From: Tedra Osell
To: Courtney E. Martin; Wendy Shanker
Do women have any special obligation to support Clinton's candidacy? The obvious answer is no — only the most reactionary kind of identity politics would assert that women must support women, men must support men, etc. (And what are black women to do? Vote twice?)
It isn't that simple though. Clinton does have a shot at breaking the glass ceiling of the American presidency, and I for one think that if she wins it will be not only a symbolic victory — and symbols are important, mind you — but also a material one for American women.
Clinton really has made an explicit point of putting women's issues front and center in her political career. She spent the early years of her career working for the Children's Defense Fund. She started a parent education program in Arkansas. There's a page on her Senate website devoted to women's issues (no corresponding page on Obama's). She made a point, as first lady, of going to Beijing to speak at the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women, where she emphasized that "women's rights are human rights" — a fact that gets too little attention from the executive office of the so-called last remaining superpower.
She was the first person in national public life to try to achieve universal health care,*
one of the things that would make the greatest difference in the lives of poor mothers; now that issue is at the center of the Democratic Party's agenda. When she failed, she pushed for the State Children's Health Insurance Program. In the Senate, she worked with Harry Reid (who is anti-abortion) to introduce the Prevention First Act in Congress. She and Patty Murray held the nomination of a new FDA chair hostage until Congress voted to make Plan B available over the counter. There's also the fact that according to the Huffington Post's research, Clinton's campaign staff is "balanced, but favors women," while Obama's campaign has "few women at the top." If you are a feminist who thinks that having more women in powerful positions is good for women's rights, then you do, in fact, have something of an obligation to support Clinton's candidacy.
Inasmuch as feminists like Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, and Erica Jong have endorsed Clinton as feminists, they are right to do so. Steinem is right, too, when she says that "some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system" — when young feminists argue that it's sexist to expect them to support Clinton "just" because she's a woman, or that feminism is "all about choices" (as if all choices were equally valid), they are, in fact, denying the fact of the sexual caste system. She's also right that "women…[grow] more radical with age," precisely because, the older one gets, the more experience one has with the fact of the sexual caste system, and the harder it becomes to ignore it.
As feminists, we should support Clinton. Not "just" because she's a woman; because she is a woman who, as a woman, has spent her life and career working for women's interests. Because we recognize that although not all women are good on women's issues, the more women there are in power, the more likely it is that everyone, men and women, will see women's rights as human rights.
That said, this feminist voted for Obama. Even though I felt bad about doing it. I made my choice primarily in response to another feminist's pro-Obama arguments: As Senator he introduced a nuclear non-proliferation initiative and co-sponsored a bill to secure conventional weapon stockpiles; he was central in new Congressional ethics legislation and open government initiatives; in Illinois, he spearheaded a bill requiring all police interrogations to be videotaped — and he got it passed, unanimously.
Those issues matter to me too, and given the current state of U.S. war policy and civil liberties, I found them decisive. But they're not feminist issues, and my decision wasn't, in the end, a feminist decision. Not because civil liberties and anti-weapons proliferation are incompatible with feminism (they aren't) but because in this election the candidate who's best on civil liberties is a man.
Feminists who support Obama aren't doing so because he's the best feminist candidate
(he isn't). They're supporting him because they like his position on the war or on civil liberties, or because they're more impressed with his political style or youth appeal than they are with Clinton's. These are completely valid and good reasons to vote for him, and there's nothing wrong with doing so — unless you insist that your feminist sisters are somehow oppressing you by pointing out that Clinton is the feminist choice. They're not. They're pointing out that Clinton is the feminist choice and asking you to vote accordingly.
As a feminist who voted for Obama, I'm pointing out that those like me can at least be honest about it. We all have multifaceted political and social identities. I'm a feminist, and I'm a mother, a Catholic, an American, a wife. Sometimes these various identities conflict: Heterosexual marriage, for example, is not a feminist institution. As a straight married woman, I'm making a compromise between my feminist beliefs and the world in which I actually live. As a no-bullshit feminist, I'm woman enough to admit it. As a voter, I faced a choice.
One candidate (possibly because he is black, possibly because he has lived abroad, possibly because his father is Kenyan) seems better on international issues. The other (partly because she is a woman, possibly because she has herself made compromises between her feminism and her other goals, possibly because she is in her sixties) is more experienced and a better feminist. I chose the first. It wasn't a feminist decision. I'm woman enough to admit that, too.
*Correction: the first high profile effort at achieving universal health care was during deliberations on the Social Security Act in 1935–ed.
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