Clinton and sexism
Is Hillary Clinton a victim of sexism? Undoubtedly she is — along with just about every other woman in a position of power, particularly in politics. (For some examples, check out this video compiled by the Women’s Media Center.) In fact, just about all women have, at some point or many points in their lives, encountered sexist attitudes or actions that made their lives unfairly difficult. Fine, I think we can all agree on that. But the Clinton campaign has been making a stronger statement: that sexism is costing her the nomination. Oh, wait — not that she’s lost the nomination, of course, still fighting! — but in the event that she might not be the winner of the Democratic primary election, that would be a key reason.
Clinton was the focus of a lot of negative attention when the campaigning began because, at that point, she was the front-runner. That makes strategic sense. Yes, she is female; yes, the other candidates are male. That does not mean that their negative comments were sexist. Yet Clinton and many of her supporters tried to frame it that way, and have continued to push that perspective about the race overall.
Eleanor Smeal, Feminist Majority Foundation president and endorser of Clinton, was quoted as saying about one early debate, “It goes beyond logic — it’s a gut response. …Every woman — it was just so visceral — that panel was all male. It didn’t matter almost what was being said.” I think Smeal is saying something very true: the belief that there is sexism at play here is a visceral response that (mostly) women are having. It has little to do with whether any sexist behavior actually took place. Clinton is the first woman to make it this far, so she’s surrounded by men. People expect to see — and therefore, see — sexism everywhere.
From a campaigning perspective, the sexism angle is just an easy way to play to the sympathies of a politically correct population, and to incite righteous anger in the generations of women who really did have their careers ruined (or didn’t have a chance at careers at all) simply because of their gender. The message, sent both implicitly and explicitly, is that women ought to vote in solidarity with a woman candidate, and that men who oppose her candidacy are just being sexist. Clinton has carefully crafted her message around identity politics, including rather hypocritically playing the race card against Obama. You might suppose she’d believe the argument analogous to hers, that opposing Obama means you’re a racist. However, she’s been comfortable bragging about the powerful and large-scale ways that racist voting has helped her campaign.
This just doesn’t make sense. She’s happy to focus on her gender in a variety of ways when it wins her votes superficially, from inane jokes about her arduous morning routine to entire rallies implying that the only way for US laws to treat women fairly is to have a woman physically in the Oval Office signing federal legislation. Use her gender as a superficial reason to vote against her, though, and she’ll cry foul. She can’t logically have it both ways, since the reason sexism is bad is that gender ought not be a determining factor in political decisions. That problem is just as present when the decision goes in her favor as when it goes against her.
As a woman I resent being told that I ought to vote for another woman, ignoring all other considerations. If I am really to be viewed as a complete person with a fully developed personality and set of valid opinions, I should be allowed to decide which issues are more important to me and whom I trust most to represent my stances on those issues. Even if I decide that goals such as equal pay rank highest in my priorities, I should be allowed to believe a particular male politician can achieve those goals better than a particular female politician. I am stunned that Clinton can pretend to be supporting women’s rights while telling me I am allowed none of these things.
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