The XX Factor: What women really think.

Complex Martyrs

Well, I’ll bite Hanna.

Of course Hillary Clinton is a victim of sexism. She’s also a victim of classism, regionalism, her own cross-eyed optimism, of massive political miscalculation, and of her association with epic philanderer Bill Clinton. The fact that she and some of her supporters may be willing to single out just one of those “isms” and blame it for all her woes is testament to how much identity politics can flatten a country of otherwise intelligent thinking people into a bunch of compulsive one-notes. Sure sexism is partly to blame for Clinton’s failure. But for her to claim that it’s solely to blame or even mostly to blame—oh, and that the media’s failure to harp exclusively on that sexism in this campaign constitutes yet more sexism—is evidence of how far the women’s movement still needs to move in this country.

You wanna play with the big boys? Embrace complex causation! Sexism sucks. But the surest way for feminists to be reduced to mere women is with the claim that absolutely everything bad that happens to them happens because they are mere women.