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And Speaking of Perfect Unions …What if Hillary Clinton gave a speech about gender? (And why she won't.)

By Melinda Henneberger and Dahlia LithwickPosted Friday, March 21, 2008, at 7:12 PM ET

Hillary ClintonThis week, Barack Obama gave one of the most important speeches about race many of us have ever heard. And, whatever you think of his candidacy, on the merits, this speech was anything but soaring, empty rhetoric. In the way of all truly important political addresses, it reached beyond comforting blah-blah (America … patriotism … change) and challenged us with truths we'd rather not contemplate. Instead of claiming to be a victim of race politics in America, Obama asked the victims on both sides—white and black—to acknowledge that there are victims on both sides.

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There are a bunch of reasons Hillary Clinton won't give the speech on gender that her rival just gave on race, and we'll get to those. But if she were to give that speech, what would it say?

Start from the premise that Clinton is not really in the optimal position to hold forth about unions, perfect or otherwise. Unlike Obama, who was forced to respond to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary comments, Clinton has no Rev. Wright looping endlessly on CNN. The closest thing she has to an embarrassing confidant with unfortunate views about race is an embarrassing spouse with an unfortunate history of going after women like they were petit fours. But the Starr Report ain't YouTube. (And in her autobiography, Hillary says she never read it.) It's also not news.

At some level, Clinton no less than Obama should be asked to account for the fact that someone close to her holds views from another century, and in her case we don't mean the 20^th. Perhaps tagged to the next governor to be outed for his faithlessness? Or to the news that while Hillary was brunching with Col. Mustard in the billiards room, the president was canoodling with Miss Scarlet in the Oval Office? We'd like to hear such a speech, because what Obama did in 40 eloquent minutes for the conversation about race in America, Hillary Clinton could do for the conversation on gender. And here's just a rough outline:

1) I am proud to be a woman and a mother and the first serious female contender for the presidency, but my gender is only a part of who I am, and it doesn't define or constrain me.
2) I am part of a generation that faced and still faces all sorts of gender slights and slurs, and I honor the women who came before me for their commitment to achieving equal rights for women in the face of that.
3) But I would ask the women of this country to stop engaging in petty warfare over who has suffered more—women or blacks, women or men—as it is corrosive and fruitless. This country was founded on the promise that you can become the best thing you can dream for yourself; you are not trapped by the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
4) Things have improved for women in America in the last decades. They are not perfect; there is still much to be done. But women have made enormous strides in a few short decades, and to suggest otherwise is to devalue the life's work of too many heroes of the women's movement.
5) It is possible, indeed it is probable, that just as women have faced barriers and obstacles and derision, so have Hispanics, so have blacks, and so have men. No one in America can corner the market on suffering. Who the hell wants to spend their life in a corner, anyhow?
6) Men. What are they thinking? (Pause for applause.)

7) But seriously, if we in this country are ever going to move beyond Hooters, beyond date rape, beyond the wage gap and the glass ceiling, beyond Girls Gone Wild, and bulimic 12-year-olds, we need to start working together. We need to work with men on the gender signals called out by the media and with business about the value of women workers. We need to talk to one another respectfully and listen to one another's complaints.
8) Men, we understand and honor that many of you are taking paternity leave and folding the laundry and eating takeout because we forgot to turn on the crockpot. We get that everything has changed very, very quickly, and it's hard to come home to a wife who's coming home at the same time. You are doing more than your dads ever did around the house, and we still get mad when you forget to clean out the lint filter. It's nuts. But it's getting better. Stay with us.
9) Married guys, don't fool around with hookers. Don't fool around with staffers. Don't fool around with interns or Supreme Court justices. It's insulting to us and to you and to them. Marriage has to mean something. Gov. Spitzer. Bill, darling. I can respect the heck out of your political achievements even as I berate you for demeaning marriage. Life is complicated that way. Deal, buddies.
10) People of America, I understand why some of you are anxious at the prospect of a woman president. Sometimes I am nervous, too. But it's time. Also, I am sorry about that whole cookie comment.

Only, she won't ever give that speech, will she? Because as much as Hillary Clinton the wife and the woman and the mom no doubt hates it, Hillary Clinton the candidate has largely benefited from her husband's extracurricular activities. That's because—and this is the tragic part—America seems to like her best when she's being victimized—by Bill or Rick Lazio or the media. In that sense, her husband is a useful prop who reminds us of the extent of her suffering.

She won't give that speech because the whole narrative of her candidacy—and more broadly, her life—is as rooted in grievance as Obama's is in getting past grievance.

Her biggest supporters are the women who see themselves in her and who feel that she is/they are owed this; after all she has/they have endured. But she won't give that speech because those women don't have as much in common with her as they think. Sure, her husband's behavior has humiliated her. But she has also helped him humiliate the women he's been involved with.

She won't give that speech because she has been on the wrong side of gender bias. OK, there is no right side, but she consistently relates to and protects and stands with the oppressors in the gender wars, not the victims. It isn't only that she stayed with Bill Clinton, but that she invariably sees him as the victim, preyed upon by a series of female aggressors.

According to Carl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge, as her husband prepared to run for president, she pushed to get sworn statements from women he'd been rumored to have been involved with, statements in which they were supposed to say they'd had no relationship with him. She even interviewed one of these women herself, at her law firm. She also led efforts to undermine Gennifer Flowers, whom she referred to as "trailer trash."

In an interview she gave after the Monica Lewinsky affair became public, Hillary spoke about how horribly her husband had suffered in his childhood as the result of being torn between the first two women in his life—his mother and grandmother. (Note: Again, in this scenario it's the women who are victimizing the poor little guy.)

Hillary Clinton can't give the speech because she has not always been so sisterly, and if her biggest fans knew who she really blamed—other women—they might not still be fans.

One of the most laudable things about Obama is that he always elects to rise above the politics of victimization. One of the most troubling things about Hillary Clinton is that she is never above cashing in on it.

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Melinda Henneberger is a Slate contributor and the author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians To Hear. Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

Photograph of Hillary Clinton by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

Condemning a heterosexual woman for the extra-sexual conduct of her husband is just as outdated as insisting she stand by her man. You may think she should have cut and run in her marriage, but that ethic is also clearly a product of the one man, one woman formula. So it's a wash who is feministically correct. It's her choice and it's her business who she sleeps with and lives with. Especially given that she's not out prosecuting sex crimes and has NOT committed a crime by staying with a philanderer.

Your analysis reeks of the double standard. Obama can "pass" as black or white, and does so when he so chooses, and he is adept at it. No woman can switch hit at will, by passing as a man or a woman when the situation demands it --the majority of this nation's citizen's voters will not let her. That is the number one reason so many hate Hilary--not misogyny, but gender stereotyping. As a woman you are taught that you can have one or the other but not both. You can have a career but you must be willing to be a castrating bitch. Since she was the supportive wife and mom therefore we MUST deny her this opportunity. That's how the gender mythologizing goes. It's not that different from demanding that non-American WASPs give up their unique cultural identity.

It is an illustration of how and why gender roles are MORE primary to our culture than race, because we are forced into an appropriate gender role before we even leave the home or womb...

Maybe some women see Hillary as hopelessly loyal to her role as wife/victim or duplicitous for desiring both roles. If so, you have been swallowing the conservative religious repackaging of her hook line and sinker. We are all complex beings and marriage for life is a difficult task under the best of circumstances.

You can expect more from women, but that does not mean you should hold them to a higher standard of punishment just because your ideals for them are higher.

--esya

(To reply, click here.)

As a wife, I can imagine the pain of infidelity and what mental block that must require to keep a marriage together. Seeing her and Bill with Chelsea, it is clear that they would keep their marriage together for their daughter, any political advantage is secondary. Her attacks on the "other women" are understandable, and not clearly evidence of hostility to women, or willingness to run roughshod over them.

The reason she can't give a speech on sexism is that, despite having her own impressive accomplishments, she insists on selling voters her husband's experience. Not an act of women's liberation by any stretch of the imagination!

--awsh

(To reply, click here.)

Senator Obama's tour de force speech on race in America was impressive. It was made possible in part because the Constitution was amended to give all races equal protection under the laws and [those] ideals have been given the teeth of enforcement. It was made possible because society no longer tolerates bigotry on the basis of race. With that achieved, Obama was able to take the next step.

Women haven't come quite as far. There is no Constitutional amendment guaranteeing them equal rights. The social opprobrium for using sexist slurs is far lower than that for using racist slurs. In general women are valued much more for their attractiveness than for their skills. Generations of inculcation from many homelands and religions often give the impression that women should be subservient to men.

Society needs to reject these and other ingrained ways we devalue women before we can move out of what Mario Solis-Marich called the post-racist, pre-post-sexist era into the post-sexist era with a similar speech.

--Calvados

(To reply, click here.)

The problem with the race-gender 'debate' is not that it is banal and insoluble. The problem is a much more difficult one. The debate can only ever favor Clinton.

Over the course of the campaign we have heard from various feminist theorists and bloggers, Clinton campaign staffers, and most recently Geraldine Ferraro, that the coverage of Clinton is sexist - not for any particular story, but in overall tone. This is clearly and regrettably true. But it is also true, as is probably clear to anyone living in America, that calling someone out as sexist is fairly harmless, especially when compared to the charge of racism, which is normally acknowledged as just the most serious and damning adjective we in the US share. This is a shame, because it means that the impact of a charge of sexism is far less than it reasonably ought to be. If one is called sexist at a dinner party s/he smiles and protests. But call someone racist and it leads to outrage, an end to friendships. Clinton can charge the media with sexism in general, because it is as true as it is nebulous and unthreatening. For Obama, there can be no racism in general; claiming so would be to cast himself as an 'angry black man' – it would be an act of suicide. Both campaigns are aware of this.

The numbers support the logic of the Clinton campaign. Women are aware that they are discriminated against not just concretely, but in a million different nebulous, general ways. They understand her campaign's complaints, and their sympathy is reflected in their support of the Clinton candidacy. African-Americans are equally aware of the general, abstract forms of discrimination they face, along with the obvious and shocking forms of material discrimination. But women are more than half the population, which matters a great deal in a democracy; African-Americans number only 12.8%. These numbers, along with the extremely unequal impacts of racism versus sexism as terms, tell us far more about how charges of bias are deployed than do any count of mentions of Clinton's décolletage.

--scotevan

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