[Marxism] Obama v. Clinton Puts Stretch Marks on Sisterhood

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Obama v. Clinton Puts Stretch Marks on Sisterhood 
Run Date: 04/15/08 
By Amy Tiemann
WeNews commentator 
As the Democratic primaries continue to split women's rights activists
down generational lines, Amy Tiemann sees an overdue mother-daughter
power struggle in which younger women are claiming their share of the
political stage.

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed
are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's
eNews.
 

(WOMENSENEWS)--"Sisterhood" bound women together during the second
wave
of feminism in the 1970s.

Fast-forward three decades, and it is time to start asking ourselves
what happens when you try to stretch sisterhood across a generational
divide and then push and pull it between the campaigns of Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton.

Answer: serious stretch marks.

Yes, Clinton is attracting her share of Gen X and Y supporters as she
wages an impressive political battle.

And plenty of older, self-described feminists support Obama. Take
Sheila Goldmacher.

"I am a 74-year-old Jewish feminist lesbian and do not support Hillary
and have disliked her for a long time as well as her husband Bill,"
she
recently e-mailed Women's eNews. "They have helped to bring us the
disaster we now have on our hands by the imposition of NAFTA, which
she
seems to been backtracking on; the so-called Welfare Reform Act, which
has continued to make life miserable for countless numbers of women
and
children in this country. Stop trying to see this race as only men vs.
women."

Goldmacher notwithstanding, plenty of second-wavers have turned the
campaigns into a test of feminist credentials.

Robin Morgan's commentary, published by the Women's Media Center in
February, is by now the most talked about example.

Far From Sororal
Morgan has published three books promoting "Sisterhood" but her
attitude toward younger women supporting Obama is far from sororal.

"Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing
they're not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the
status 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 . . . '"

In the wake of the Morgan commentary we've seen some peace-pipe
efforts
by women anxious to keep the media from having too much fun with our
little "catfight."

But I don't feel ready to drop the issue. This feels like an overdue
"Mother-Daughter" power struggle that we need to examine. There is a
great deal at stake here, as we face a future full of challenges that
will require us to work across generational lines.

I agree with Feministing's Jessica Valenti, who pointed out that when
Gloria Steinem recently convened a roundtable to try to heal the
race-gender split, there was "nary a woman under 40 in sight" and that
this meeting "represents the exact problem it purports to seek an end
to: the narrowing of feminist viewpoints."

Over-40 Crowd
In the past year I have been invited to many gatherings of women's
rights leaders and have been one of the only women under 40. There is
a
great deal of potential there, but we have to keep working at it.

We need to honor the idea that younger women can legitimately make
different political choices, and it's not because we are fickle,
ignorant or swept up in "Obama-mania." Even the eminently reasonable
Ellen Goodman described the daughters as "having a lower boiling point
or a lower consciousness" when they say "a woman in the White House is
fine but not this woman."

Writers such as Linda Hirshman and Leslie Bennetts have characterized
the current crop of mothers as unambitious, or uninvolved. But how
well
have they gotten to know women under 40 (outside of their own
rebellious
daughters, perhaps)?

In "The Feminine Mistake" Leslie Bennetts interviewed a woman who
complained she hasn't seen the "young Gloria Steinems."

That is exactly the problem: baby-boomer women are busy looking for
the
leader they already know while ignoring women who are working for
social
justice in new ways. Bennetts, for one, makes it clear that she is
aware
of organizations like Mothers and More and MomsRising.org. But these
grassroots activist movements fail to register on her radar, and
Bennetts remains "shocked by the failure of the younger generations to
understand that the majority of women . . . share common needs."

Unfinished Business
By raising this question, Bennetts also raises the unfinished business
of the second-wavers. Women of color and low-income women have argued
for years that their perspectives and needs took a back seat to the
strategies of more privileged white women getting ahead in
high-profile,
male-dominated professions.

Now that dynamic is showing up between the generations. Ten years from
now we could look back on the arguments about Clinton v. Obama as the
wedge that emphasized a generational divide, to the detriment of all
women.

The Mother-Daughter dynamic illuminates a power differential. In many
ways the Mothers have the upper hand. They control the largest
established organizations, the purse strings of foundation grants. By
excluding younger women's definitions of feminism, however, the
Mothers
are short-circuiting their power.

The Mothers need to remember that they need the Daughters as well.

Gen-Xers such as myself are no longer children; we're reaching our 40s
now. Not only do we represent the future, we are the bridge to the
millennial generation who will clean up after all of us.

I am already having discussions with my 8-year-old daughter about the
fact that she and her peers are going to have to cope with a post-oil
world, face the effects of global warming in the second half of the
21st
century, and deal with complex issues involving international
relations.

I have asked her to think about how she would envision running cars
without gasoline, and she has some really good ideas. I look at her
and
see an elder of the future. Why can't more boomers see that in women
like me?

I am worried that modern feminism may go the way of "The Greatest
Generation," something younger women honor as a historical legacy that
does not directly involve us.

If we want to proceed together, rather than breaking into splinter
movements, we are going to have to create a coalition that shares
power
and respects a wider variety of opinions.

Amy Tiemann, Ph.D., writes about mothers' leadership in her book,
"Mojo
Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family" and on her Web site,
MojoMom.com

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at
editors@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx







This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. 
www.surfcontrol.com

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu