steinem made the shockingly sexist comment that millennial women are supporting Sanders because they are only interested in going to where the boys go. Just as powerful men can so easily dismiss the true plight of women, Steinem, an established feminist icon, so effortlessly dismissed the true plight of millennials. Her comment was not only demeaning, but it denied the urgent and catastrophic issues faced by millennial women. It undermined the harsh reality of having to establish oneself while college debt is high, and incomes are low. It undermined the harsh reality of inheriting an earth destroyed by the generations that came before them. It suggested that their judgement is not to be trusted. So instead of taking the traditional route of visiting the bars at night to pick up men, they were attending Bernie Sanders rallies. In fact, the suggestion was so far-fetched and misogynistic in nature, that it is hard to believe that it came from Steinem rather than from Trump.
As if that wasn’t damaging enough to the Clinton campaign, at the end of her endorsement at a Hillary rally, Madeleine Albright repeated her famous phrase, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Albright is also known for having had said, during a 60 Minutes Interview, that the price of half a million Iraqi children dead was “worth it” for the sake of U.S. policy objectives. Not surprisingly, female Bernie supporters didn’t feel particularly damned. Nonetheless, there are some questions to be raised when well-known “feminist icons” use the dismissive language and tactics of the patriarchy in their attempts to win over young female voters. And as so many progressive women choose not to support a democratic female candidate, the Hillary camp’s sexism plea continues to lose credibility.
Millennials have spent their entire lives bearing the consequences of the Clinton and Bush wars. So what made the Clinton camp think that an endorsement from a warmongering establishment politician, such as Madeleine Albright, would be a good idea anyway? And what’s to be said of the Hillary campaign, and the establishment politicians of her day, when their “feminist icon” is known around the world as an international war criminal? The very notion that it is the duty of the millennial woman to “help” elect Hillary Clinton is absurd. Why should it fall on the women of the generation that is the most indebted and most underemployed to “help” elect a presidential candidate who does not support free public college tuition? Why is it their duty to “help” elect a presidential candidate who does not support the livable minimum wage that her generation benefited from? Why should the women of a generation who have spent their lives bearing the consequences of America’s wars support a candidate who is still pro-war? Since when has it been the role of the voter to help the “public servant” rather than the role of the “public servant” to help the voter? And how could the eternal damnation of a fellow warmongering female patriarch, presented as a feminist icon, who made millions of dollars off of the wars of the first Clinton presidency, was quoted to support the Bush wars, and is endorsing a second Clinton presidency, ever be appropriate?
To further investigate that question, lets rewind back to 2008, when Steinem received sharp criticism during her first endorsement of Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. In her New York Times Op-ed peice, she wrote that that “gender, not race, was probably the most restricting force in American life.” “Why is the gender barrier not taken as seriously as the race barrier?” she asked, while asserting that in an American Presidential election, it was easier to be a Black man than a White woman (even when the Black man has a Muslim name and the White women is a Clinton, a First Lady, and already has ties to the White House). She asserted that Hillary Clinton was seen as divisive, even by women, due to societal sexism. She asserted that because Obama is a man, he didn’t have to deal with this problem. It is a shame that Steinem forgot to include in her piece, the harm that the Clinton policies have caused various cross sections of women, particularly women of color, women of religious minority, poor women, and female victims of sexual assault, rendering Hillary a divisive female figure among women. Instead, she blamed it all on sexism.
Not only was she dismissive to the plight of arguably the most oppressed racial group on the planet, but she also deleted women of color, women of religious minority, and poor white women from her definition of women, and muted their voices from the dominant feminist narrative. In doing so, she placed herself at the top of the hierarchy of the unequal ranks among women. It may be no wonder then, how she can still support a female candidate who opposes a $15 minimum wage, opposes Universal Healthcare, has received millions of dollars from Wall Street, millions of dollars from private prisons (an institution Bill Clinton helped create), and is still maintaining a pro-war rhetoric. Perhaps it would be fair to remind Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright that the greatest victims of America’s wars have been and continue to be women. The young millennials, who are more globally connected than any generation before them, seem to understand that.
In 2016, as Hillary is not running against a Black man, Steinem redirected her sexism claims, at yet, another group of women. Never mind that Sanders, a Jew and Socialist, is also of a marginalized group in American politics. In her attempts to continue the lie that the support that Bernie Sanders receives is male centric, she asserted that millennial women support Bernie due to their chasing after boys, rather than the issues that affect them directly. Not only is the assumption here that all millennial women are vapid and boy crazy, there is also an assumption that millennial gay women don’t really exist. This time, she went as far as to dismiss the plight of college educated White women as well, assigning them to a lower rank than her own in the hierarchy of women. They noticed. It backfired.
Ultimately, when millennials refuse to support Hillary Clinton, they are not rejecting feminism. Rather, they are rejected the Patriarchy. After all, what can be more patriarchal than the continued dynastic rule of the Bushes and the Clintons? President Obama winning the Democratic Primaries in 2008, may have caused some interference. But Sanders’ political revolution is driving the final nail in the coffin of what should have been the Clinton dynasty – a dynasty that has not much to offer this young generation. Feminists of Clinton’s, Albright’s, and Steinem’s generation, struggle while facing the difficult decision between their potentially last chance to vote for a woman presidential candidate, or their potentially last chance to vote for a presidential candidate who embodies the many feminist values they have fought so long and hard for (Bernie Sanders). In the meanwhile, millennial women know that they will have chances to vote for far better women presidential candidates, so long as they continue the fight against the establishment. As described in a previous post, to smash the patriarchy is to fight the establishment. Once college education is accessible, and money is taken out of politics, there is no telling how many capable and brilliant women will gain the opportunity to run for president of the United States. Many of them will be from among the ranks of millennials.
So as Albright was asked in 1996, if the deaths of half a million of Iraqi children was worth it, today’s feminists are also being asked some important questions. In having to choose between Hillary and Bernie, they are being asked if private prisons, institutionalized racism, institutionalized sexism, support of Wall Street, support of war, denial of a living wage, denial of free public college education, the continued oppression and of slaughter of peoples around the word, among other issues are worth it. They are being asked if supporting the establishment is worth it. Their overwhelming answer? “No, it’s not.”
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