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You Can Keep Your Old Brass RingWomen should push for substance over symbolism in this election.

By Emily BazelonPosted Monday, June 9, 2008, at 3:56 PM ET

Read what XX Factor bloggers have written about Hillary's exit.

Hillary ClintonNeither my mother nor my grandmother is a Hillary Clinton supporter. Maybe that helps explain why the generational split over Clinton and Obama has puzzled me a little. I take it seriously, for sure—reminders of the divide have hit us all over the head many times during this endless primary season, not least in the lamentations over Hillary's exit Saturday. We have heard over and over again of late that Clinton's defeat is a blow to feminists and to organized feminism. It is supposed to prove that women are at odds with their best interests. But on some level, I still don't get it. (Though I'm all for my colleague Dahlia Lithwick's suggestions for healing the rift.)

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Yes, Hillary's defeat was a blow if you define organized feminism as the New York chapter of the National Organization of Women, which spewed in fury against Sen. Ted Kennedy for endorsing Obama. Or as embodied by Gloria Steinem or Robin Morgan or Geraldine Ferraro. But other women's groups, like NARAL, backed Obama. And even NOW was divided this spring, with some state chapters backing him or suggesting that the organization as a whole stay out of the fight.

You can endlessly parse how women splintered in this primary: white vs. black, old vs. young—no wait, what about the middle-aged? You can see the lesson in all this splintering as "divided we stand, divided we fall." And you can make women's failure to vote for Hillary Clinton by the overwhelming margins that African-Americans voted for Obama look like evidence of our own self-defeating naiveté.

Or you can see it as a difference over tactics in a fight to win the same war—that is, vaulting a Democrat into the White House—because that's the best bet for making headway on the issues all feminists care about.

The feminist agenda isn't just about breaking the glass ceiling. Feminists also are supposed want to fight to pass actual legislation that could make lots of women's lives better, by providing for paid family leave, for example, or universal preschool, or Social Security parity, or this year's Fair Pay Act. If you're pro-choice, there is fighting to maintain legal access to abortion via the next president's Supreme Court picks. The prospect of a woman in the White House is heady stuff, yes. But in the day-to-day slog of schlepping and groceries and pregnancy tests and worries about subpar day care, wouldn't some of these more mundane gains have a larger impact in the end? Why should women and women's groups care more about the who than about the what?

This is, of course, an old fight. In arguing over the priorities of the feminist movement, women have been waging one version or another of it since at least the 1960s. Linda Hirshman traces one aspect of the battle in the Washington Post and argues that in broadening their focus from the problems that only women face to the problems of disadvantaged groups in general, modern feminists let their electoral magic melt away. Hillary's defeat, then, is evidence that "women have trouble voting their own interests," as a past president of the National Council of Women's Organizations said to Hirshman.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX.

Photograph of Hillary Clinton by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

I think the problem that I, and presumably other women have, is that although the Obama/Clinton campaigns ran virtually neck and neck, Slate ran about 95% Obama backers.

So, kudos to you, and you privileged family, but your choices, while wonderful for your personal career, are not necessarily representative of women and do not necessarily advance women.

Hillary Clinton has been mercilessly mocked and treated with enormous disrespect, but that doesn't seem to bother you -- you feel no need to bond with the bitter old chicks who see sexism everywhere. You are so beyond that.

The Blacks seem comfortable aligning behind Obama. A look at the campaign workers of the various campaigns (in 2007) showed Obama had only 20% women, and no Asians. Hillary Clinton had the most diverse group of people working for her. But, hey, that is so yesterday, actually looking at who people hire.

The Democratic party, that bastion of women's rights, has Reid, an anti-choice politician as its main negotiator. When men negotiate, women's rights seem to be one of the first things that get negotiated away.

But, hey, happy to hear how liberated, and unconstrained by sex you are when you vote. Sadly, everyone else is voting their tribe -and the tribe that fought for your rights is getting royally screwed. Thanks for saying, "No thank you, it wouldn't really look good on my resume," when the torch was passed to you.

--nywoman

(To reply, click here.)

I don't want to make my decision for president based on something stupid like hair, or fist-bumps, or suit collars, the way they laugh, or what some other random talking head said about whether they're a cat or dog person.

And I really don't want to have to think that millions of Americans out there who may not have access to the internet made their decision based on that garbage either.

I think that this sensationalist and trivialist trend in media coverage only fosters the inertia of the status quo by magnifying anything (gender and race come to mind) out of the ordinary into an "event".

This is, to my mind, why we had to have the "pant-suit" wars, the "cleavage" circus, etc. etc. as well as "muslim" wars, and "what-my-pastor said" gate.

It's just stupid. I'd like to ask that if you get a chance, please, when you're telling the media off, if you'd include something about the total lack of substance in most newscasts vs. the overabundance of shmuck, I'd appreciate it.

--TheVail

(To reply, click here.)

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