http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html
February 2, 2008
"Goodbye To All That" was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from
a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online
version, see http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).
--
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women's
movements, I've avoided writing another specific "Goodbye . . ." But
not since the suffrage struggle have two communitiesjoint
conscience-keepers of this countrybeen so set in competition, as the
contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who's
emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever had labor pains?)
When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it was
considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my shoes!" at
BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint
analyzing our national dishonor.
Young political KennedysKathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.all endorsed
Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were
reversed, pundits would snort "See? Ted and establishment types back
her, but the forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm
unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the Fathers.
Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I
still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo
Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles." Nixon-trickster
Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group, "Citizens United Not
Timid" (check the capital letters). John McCain answering "How do we
beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have dared reply
similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?" For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed
thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be
righteously outragedand they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history,
including one with the murderous slogan "If Only Hillary had married
O.J. Instead!" Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a storyline in
which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's vagina. I refuse to wrench
my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based
comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not
"Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is sociopathic
woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly
as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA
would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals.
Where is our sense of outrageas citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC's
Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments
(www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim Russert's
continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating
on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony Harris chuckling at "the chromosome
thing" while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And
that's not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all
women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities,
abilities, sexual preferences, and agesnot only African American and
European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and
Pacific Islanders, Arab American andhey, every group, because a
group wouldn't exist if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist
countries may existbut sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways
a woman breaks free from other discriminations, she remains a female
human being in a world still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and
the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as
black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which
whitesespecially wealthy onesadore), while she has to pass as male
(which both men and women demanded of her, and then found
unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female we wouldn't be
having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at
present such a candidate wouldn't stand a chanceeven if she shared
Condi Rice's Bush-defending politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African
American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their
voteuntil a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me
they're being called "race traitors."
So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest
scarslaverywhich fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery
exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this planet, and the
majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and
battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the
majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees,
caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived
invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas,
forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital
mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We
have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being
extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications
after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience
the world differently from menthough not all the same as one
anotherand can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele
Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this
high office and barely got past the gatethey showed too much
passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all
that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female
president they were even willing to abandon women's rights in backing
Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his
womanizing like the Kennedy guysthough unlike them, he got reported
on). Let's get real. If he hadn't campaigned strongly for her
everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy
Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics
that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is
actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects
our elections so that it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma
than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a
nuclear, wounded planet.
the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who
feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the
destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when she's worked
intensely at everything she's doneincluding being a
nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who
reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears,
failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe someone who
embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are
poised to make in this one. It was the women's movement that quipped,
"We are becoming the men we wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their
hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've been warned
they must be, or because she didn't leave him, couldn't "control"
him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter.
(Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic,
neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting
because she didn't bake cookies or she did, sniping because she
learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She
is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist
movement. She's running to be president of the United States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other
countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through
party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders.
Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related
to men of powergranddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows:
Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed,
Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even
in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the first pathway "in"
permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and
Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting her
bikini-clad ass onlinethen confessing Oh yeah it wasn't her idea
after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which
she said "made me feel like a dork."
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing
they're not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten
thestatus quo), who can't identify with a woman candidate because she
is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might
look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to
women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not
electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're already
free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as
reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved
African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War,
she replied bitterly, "I could have saved thousandsif only I'd been
able to convince them they were slaves."
I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do
identifywith Hillary, and all the brave, smart menof all ethnicities
and any agewho get that it's in their self-interest, too. She's
better qualified. (D'uh.) She's a high-profile candidate with an
enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to
detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while
retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on.
(Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections and funding and
party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those
when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in
the first place.)
I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might make in
eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical
know-howand he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him
into a shining knight when actually he's an astute, smooth pol with
speechwriters who've worked with the Kennedys' own
speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it's only about ringing
rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn't it about getting the
policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history,
papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the
promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while
dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from torpor it's useful
to triage the single largest demographic in this country's history:
the boomer generationthe majority of which is female?
Old woman are the one group that doesn't grow more conservative with
ageand we are the generation of radicals who said "Well-behaved
women seldom make history." Goodbye to going gently into any
goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the
reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace
yourselves: we're back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay,
affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the
women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters,
marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian
custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and
environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include
female anatomy; who inspired men to become more nurturing parents;
who created women's studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the
WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality
from violent pornography, who put childcare on the national agenda,
who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself.
We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud
successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S. voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There's not a
woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't recognize what she means.
Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media's
obsession with everything Bill.
So listen to her voice:
"For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence.
Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.
"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or
drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they
are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and
girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of
human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and
burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in
their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to
rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights
when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is
the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a
violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan
their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions
or being sterilized against their will.
"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to
speak freelyand the right to be heard."
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State Department and
the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in
Beijing (look here for the full, stunning speech).
And this voice, age 22, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary D.
Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969."
"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . .
searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of
living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in
relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle
for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust
and respect is one with desperately important political and social
consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have
time for it."
She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the skill of our
being: the art of making possible."
And for decades, she's been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real question is
deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we
do this for ourselves?
"Our President, Ourselves!"
----
About the author:
An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political analyst,
journalist, editor, and co-founder of the Women's Media Center, Robin
Morgan has published 21 books, including six of poetry, four of
fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful,
Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of
contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in the
international women's movement for 25 years. Recent books include A
Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's Child: A Memoir; her
best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, updated and
reissued in 2001; and her novel, The Burning Time. Her nonfiction
work, Fighting Words: A Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right,
came out in September 2006.
.
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