the feminine politique
by Sandra Kinne
Published: January 14, 2008
My family is stunned by my lack of support for Hillary. Like many people whose relatives see them as a child, most of mine think I’m still 15. They see me as the makeup-free, Andrea Dworkin-reading, Limbaugh-labeled femi-nazi I was in the early 1990s and therefore must support a woman because, I, too, have boobs.
Of course, I feel I’m betraying the sisterhood by not supporting Hillary. But if I learned nothing else in four years of women’s studies courses, it’s more about the person than it is the gender. Me voting for Hillary because she’s a woman uses the same rationale as someone who won’t vote for her because she’s a woman. It should be about the person, their policies and positions, not their body parts.
The endorsement of Hillary’s leading opponent, Barack Obama, by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano shows women, even women who understand the struggles of running for office, know it’s not just about gender.
Gloria Steinem tried to persuade us otherwise in a New York Times Op-Ed last week. She argued for Hillary, writing, “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.” Steinem also cites Hillary’s “unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House.”
Funny, but I don’t remember Hillary being Vice President or the official co-President. Being the First Lady and being the President are two very different jobs.
The position of First Lady came as a result of her marriage to Bill, and as a well-educated woman, I’d really appreciate Hillary - or anyone else, especially Steinem - to not use her role as “wife” in her count for political experience. Rather than move us forward, it reverts us back a century when women only came into politics to complete their late husband’s term.
Clearly, Hillary is a well-established woman in her own regard, with her own accomplishments separate from that of her husband. However, it is eight years of being First Lady that she, and others, continually highlight and count as her experience and qualifications.
Hillary speaks of her efforts in health care (a fiasco), her role as an informal advisor to Bill, and her rousing speech in Beijing in 1995 where she reminded the world that “women’s rights are human rights.” There’s a lot more to being president, and while I agree it’s time a woman try her hand at the job, Hillary is not the woman I want running the country.
If nothing else, Hillary’s Oscar-worthy performance last weekend reminded me that it’s not about the gender, and if it was, Hillary wouldn’t the prototypical woman to represent the sisterhood.
Clearly pandering to the Academy, uh, I mean voters, made her “more relatable” and “helped her find her voice” as she and her machine noted in the days after New Hampshire. As someone who, in her own words, has been producing change for 35 years, shouldn’t she have found her own voice by now? Whose voice had she used all these years she claims in her message of experience?
I think it’s crucial this country get a female head of state; we lag far, far behind many other countries, including Pakistan, India, Bolivia, Germany, and Israel. Women do have a much, much harder time get elected, and Hillary, like most women, face the double-edged sword of being perceived as too soft or too hard. I don’t argue that. I strongly support EMILY’s List, the White House Project, and similar organizations. They provide an important service: getting women elected. Where I disagree, however, is the notion that I ought to vote for Hillary because she is a woman, too.
Women aren’t one carbon copy of one another; we’re not all Barbie-like with the only distinctions between us being our outfit, hair color, and job description. We don’t all support the same policies, the same positions, the same causes. We don’t all think alike, and we don’t all have to vote alike.
Call it a woman’s prerogative to have her own mind and her own vote.
—
(email this article or post to social network)
—
