From my point of view, this last week has been an unraveling of feminist fabric in America. The new F-Word is faction. I have not felt this alone in the movement since June, 1982 when the ERA deadline passed and banded women disbanded to never coalesce in that form again.
Much like my unusual high school experience of traveling within many cliques, I am in touch with many women in the movement who work in different avenues. My Outlook inbox has been flooded this week with the most disturbing asks, messages, hoaxes, essays, photos, lists. Late last Thursday, I wrote to several women and told them that I cannot deal with this presidential primary along color lines, to take my name off their distribution lists until the primary is over and realize that we are all blue (dems – which in each case was true)
Since I began studying the lives of Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Winnie Mandela and reading bell hooks, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou and watching Oprah, I felt fairly confident that we were making some progress about racism in the Women’s Movement. And yet this week, I have never seen such racial lines drawn. And what is this incredible sexism about Hillary Rodham being just more of the Clinton years? Can a woman stand on her own education, qualifications and experience? Or is this 1950 – when people are imposing a husband’s legacy on his wife – like the plumber’s wife, fireman’s wife or professor’s wife? What do people want from her? If she divorced her husband – if she kept her name – if she had no children… I thought all that crap went out with June Cleaver.
How have I been fooled to believe that sexism is something hidden, something that will be gutted through the courts and Congress, something so integrated in our lives that is barely shows, something practiced by antiquated employers who are being exposed in slow motion? And have I been fooled into thinking that one crude man says, “nappy-headed hoes’” and righteous people stand to be counted? And have I been fooled to believe that if a woman goes to college, works in hedge funds, manages a self-reliant life; she will be respected? When, all the while, polite society bickers about the level of insult (if at all) occurs when a member of the media says that a 27 year old woman campaigning for her mother is a whore – “pimped by her mother.” Senator Obama, you have two daughters ~ would you please speak up on this!!! I am truly sickened by it. I am losing my footing as the reasonable, ethical road narrows.
Lets sum up here ~ feminists have been working to put a woman the White House and to remove racism from our lives. No one could have foreseen that a woman would be running against an African American man in the Democratic Party. But what I find unfathomable is that this historic combination is bringing out the worst of the very people who worked so hard to make it happen. I only hope that when the Primary is over, we can get on with the holy work of social justice – and that we can do it together.
