Clash with the Titans
This has been a lousy week for feminists of all ages. The longstanding tensions between second- and third-wave feminists have been boiling over as the old guard claims that younger women mistakenly think feminism is a thing of the past, that we’re distracted by other causes, that we don’t understand the importance of having the first woman president.
When I heard Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem saying the reason many young women support Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton is that they take feminism for granted, my first, furious thought was, “You think we think the fight for equality is over? I bet neither of you even knows what the word doxxing means.” This is a generation that uses Title IX not to defend their right to play basketball, but to ensure they can’t be raped by their classmates without consequences. We know we still have miles to go.
Certainly, there are a lot of younger women who claim they’re not feminists or don’t need feminism. But let’s be honest, even at the height of the feminist revolution, there were women who scorned the notion of equal rights. And really, this fight is not about them. It’s about the women who are politically active and engaged, but whose priorities don’t match Albright’s or Steinem’s. And part of the reason they’re so angry is because these schisms aren’t new. They have always existed in the women’s movement.
In the early days of the movement, women of color were told that they had to put the needs of all women before the needs of their individual communities. Lesbians and transpeople were told to keep quiet to avoid alienating Middle America. Now, especially in the interconnected, intersectional Internet generation, these groups are established and mobilized and working to solve their own problems, and the pool of activists whose sole focus is women’s rights, women like Steinem and Albright, is steadily shrinking. The idea that feminism means all women having the same priorities and acting as one is even less realistic now than it was during the feminist revolution.
The problems women suffer don’t just fall under the heading of sexism. There are women who graduate with so much debt that it radically shifts what dreams they think they can achieve in a lifetime. There are women in Flint, Michigan sickened by contaminated water and women on the Gulf Coast whose homes are threatened every year by climate change. There are women being shot by husbands or boyfriends with too-easy access to guns and women whose children are jailed or killed for the color of their skin. There are transwomen being attacked for simply being who they are. If I question where Hillary Clinton stands on those issues, it’s because I owe them my loyalty too, not just her. She may very well be the best candidate to help them, and if so, I will back her to the hilt. But I have to make that decision for myself.
I have tremendous respect for the second-wave feminists who fought to make sure that they—and I—could choose how to live our lives. Ironically, it’s thanks to them that I’m determined to do what I think is right, not what’s expected of me.