"Raise your hand if you consider yourself a feminist."
Nobody raised their hands.
"Ok, now if Feminism was defined as believing that all women should have the same rights as men, who would consider themselves feminists"
A lot more people raised their hands.
"That, is the actual definition of feminism. If that is what you believe, than it is OK to consider yourself a feminist.
Granted, I was probably only one or two men who raised their hands the second time in this community college setting. Bowling Green was a very conservative town. I suppose I didn't understand feminism fully at the time. Perhaps it was fear of being ostracized. But regardless of what you call it, its hard, for most people anyway, to denounce equal rights. But feminism isn't just about equal rights among the sexes. It's about treating one another fairly. Believing that everyone should have a fair shot, no mater what gender they are born with.
But most would also agree that equal rights is fair treatment. It is not debt for past transgressions.
This is why I was so disappointed in some statements made by prominent feminist over the last week.
“We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder, and a lot of you younger women think it’s done. It’s not done,” Ms. Albright said of the broader fight for women’s equality. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”
Gloria Steinem, one of the most famous spokeswomen of the feminist movement, took the sentiment a step further on Friday in an interview with the talk show host Bill Maher. Explaining how women tend to become more active in politics as they become older, she suggested younger women were just backing Mr. Sanders so that they could meet young men.
“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’ ” Ms. Steinem said.
New York Times, Febuary 7, 2016Before I delve deeper into these comments, lets take a moment and see who these people are.
Madeline Albright is a well known Diplomat and Politician in the United States. She has served as UN Ambassador, and later became the first female Secretary of State. I vividly remember her as Secretary of State. She actually set off a long line of Secretaries of State who were either female, African-American, or both. Started with her tenure in 1992, and ended when Hillary Clinton stepped down and was replaced with then Senator John Kerry in 2013. That 21 years of progress,
Gloria Steinem is a famous 1960's journalist and leader in the feminist movement. She fought hard against the male-dominated press at the time, and help lead the push that led to women have the right to control their own body.
To be fair, Steinem and Albright has every right to peruse any candidate they desire. But for two women who help break the glass ceiling, it is sad to hear their rhetoric now as they push for Clinton's nomination.
For Albright, the idea that all women should stick together, is a positive one on its face. But her suggestion that women millennial votes, who are overwhelmingly supporting Clinton's rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, is somehow treasonous is sad and deplorable. It is the suggestion that women of all ages should vote for Clinton by default, and any deviation from that is ignoring nearly a century and a half of progress. Albright's belief, and what I believe was Clinton's belief from the forefront, was that millennial women will vote like all other women.
But this suggestion ignores a central tenants of feminism: Free Will. If women have the right to choose who they vote for, shouldn't they have the right NOT to vote for Clinton? Perhaps there is this idea that somehow Clinton is owed the nomination. But as I said before, equal rights is not a debt to be owed, but fair treatment.
Steinem's comments were even more deplorable. It is simply inconceivable that a leader in the feminist movement could suggest that Millennial women were flocking to Sanders because they lack any control over their sex drives. This is a statement we would have expected from Ann Coulter, not Gloria Steinem. Maybe we really don't know her. But with statements like that, its likely we would no longer care to know her.
Rather than marginalizing Millennial women, what Steinem, Albright, and Clinton should do is figure out why Millennials, both men and women are moving to Sanders in large numbers.
Lets start with the PR aspect. Clinton, it seems like, have treated Millennials as another box on her check list. Women? Check. African Americans? Check. Millennials? Uncheck. How do we get Millennials? Make a Star Wars reference? Use Social Media? Taylor Swift songs? She's even got an iPhone. (See?! Shes Cool! Please clap!)
Meanwhile, most Millennials would probably find it hard to believe Sanders could operate his old Nokia flip phone on the Jitterbug network. (Full disclaimer, I don't actually know if Bernie Sanders even has a cell phone.)
But what Sanders does have that Clinton does not have, is authenticity. Sanders may be older than the hills, but at least hes authentic. And authenticity = honesty. We have seen his track record. We have seen what he has done. Have we agreed with his record 100 percent of the time? No. But he's not going to hide that fact either. And we realize we aren't going to agree with him on every issue. Meanwhile, Clinton has proven to be deceptive with her record on more than one occasion. You cannot tell us you are not paid for by Wall Street when your supporting the deregulation (And continued deregulation) of investment and consumer banking. You cannot tell us that you were against the TPP when you were at the negotiation table. And you cannot hid this in the information age, which formed while you were first lady.
But more important than that are the issues. High tuition costs, and by extension, large student loan debts. These debts are so massive that many are forgoing mortgages, and new cars. If they are not renting (and cohabiting) they are moving back home. For the few that are lucky to find jobs, the jobs they are finding are not paying nearly enough. With too much debt and no way to pay it off, they are looking for a candidate who will help. They are also wanting to move to a public single-payer system, so there is less they have to worry about when they do get sick. Sanders's has the plans in place to do this. Clinton, however has largely dismissed these plans as inconceivable, and impossible.
Worst still, she blatantly lies about his plan. Do you honestly expect us to believe that Sanders will completely dismantle Obamacare before setting up Medicare for all? Do you think this will scare us, or somehow sway our vote? Do you think we won't do our homework?
How shallow do you think Millennials really are? We are ambitious, not stupid. We see through the holes. We don't need to be lectured about what it means to be a feminist, when our lecturers are exposing their own sexist views. For Millennials, Feminism is a much a men's movement as it is a women's movement. It's an issue not limited to equal rights for women, but is directly linked to civil rights for African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Gays, Transgender, Transsexual, Bisexual, Pansexuals, people who have physical as well as mental aliments. We want people, not just ourselves, to have the right to be who they are, and not confined into some kind of box.
If that is not what Feminism is about, I'll put my hand down now.
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