As Hilary Clinton’s campaign rapidly loses its sizzle, I’ve been reading a lot of complaints from baby boomer feminists bemoaning the sexism inherent in her (apparent) downfall.
Excuse me, but where do they get the notion that Hilary Clinton represents something special to me, because, like fifty percent of the world’s population, we share the same gender? Hilary Clinton is not all women to me.
Likewise, I don’t think Barack Obama represents all black people. But while black people are by no means a homogeneous group there is a group of cultural attitudes– music, food, manners of speech, shared history–that can be identified as “American black culture”. The same cannot be said for women.
Women, however, do share the same biology. They are the half of the human population that bears children, and they traditionally, in most cultures throughout history, have been the ones to raise those children, cook the food, and take care of the home. In our current culture we are slowly edging towards sharing these tasks more evenly. There ARE plenty of ways to successfully balance family and career, but a high powered career (like running for president) is not about balance. By definition, it is about career.
I think there is some sexism at work in people’s perceptions of Hilary Clinton, but its a function of the type of woman that chooses to function in what has been traditionally a man’s world. They are pushy, abrasive, ruthlessly efficient, take-charge…they’ve had to be to survive. People wonder why Hilary doesn’t show her “tender” side more–I suspect its because its not her biggest side, and its a side she’s had to hide for a long time.
Women in high powered careers have to make tougher decisions than men. Unlike we were told in the ’70s, you can’t have it all. You can choose not to have children. But if you do, someone has to take care of them, and I’m not talking about a “quality time” story before bed. I’m talking about changing their diapers, and spending hours with them at the playground, and listening attentively while they tell you the plot of a superhero movie for the thousanth time, and driving them to basketball practice. Someone has to cook dinner every night. Someone has to do the dishes, and the laundry, and wait for the plumber.
If you want that high powered career, you can marry a man willing to take on the traditional female role. Or more commonly, you can offload the work on a subclass of women–nannies, day care workers, the food service worker who’s putting together that “ready to eat” meal at the deli–who, while equally female, somehow don’t deserve the same right to personal fulfillment.
I’m sorry about this feminist heresy, but while I respect the right of women like Hilary Clinton to make their life choices, I generally don’t like them very much personally. The weirdest thing about Clinton is she isn’t even running on her own accomplishments. She is leveraging off her husband. I know far more accomplished women in my own community on the basis of their work in law and politics.
One of Barack Obamas strengths is that, while he has overwhelming black support, he isn’t running as a “black candidate”. He transcends that. He is biracial, for one thing, truly an “African-American”. He was raised internationally. He came of age after the civil rights movement, benefiting from it enough not to let that struggle define him. Maybe the first woman president will be a post feminist candidate, less strident, someone who happens to be a woman but who does not let that biological fact define her.
Obama was two years old when Martin Luther King gave his famous March on Washington speech. I am judging both he and Clinton by the content of their character.
