Feminist Law Professors

A very powerful post appeared at Shakesville a couple of days ago. Since I don’t think I can excerpt if effectively I’ve reposted the entire thing here. I hope Liss doesn’t mind and if she does I will remove it at her request. Here goes:

I’m not sad because Obama’s the nominee.

I’m sad because there are women at this blog, in my personal life, across this nation, and:if my inbox is any indication:across the globe, women of all races and sexualities and socio-economic classes, many of whom weren’t even Hillary Clinton supporters, many of whom voted for Obama in the primary, who have watched with horror the seething hatred directed at Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman.

(I’m not talking about legitimate criticisms of her campaign, which I have made myself. I’m not saying any criticism of Clinton is de facto sexist; it isn’t. I’m talking specifically and only about misogynist attacks, which are always unjustified and smear not just the woman at whom they are directed, but all women.)

And these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies’ casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn’t like.

And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.

And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.

And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they’d called home for years.

(But don’t take that personally.)

And now, at long last, even now, when Clinton cannot win, she is being pushed out, carelessly, rudely, with little regard for the implicit message in hustling a historic candidate off the stage and demanding her graciousness in defeat, despite offering her no graciousness in victory. Right to the end, there is a lack of respect that hurts to watch.

And I’m sad because I know there are women who are hurting. Not because their candidate lost. Clinton may not have even been their candidate. They’re hurting because misogyny hurts all women, and because they have fewer allies than they once thought.

And unlike the people (including many of these women) who are feeling the same way with regard to racism in this campaign, who are licking wounds of racist attacks even as preparations begin for the breathtakingly awesome celebration of the first ever presumptive nominee of color, ZOMG, these women do not have an equivalent wonder to celebrate. They don’t have a “despite it all.” They don’t have a step forward to point to, to say the pain was worth it.

They just have the pain.

And I’m sad because I see so little evidence of people who are willing to understand that.

–Ann Bartow [Comments to this post will be moderated even more heavy-handedly than usual. Folks in the blog roll have the absolute right to comment as they wish, but no one else does.]

LISS POSTED AN UPDATE HERE.

Who speaks for all women? The maelstrom following the recent endorsement of Barack Obama by NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League) dramatically pumped up the volume of a months-old debate among women: namely, can a true women’s rights supporter endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton, without guilt or ambivalence?

These two women answer: of course.

We wish this truth were self-evident, but current “Don’t Quit, Hillary” bromides suggest otherwise. Fueled by respected women’s movement icons such as Ellen Malcolm of Emily’s List, the “Don’t Quit” argument holds that Hillary is fighting for all women, and that therefore women must not abandon her. A new high-profile ad by WomenCount PAC proclaims, “Hillary’s voice is OUR voice, and she’s speaking for all of us.” The ad links Clinton’s continued candidacy to the “quests for justice” of Abigail Adams, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fannie Lou Hamer, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, and Dolores Huerta. (Only the last of these great women is a Clinton supporter and, in fact, even alive.)

The message is as subtle as a Judas metaphor: a woman who supports Barack Obama must be a traitor to her gender. We find such generalizations both misleading and insulting. While being a woman is a defining characteristic for us, it does not dictate the manner in which our brains work. Women’s equality is a core principle of our personhood, yet it does not always lead us to the same conclusions. If progress for women means anything, it must include the right to debate principles of governance and to choose which candidate best embodies those precepts.

One of us is a white woman of Clinton’s generation — ostensibly the demographic epitome of the key Hillary supporter. The other is an African-Asian-American middle-aged woman — someone who arguably could fit the profile of either Obama’s or Clinton’s “base.” But, like all voters, we are more than the sum of demographic data. While we aspire to a world in which race and gender would not have negative impact, we recognize that those identity characteristics still do matter at this time in our nation’s history. Insights about race and gender continue to provide great depth to our perceptions about the world. These perceptions influence our electoral choices, but they do not render our endorsements rote or formulaic.

Consider why some women’s rights supporters might choose Obama over Clinton, and still hold fast to our ideals: The oft-discussed topic of Obama’s early opposition to the Iraq War — to many of us, a “women’s rights issue” if ever there were one — reveals much about his sagacity. We prefer Obama’s thoughtfulness about the challenge of global leadership in the 21st century. We value his explicit and repeated emphasis on the language of diplomacy to solve problems, including his own; conversely, Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran, as well as her metaphors of Rocky Balboa and boxing gloves, leave us cold. As women of the “boomer” demographic, we are acutely aware that most of this country’s problems will fall most heavily on our children’s generation, and we respect the hard work and optimism that progressive young women and men have devoted to the Obama candidacy. Both candidates disappoint us on certain issues — for example, their support of civil unions but not same-sex marriages — but we see no reason to believe that an Obama presidency will be anything less than auspicious for women’s equality.

Certainly, we decry the blanket of sexism draping this campaign, just as we deplore its ugly racial overtones. We suspect that the electorate is affected by both, despite the wishful claim that “race and gender don’t mean anything.” Obama may be hemmed in by unspoken biases about black masculinity just as much as Clinton is hampered by the code of perfect white womanhood. And both candidates have had to struggle against conventional notions of electability.

If we choose to support a black man whose principles of governance and equality seem closer to our own, we are not betraying women. It is time to bury the myth of speaking for “all women.”

–Margaret M. Russell and Stephanie M. Wildman