Here, here. Obama has my vote in part because I'm a feminist. It's quite sad to hear feminists going for a spite vote instead of seeing the bigger picture. Right now they can't see how selfish they're being, and what a McCain presidency would mean for women's rights. Thank you for a great post. Rec'd.

You can add me to that list. Emma in Maine is also not mad that Clinton is losing.

I, too, am mad at the "feminist" Clinton supporters. Their stand is no better than any other single-issue reason for voting. Single-issue voters are a peeve of mine.

I feel empowered and enlightened by keeping a clear mind and an objective eye and selecting the best candidate for myself, regardless of race or gender...and without a group of angry women telling me how I should feel or what I should do.

I love your post.

You don't have a clue. You know nothing about the feminist movement and how difficult it was, how hard we worked and what it meant to all women in this country. Just because you've limited your own experience to the white middle class doesn't mean that everyone has and just because you're not aware of it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I am sick to death of this constantly parroted meme that the feminist movement was and is for white midlle class women. It never has been, women have always worked hard to ensure that civil rights are extended to all members of this society even though the opposite was seldom at work.

You also might want to stop projecting your own scenarios onto feminists - I don't know any feminist who has claimed any of those things you say they have about Obama. What they are pissed about and I agree with them 100% is the lack of support in the sexism that has been and is rampant in the press and not one DNC leader has spoken against or even recognized that it exists. They're not angry at Obama, they're angry at the lack of support, recognition and willingness to fight for the women who have always been among the party's staunchest members.

The next time you might want to ask instead of making unsubstantiated accusations and complaints about a movement that has done so much for so many by so few. I have quite a few complaints about younger women and their complete apathy and lack of interest in the feminist movement along with their mistaken notion that it's all over and all they have to do is reap the beneifts.

bevd-
wtf. as a feminist, you spit on your mothers and now turn around a kick your daughters. Once again your generation did all that heavy lifting so that we may benefit and live in a better society and can actaully choose our life. No us youngsters don't think the movement is dead we are fighting the next battles and to have people like you swagger around and not listen to us is insulting. I am super pissed that hillary clinton has 3 cajones and is ready to nuke iran and she continues to tantrum because she lost. Hello people win and people loose, now about afforadable daycare and public education and the weakening dollar and security and equal pay.......

Hey, Jennifer, wonderful post -- but let's not 'marginalize' those older (Hillary's age) "whiter" women. In fact, some of us are probably more angry than you!

It been a dream with us longer than it has been with you to see a woman competing equally for the top job in this nation. (Forget about pride. With all the problems we have, why would we want to limit the pool of potential problem-solvers. And at least we women understand that sometimes the best problem solver WILL be a woman, or a black, or a member of some other 'non-favored' group.)

I have resented it every time Hillary has played on the fact that she is a woman, which has been *often,* overt and sometimes in unseemly fashion. I have resented and been embarassed when she and her staff and supporters scream "sexism" at each bump in the road. I have cringed when she's acted out so many of the negative stereotypes of women that keep us on the sidelines (overly emotional, thin-skinned, tone-deaf, unrealistic, etc.) I want her out of the race so that it doesn't get worse, so there aren't more painful images piled up.

And now that we are almost at the end, looking back I find that am furiously angry not just at her, but also at the strident 'feminists' (who screamed even quicker and more piercingly than Hillary herself - NOW has forever lost any respect I had for it) and at the media, commentators, and other politicians because they haven't been discriminating *against* her but rather "patronizing her because she's are a woman" That's one of the worst forms of sexism in my opinion - and experience - but that's not what NOW and the others are screaming about. And Hillary readily accepts being patronized -- in fact, she relies on it. She - routinely - does and says things that a man would be laughed off the stage if he tried.

As I wrote on another post, if you are honest, don't you get the feeling that some of these men (media, politicians, pundits, even other candidates) are praising Hillary's "guts and grit and stamina" in public while, in private, they are thinking something like "Wow, just look how that gal is fighting. Of course, it's ridiculous - she's already lost, it's hurting her own party, and she looks like a fool, and no man would lose his dignity that much, or be allowed to! But you gotta admit that it's pretty impressive for a woman can fight that hard, even if it shows she doesn't have good sense. Let's applaud her a little to see how long she can go on. And of course. we don't want to say anything negative in public, whatever we think, because she and her posse will start calling us sexists."

Do you think, possibly? Sadly, I do.

For good reason, the black community knows a lot more about fighting for equality than women do. The prejudice against us was, frankly, a lot more comfortable and safe than racism in amost all cases. I believe the black leaders and the community in general learned you have to be very level-headed and reality-based to break down barriers. When there has to be a "first person," you need it to be someone exceptional and solid to the core, a Jackie Robinson not a highly skilled but flawed Dwight Gooden or Darryl Strawberry. A Martin Luther King, not a Stokley Carmichael or an Al Sharpton. (For the record, I'm not saying that was planned or brought about by the black community - in fact Branch Rickey chose Robinson for those qualities. But it's a lesson very important to blacks and by now well-learned.

So I truly believe, deep in my heart, that if Sen. Obama had started behaving as, well, embarassingly as Sen. Clinton has done, he would have been taken aside and 'talked to' by some wiser father - and mother! - figures and reminded that it wasn't just about him, not this time. And even if that didn't happen, or if he didn't listen, I believe the black voters in general would have returned quickly to the skepticism they expressed in the beginning of his campaign. They aren't going to waste that precious power of the vote .... AND they know, as we should all know, that a badly-behaving "first person" puts the fight for equality and respect further behind. It's perhaps better to wait a little longer for the right "first person".

It never occurred to me when Sen. Clinton's campaign began that she didn't have what it took to be a serious, respected, considered on her own merits candidate. Whether she won or lost, she was going to do us proud and prove without doubt that women truly belong "in the big leagues." By New Hampshire I realized she wasn't going to be anything special, just another not-very-honest politician. And there were many cringes after that. After her Three-Days-of-the-Faces-of-Eve in Iowa ("I'm so honored" - "shame on you" - "celestial choirs"), I started just wishing she would just - please! - get off the stage.

But it took the sniper fire --- seeing her tell that story (for the 2nd or 3rd time) on St. Patrick's Day, when she was fresh and smiling and relaxed - Hillary at her best, most engaging and (apparently) most HONEST - and then learning it was a blatant, flagrant lie. Then it became visceral. Since then, I give myself the same 'gift' I do with George Bush - hit the mute button when they start to speak and depend on transcripts or summaries to find out what was said. And then wonder, with cynical detachment and no more than a 50/50 bet either way, if what they said was true.

So, although I'm older than most of you and, except for education, in that demographic where I should be a staunch HRC supporter, I am instead disillusioned (I voted for her twice!), extremely disappointed, and - yeah - angry.

I can't help but be angry at Hillary for letting us down but (and this is true admiration) I couldn't have lived the life she has and stayed sane, much less be strong enough to get out there every day and be impressive most of those days. I also believe she doesn't *see* the foolishness (or worse) of many of the things she is doing. It reminds me so much of George W. Bush - at some point they just turn off their brains and go into, as Scott McClelland described it, "permanent campaign" mode.

I am equally or even more angry at other women: those who are blindly supporting her - "enabling" her in seriously self-destructive behavior - and those, perhaps including myself, who see it and don't step up to tell her in some caring, persuasive fashion that it's going to have to stop, that she's hurting all of us. This isn't an issue just for Obama supporters - actually, it has nothing to do with him. If Biden had stayed in and I'd continued to support him I'd feel precisely the same. Actually, Hillary's own supporters should care more than we do, but even Republican women are affected because, as women, this is going to affect all of us.

She's been our "first person" on the biggest stage and while it's nice (and I hope true) for Sen. Obama and others to praise the path she's broken for all women, I have to say that I wonder. Given the drama and injury to the party and moments of sheer embarrassment that she has brought, will the powers-that-be, or the voters, four or eight or twelve years from now be more - or perhaps less - willing to favor a woman candidate? I don't know. I fear many will look back, see only Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary, and decide it might be wiser, more sane to consider the potential male candidates.

And maybe that's why women my age are either blindly devoted and blaming everyone and everything besides their candidate and themselves ..... or deeply angy in the other direction. This is probably the last chance WE will have to see what we've all felt could and should happen: a woman president who competes meaningfully and proudly for the top spot and who will fill it with honor if successful. I truly fear that that day may be further away, not closer, as a result of Hillary's campaign. I hope I'm wrong. But I no longer believe it will happen in my lifetime. Not now - it's going to take some time to recover from this.

Jenn in Indiana, and everyone else disgusted at how "feminist" seems to mean only "certain white women who support Clinton"--hey, now you know how it feels to be a woman of color! :) The refusal of some "feminist" Clinton supporters to recognize that there are many feminismS and no one has a monopoly on what the word means or who it signifies is annoying to say the least. And has been ever since former slave Sojourner Truth stood up among her white female abolitionist/suffragette allies and said, "Ain't I a woman?"

Anyway, come on over to MOMocrats.com, where there are plenty of straight-up feminist supporters of Obama (and Clinton, to a lesser degree). Just because individual commenters may not have seen much posting by feminists supporting Obama doesn't mean they don't exist.

Looks like Obama needs to go on Oprah with Michelle--you know, the women's vote gig.

My reaction to Hillary's teary moment earned me my first ever "0" ratings on TPMCafe despite many contentious posts on I/P issues. I was rather proud that I scored 3 of those little buggers first time out. It was an early indicator that things would be getting very heated around the issue of Hillary's campaign as seen by professional feminist types.

As a women's libber community activist from the pre-"feminist" days, I recognize the same element of self righteous rigid "sisterhood" that attempted to impose their own litmus tests and "standards" on those of us already very effectively working in the trenches.

My compadres and I weren't too much enamoured of the bureaucratic theorists who later morphed into the professional feminists insisting on their way and only their way today. Attempts to gain control of our fledgling org were soundly rebuffed and we built it into a powerhouse by staying focused on the day-to-day challenges of improving the lives of the diverse community of women and kids that we served.

The irony is that Hillary Clinton didn't embrace these perpetuaters of endless umbrage and victimology until her campaign had passed it's sell-by date. They are using eachother and in the process, alienating the younger women who will now watch their legacy torches sputter out rather than fire them up in solidarity and march onwards under their tattered banners.

To the women who are angry about the distorted notions of "feminism" being insisted upon by the likes of Joan Walsh, Gloria Steinem, Hillary, Taylor Marsh et al; you are right and they are wrong. Period.

There are plenty of us boomerettes who are in agreement with ya'll who have been there, done that, back in the day. The professional "feminist" militants don't own the brand and their ranks are thinning.

This is their last g(r)asp.

Something imani360 said up-thread has really stuck with me - that some of the women who fought so hard for equal rights may have become "ideologically rigid and doctrinaire" in the same way that Jeremiah Wright's vision and anger has solidified, for lack of a better word.

Rep James Clyburn talked about that sort of thing during one of the Wright dust-ups. I don't consider him to be an angry and bitter man at all, but he acknowledged that because he lived through the times that he did, there are angers and fears and - yes - prejudices that will always be with him and sometimes limit what he can envision or be comfortable with. But for his daughter, who is Obama's age, he said, it's clearer and a good deal more simple, far less difficult to see past the black/white divide. And that's the way it should be, he said: each generation standing on the shoulders of the one before and able to reach higher.

And maybe we can learn a great deal from the struggles and achievement of others. Actually, I'm not for "equality" for women or blacks or any other group: my goal is nice, plain, simple "personhood" for all of us. (And, yes, that means we all wind up subject to the draft and equally responsible for our actions.)

Where I grew up, when I grew up there, a 12 year old black boy shot and killed by a car full of white teenagers - some from very respected families - simply because he was walking on a certain block on a certain street. Earlier that evening a rock had been thrown at their car by some young 'n_____r' on that street, that block. So they went home, got a gun, drove back, and shot the young black man who was then walking on the same block. Was he the same person who had thrown something at their car? Not that that would have been an excuse for murder, but in fact they had no idea. There were some consequences, I forget what, but none of the white teenagers lost popularity with their schoolmates or were delayed in graduating from high school.

Growing up around things like that, and so many other things that were less shocking but more grindingly humiliating, it's always been a little hard for me to be extremely indignant about the hardships and limitations placed on women. Certainly SOME women were treated horribly, without doubt, and there were barriers, but many were not and society did, always, offer protection from the worst of it. If you were black, however, there was no real safety and no real respect - anywhere. (Except maybe during that safe time in church -- well, not even there in Birmingham.)

It really isn't a competition or division between the various groups of disadvantaged (and in some things white men are disadvantaged, too). It's all one fight and the fight is against goup prejudice. So when one member of a 'minority' acts shamefully and plays on and encourages the anger and resentment of their group to solidify and energize them ... and another member of another 'minority' acts with dignity and talks to those supporters about the need to get past their anger and accept responsibility for their actions and attitudes, to respect others who are different, then I know which *person* I want to vote for.

And it could well be - has been in the past - that a member of our most powerful group, white men, might well be the best, most motivated *person* to lead the fight against prejudice. And in that case he would get my vote. We should keep in mind that it's the person who is the most effective fighter against prejudice who will, in the end, do the most for women.

I am a 43 year old feminist. Didn't change my name when I got married and all that other feminist stuff. Which is why I think Hillary Clinton is not a good role model of feminism to rally behind. She stayed married to a man who was accused of rape by one woman, and sexual harrassment by several others, who repeatedly cheated on his wife, even in her own home, thus disrespecting both his wife and his daughter. And then she ran her campaign and electablity on HIS experience.

All her political clout has been because of her connection to a former president of the United States. I am waiting to hear what she has done in her own right to own the right to be the icon of feminism in this country? And by complaining endlessly about sexism, she has undermined her cause.

I want a female president. But I want a female president I can in good conscience vote for. If Hillary's supporters want a woman as a president, they shouldn't be trying to foist the idea upon us that we are sexist if we don't want this particular woman to be her.

I mean think about it: I would never vote for Jesse Jackson for president just because he would be the first black president because I don't think he would make a good one. I'm not voting for Obama because he's black but because I think he's qualified. Does that mean I'm not thrilled that he's also black? Of course not: I am. The idea of electing our first black president is thrilling to me. But still, I'm voting for him based on his qualifications and talents, not on the color of his skin. Competency matters, integrity matters. I can't vote for somebody who I don't think has integrity. It never occurred to me that I was being sexist in having this view. But now I also don't want to vote for her because if she is supposed to be elected because she is the latest symbol of feminism, I'm not down with that. On top of which, after this campaign, I no longer think she is competent to be president. She doesn't have the temperament or the vision.

Clinton is like Meir in many ways, but there is one big difference: Meir and her supporters never called her opposition sexist (though they did call them pretty much everything else).

Also, those feminists still here might enjoy this: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/987681.html

I DO have a clue! I cut my teeth on Feminism! I still have my ERA Now button...you know the one from 1972 when we actually believed that it could pass and then we would finally have fantasies like pay equity, decent child care for our kids while we worked, insurance coverage for birth control, etc, etc.

I am a 53 year old white married white Feminist living in Florida, you know, one of the states that everyone is having a hissy fit about. I am here to tell you that hubby and I were REALLY ticked off when the DNC Rules Committee voted for what we affectionately refer to as the "Nuclear Option" and stripped us of 100% of our delegates. But what REALLY popped my cork was when I got a letter from Ms. Hillary Clinton soliciting my generous donation to her campaign. This was right after she signed the pledge NOT to campaign in our state. Guess there was nothing in her moral book about fund raising as she did it all the way up until our primary. She even conveniently showed up prominently at our local airport 2 DAYS before the Primary for all of the Bay area media to document on their nightly news reports. How convenient!

And you know the neat thing about Obama? He never once disrespected me or my vote by going and asking me for money. No, he knew that as an intelligent voter I would evaluate the candidates on their merits and make an informed decision. And you know what? His is the very first Presidential candidacy that I have ever contributed to
and it felt so good when I did that now I make a point of doing it every month. And yes, we voted for him in the Primary. Yes, the we includes my husband, the big tough Viet Nam veteran who cries with me each and every time we hear of the death or maiming of one of our brave young and not so young soldiers in this abortion they call the War on Terrorism. Oh, I guess we have achieved some equity...it seems that our women soldiers are being killed and maimed over there too! Yet somehow I still have never received the same pay for doing the same work as a man.

Oh, by the way, we hold Hillary Clinton personally responsible for this mess because she didn't bother to even read the Intelligence Estimate and that was her job GD it! If she can't do her job as a Senator, how do we expect her to do it as President? We knew that this was a fool's folly and so did all of the people who protested with us in the lead up to "shock and awe". The question is if she was so smart how come she didn'?

Excellent post! Very well expressed.
Count me in. Stay-at-home Mom, white, 41, and an Obama supporter from the first.

Jennifer, great post...39, African American, woman in Pasadena, California.

I totally enjoyed the thread and thing everyone effectively argued their positions. I would only add to BevD something one of my uncles told me:
he accused me of "speaking white", I critized him for saying something I deemed ridiculous. His response: I never went to school with white kids and I didn't have white teachers.

It made me immediately realize that his life experience, growing up in Lubbock Texas, was different from my experience growing up in California. And, for the women in my family, their lives will be different from what I have experienced. I accept that difference and don't judge them for not thinking like me.

As to Hillary's record on women's and children's issues. I have two words for you: cluster bombs.

Your comment about Jesse Jackson may explain 'some' of Hillary's vote totals. -- I voted for Jackson in the 1984 primary because it meant so very much to me to be able to vote for a black person who was a recognized candidate for president in my party. Emotionally - hell, patriotically - it was a tremendous day for me, one I'll never forget, that that possibility occurred in my lifetime! (As posts above establish, I'm white but grew up very painfully aware of racial discrimination.) ----- Since NC/IN, it's been pretty clear that Clinton is not going to win the nomination. I suspect that there are some women in the states that have voted for her since and that will vote this coming week are doing so for a similar reason, with the same sense of pride and awe that I felt in 1984. Knowing how much it meant to me to do that - to be *able* to do that - I can't begrudge them that experience even if it messes up a bit with the political message of it all.