Post-feminist my ass

By Kathy G.

Via Molly at Whiskey Fire, I came across this article in New York magazine, which asks whether Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has caused a feminist reawakening. Well, I don't know about you, but I think a lot of us were awake already, thank you. The annoying premise of the piece is that up until the primary campaign season, we were living in a "post-feminist" moment. I admit, I've never been able to wrap my mind around the whole "post-feminist" line of argument. When patriarchy declared unconditional surrender to the feminists and voted itself out of business -- what year was that, exactly?  As they say, I must have missed the memo.

Still, some smarmily condescending touches aside, it's not a terrible article. Even for the card-carrying feminists among us, the depth and intensity of the sexism directed at Hillary during this campaign has been stunning. I fully expected her to face a non-trivial amount of sexist bullshit, but never the degree outrageous, no-holds-barred misogyny that so many people -- and not all of them wingnut whackjobs -- have expressed. Especially disappointing has been the response from some lefty men whom I'd considered my political allies, who either gleefully indulged in anti-Hillary sexism themselves, or lectured me about how even the most egregiously sexist incidents were fake media-manufactured controversies, so what was I getting myself all worked up for anyway?

The New York article ends by asking, if the Clinton campaign has indeed revived feminism, what's next? How should the feminist movement respond to the profound sexism and gender inequities that the response to the Clinton campaign has laid bare?

I think one useful, though admittedly very narrow, line of response for feminists would be media activism. As the stupefyingly sexist media treatment of Clinton indicates,  we have a huge problem with the media in this country. And it's not just the crap reporting Hillary, either -- a deep, and frequently nasty, sexism pervades media coverage of all kinds of issues.

You can see it in everything from the wildly disparate coverage female vs. male celebrities receive to the highly favorable media treatment of studies that  reaffirm traditional sex roles (and the near-blackout of the ones that don't). Even The Liberal New York Times™ shows a notable anti-choice bias in its coverage of abortion and has the distressing habit running dumb, sexist stories about the nonexistent "trend" of women dropping out of the workforce. And on top of all that, there's all that "opinion journalism" churned out not only by the usual (male) sexist dicks but also by misogynist tools masquerading as feminists (e.g., Maureen Dowd and Camille Paglia).

The feminist blogs do a great job at exposing and critiquing our poisonously sexist media environment, but so far as I can tell, they're not acting in a purposeful, coordinated way. If the bloggers and feminist groups could organize campaigns to pressure media outlets to cut out the sexist bullshit, who knows? They might even listen. No female candidate ever again should have to experience the misogynist  media shitstorm that has been visited on Hillary during this campaign.

Comments

[Thomas]

Love the blog. I just wanted to chime in with the following:

I HATE MAUREEN DOWD!

She is an anti-feminist, pro-Bush, bullshit artist. Grrrr!

~Thomas

[Thomas]

Love the blog. I just wanted to chime in with the following:

I HATE MAUREEN DOWD!

She is an anti-feminist, pro-Bush, bullshit artist. Grrrr!

~Thomas

[arbitrista]

I am curious though, do you think the Obama campaign has engaged in dog-whistle sexist politics, or just that the press has been quick to use misogynist critiques at Clinton? I was a little disturbed when I heard the former accusation leveled, because even though I'm male, I'm usually pretty good at spotting that kind of thing.

[Andrew]

I just finished the New York piece, and I found it unsatisfying for some of the same reasons that you did. I've been surprised at the type and degree of misogyny directed at HRC, and I think that while the article summed up some of that stuff quite well, it also starts from a premise that seems so flawed in the first place that it's difficult to feel much sympathy for this supposed awakening.

I think it's undeniable that Obama has not had to confront the same amount of explicit racism as Clinton has sexism. That's been the most interesting aspect of how identity politics has played out in this race so far. I don't think I would have predicted that, although it makes sense on reflection, given how much more acceptable sexism is than racism. While I have many issues with Clinton's candidacy and campaign, I've always maintained that she would not be able to run the same kind of campaign as Obama has, or even run a credible one at all were her national experience the same as his.

On the other hand, the legitimate feminist critique of this campaign has a few problems at times, and this article really exemplifies them. Just on the level of thoroughly and honestly examining identity politics, the article fails fairly egregiously in implicitly suggesting that Clinton faces criticisms that Obama does not simply because she's a woman, while merely nodding to the idea that he might experience the same (quasi-unique) problems due to his race. The quotation pointing out that Obama doesn't have to make decisions on a daily basis regarding his femininity somehow seems to suggest that he doesn't have to make almost identical decisions all the time about how to present himself racially. More troubling is not only the consistent failure to address issues of sex AND race in the sense that the dual categories became contentious points in Second Wave feminism, but the very strange repeated quoting of Ferraro without any acknowledgment that she's played a role in deploying divisive racial politics during this campaign. Yes, Ferraro has important things to say about running for national office as a woman, but in this context she's already made it clear that she doesn't really grasp what might be fundamentally at stake in running for such office as a Black man. In other words, her commentary, especially unchallenged by any other voice, is too dismissive of the nuances of the campaign to be credible.

Additionally, the overt (and certainly also covert) sexism that Clinton experiences, and that we all see, is in contrast to the covert racism that Obama experiences. It's much easier to write an article like this about misogyny, which has been all too evident, but harder to parse the extent to which the "lack of support" Obama experiences amongst "working class Whites" is simply racism by a euphemistic name. There are plenty of people who will not vote for Obama because he's Black, just as there are plenty who will not vote for Clinton because she's a woman. It seems to be a peculiar function of our cultural moment that the former are (mostly) unwilling to say so, while the latter are happy to make asses of themselves on national tv. In this context it's always worth remembering that there have only been three African American Senators since Reconstruction (and only two during), and that Obama is currently the only AA Senator. In contrast there are currently 16 women in the Senate, and three states represented by two female Senators.

I certainly don't mind more focus on the misogyny of this race, and I do think that the treatment of Clinton has been egregious on many fronts (although I also don't support her and think there are plenty of reasons to do so that have nothing to do with gender). I also think that while Clinton and Obama are still in the race together, it's very hard not to read an article like this, especially since it repeatedly quotes Ferraro, as seeking to make the argument that racism in this campaign isn't as problematic as sexism. I don't think the article establishes that, at all, because it largely ignores racism altogether.