The Second Wave Washes Ashore

Nineteen seventies feminist writers Erica Jong, in The Washington Post, and Robin Morgan, at The Women's Media Center, (along with Gloria Steinem in The New York Times) endorse Hillary Clinton for president.


"Yes, aging women in the US are treated with unbridled contempt. But this contempt has very, very little to do with calls for Clinton not to tear the Democratic party apart, given that she's extremely unlikely to win a majority of pledged delegates or the popular vote. If the roles were reversed, if Obama were behind by every metric, Clinton would have been coroneted by now, and the cry for her opponent to get out and quit being a spoiler would be deafening. Gender injustice is a gross, epidemic problem, resulting in more human rights violations worldwide than any other iniquity. But gender injustice does not explain what's going on here. To insist that it does is crude projection.
"The irony is that, for the overwhelming majority of women, voting against Clinton was never about repudiating second-wave feminism. But the more leaders of the movement insist on conflating their noble struggle for social justice with the fate of an uninspiring and nepotistic candidate, the less relevant it will be. Many progressives, male and female alike, see Clinton as cynical and narcissistic, pandering to interest-group sectarianism even as she compromises on important principals. It would be a hideous shame if they came to see feminism the same way."

Update: In The Guardian's blog during March, Michelle Goldberg parries such second-wave Clinton supporters