Thinking it over ... Hillary's loss is feminism's triumph By Félix Alfonso Peña Here’s an ironic scenario for you: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton loses her bid to be the Democratic nominee for the White House, thus marking a significant triumph for feminism. That’s my take, of course. Some feminists don’t see it that way, not with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton so close to achieving what could arguably be the most formidable political achievement for women in the USA since the Nineteenth Amendment granted them suffrage in 1920: a woman in the bully pulpit. For example, in a January New York Times opinion article, Gloria Steinem took pro-Barack Obama feminists to task for not supporting Clinton. In her diatribe, Steinem effectively accused these feminists, many of whom from a younger generation than hers, of failing to recognize and thereby helping to perpetuate America’s “sexual caste system.” A recent Associated Press article quotes Gloria Feld, a past president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America as saying that women ought to vote together — for Clinton — lest people never take the female voting block seriously again. In other words: Woman, you are either for Hillary Clinton or against feminism. That thought represents a huge step backwards. The positions outlined by Steinem and Feld are in absolute contradiction with the long fought-for mission of feminism and other civil rights movements: to have people base decisions on merit, not on gender, class, race, ethnicity, etc. Searching for merit is, after all, the diametrical opposite of relying on the stereotype. It requires a close look at a person’s achievements or character rather than relying on simplistic generalizations that ignore a person’s true worth. One of the major initiatives of feminism has been to unmask and overthrow the stereotype that women were essentially all the same, a class of people fit for nothing but housework and mostly menial tasks, and lacking the intelligence to make good decisions. They had fewer rights because they had lesser ability, went the argument in pre-suffrage and pre-liberation days. The upshot of this rationale was to let the men make all the decisions for men and for women. We’ve come a long way since then. Let’s not backslide. Now that Hillary Clinton is vying for the presidency, the argument that anybody should vote for her based on her gender is definitely backsliding. The same can be said for voting for Sen. Barack Obama based on his race. Race isn’t the point, and gender isn’t the point. It’s qualifications. If a man chooses to vote for Obama or Clinton based on either one’s qualifications, he’s free of prejudice, liberated. A woman should not be held to a different standard when deciding where to place her vote. She should not be accused of betrayal to the feminist cause because she believes that Obama is a better candidate, just as she should not be labeled a racist if she prefers Clinton. And when women and men make a choice about a woman based on her qualifications, regardless of whether they vote for or against her, feminism has triumphed. Win or lose, it’s a victory. |