A bit more on unity

Gloria Steinem’s op-ed in the New York Times last week (Good Feminists Must Vote Clinton) did a pretty good job of getting my goat. It irritated me because she almost makes some very good points, because I recognize latent sexism as an insidious problem in our society (though not a greater one than racism, homophobia, and radical fundamentalism), and because Steinem chose, as Clinton herself has, to use the candidate’s identity to underscore the divisions in American society, instead of to bridge them and unite us.

Read Steinem's article:

Let’s put it this way: say a man was running for president with Hillary Clinton’s background. A smart man, thoughtful, strategic, determined, but cerebral and patrician, an exemplary member of the class who traditionally feels entitled to lead. He’s been a privileged insider in a former White House administration, but had no official policymaking authority and no electoral accountability, four years in the Senate over his chief rival, and less overall legislative experience. There’s not much remarkable about his policies in a field with substantial agreement on the big issues, and there’s little in his rhetoric that brings out the best hopes and inspirations of the people who hear him speak. Could he get elected?

I’m pretty sure the answer is no. In fact, I’m confident that a man running in Clinton’s shoes wouldn’t even have a chance at Gloria Steinem’s vote. Clinton’s gender is the overwhelming factor that sets her apart in her qualifications for the presidency. And that is not good enough.

Hillary Clinton does not represent a grand departure from the castes of the political establishment by any benchmark. Steinem proclaims that “this country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees.” She neglects the obvious addition of presidential husbands to that list. Clinton, by race, by class, by dynastic connection and by policy alignment, is squarely a representative of the old-school Washington elite, the late-20th century Democrats who have served America so poorly in recent years. Steinem claims that merely by her femininity Clinton can revolutionize this system. She is wrong, and damningly so if her logic becomes the prevailing one in this election.

Electing a woman president will make history. I’ll be first in line to acknowledge the significance of that symbol. But figurehead affirmative action is the slow way to go about empowering each of the marginalized categories of American society; if women must wait for a woman president to be taken seriously in politics either collectively or individually, then black men must wait for their own token leader, as must Mormons, and Jews, Latino women and Japanese men. I am one of those younger women that Steinem condemns for “hop[ing] to deny or escape the sexual caste system,” if that’s what it is to hold out for a candidate appeals to us to break down artificial distinctions and recognize that whatever our race or gender, we are all equal heirs and enactors of the American dream. If the lesson of Clinton’s candidacy is “women can” then the lesson of Obama’s is patently “we all can.”