Yo Mamma: Hillary Clinton as the battleground in the wars between mothers and daughters

Yo Mamma: Hillary Clinton as the battleground in the wars between mothers and daughters

By Linda Hirshman
Posted Friday, April 18, 2008, at 7:11 AM ET

The next president of the United States will be at the helm of the largest and most powerful military and economy in the world, literally holding the power over life and death, wielding the legislative veto, administering the bureaucracy, and selecting life-tenured federal judges. Here's how young feminist writer Courtney Martin is selecting her candidate: "I have a dirty little political secret. I hate to admit it, because it makes me feel unfeminist and silly and a little bit irrational. But it's true and I have to get it off my chest. I'm not backing Hillary Clinton—and that's at least in part because she reminds me of being scolded by my mother."

Yo mamma.

In an interview on PBS's NOW with Maria Hinajosa, Ms. magazine founding editor Letty Cotton Pogrebin and her Obama-supporting author daughter, Abigail, discussed their personal quarrel over the election. The fortysomething daughter of one of the most famous feminists in the country explained to the camera that she had finally been forced to implore her mother to stop trying to convince her to vote for Hillary: "Mom, mom, mommmeeeeeee," the segment ends, as Abigail gets in touch with her inner child.

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It's not just their mothers these young women are defying; it's all those women who had the effrontery to start the feminist movement in the 1960s. This week by an amazing coincidence, Slate contributor Amanda Fortini in New York magazine and Salon's Rebecca Traister published courageous, conversation-altering essays about the rabid anti-feminism alienating even Obama's own female supporters. But Traister still began her analysis with the caveat that:

The exhortations from (famed old feminist activist) Robin Morgan have not exactly been lyrical, or tuned to ears of women younger than 50. Assertions from Obama-maniacs that a woman who votes for Hillary must be doing so only because she is a woman may be bad, but it's just as bad for older feminists to instruct women that they have some kind of ovarian, fallopian responsibility to do the same.

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We old '60s feminists thought that by standing up for women as rational creatures, opening up the public world to them, and ending their dependence on men for their support, we would put to an end this image of the scolding, selfish older woman. After all, one of Wylie's central arguments was that "Satan finds work for idle hands to do. … Never before has a great nation of brave and dreaming men absent-mindedly created a huge class of idle, middle-aged women. Satan himself has been taxed to dig up enterprises enough for them."

Despite our best efforts, yo-mamma feminists contend that even gainfully employed, productive, and liberated women were selfish dominatrices who must be rejected. Not until the Hillary-bashing liberal male establishment went so over the top with their attacks that it could not be ignored did the feminist oldsters start to seem sensible. How self-destructive is this?

And how untruthful. I am hard-pressed to find feminist proponents of Hillary Clinton suggesting a "vagina litmus test"—the original phrase the youngsters used against feminists like Robin Morgan. (By changing vagina to ovaries, Traister robs this crucial locution of its real sexism. Ick, a vagina,"would not want to dip my litmus paper in that!) If you actually read Robin Morgan's manifesto, "Good-Bye to All That No. 2" she says explicitly that we must not resort to any such silly standard: "And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole."

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I've never been much for pop-psychologizing, but perhaps the yo-mamma feminist rebellion is an attempt by young women to similarly free themselves from their identification with the mother. If so, it's a great argument for shared childrearing, but it still makes for lousy politics. Following Chodorow's reasoning, just for argument, men are free to stand on the shoulders of their fathers, who weren't around all that much, without psychological consequence. And so they do. Liberal and conservative. Al Gore and Al Gore, the Bushes, unto the fourth generation, the Harold Ickes, the unbreakable Kristols, Norman and John ("Normanson") Podhoretz. Only women seem to need to separate and destroy in order to start all over again with each generation.

MUCH MORE AT http://www.slate.com/id/2189406



And from Debra Dickerson at Mother Jones:

Throwing Hillary Under the Bus to Spite Mom

In Slate, the indispensable Linda Hirshman tackles feminism's latest head scratcher: Young women rejecting 'embarrassing, old school feminism' just to annoy their moms. I oversimplify, but so do young women who inherited what we mothers fought for and now want us to disappear so our girls can go wild and pole dance without feeling all guilty. Caricatures work both ways, missy.

This schism has become glaringly apparent as Clinton and Obama vie for the nomination while young women say sexism's not much of an issue anymore. The trouble started when us OG feminists surprised young chicks by pointing out that, oh, they're insane to believe that. And that their skirts are too short. It went downhill from there. Young women, like several other groups of humans, don't react well to being told they have a false consciousness. Or that their skirts are too short. In the end, the moms drove the daughters ever farther from Hillary Clinton.

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Against the odds, "The Mothers" built those organizations. But rather than receiving grateful acknowledgment, these elders have been reconstructed as merely Rovian operators, controlling the smoke-filled ladies' rooms where women's issues are bankrolled.

Unlike me, the brainy Hirshman stays calm in her assessment of this conflict, so don't miss the piece. If we're going to close down this latest circular firing squad, both generations are going to have to learn to treat each other with respect. We old school feminists aren't going to get anywhere saying what we think, which is: Honey, you haven't seen sexism yet. Diplomacy is for your allies as well as your enemies.

But facts are facts: However free women are today is due to the unbelievable sacrifices of the suffragettes and the against-the-odds success of the 'libbers'. We'll stop saying aloud that you don't know what you're talking about if you'll stop believing that you know everything already. Deal?

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/04/8004_clinton-under-the-bus-mom.html

What a bunch of condescending horseshit. The attitude in these articles is why young people are rejecting Hillary. Not to mention they watch what people DO and have noted Hillary hasn't actually DONE anything.

generational gap in feminist politics.

:shrug:

If Grandpa's voting for McCain, Dad's voting for Hillary, and Junior is voting for Obama, why is that any different than different generations of women voting?

:shrug:

have some sort of anti-old school-feminist agenda. My reasons have nothing to do with that. I like Obama as a candidate and I think Hillary would sink us in the general. Plus, she voted to send us into Iraq, where many females, from babies to elderly women, were needlessly slaughtered on behalf of U.S. corporate interests.

Also, my 75-year-old mother voted for Obama.

Two anecdotes do not prove a theory. Furthermore, it is an insult to imply that younger women are voting for Obama as a rejection of a strong feminist mother figure.