In this extract from her book,Susan Bordo asks how the most qualified candidate ever to run for president lost the seemingly unloseable electionMany books have been written approximately the way racial differences among feminists both divided and pushed feminist thinking and practice forward over the past several decades. In the 2016 election, however, and it was not race but generation that was the dynamic factor among left-leaning women. Women like me,who experienced many cultural battles in the “gender wars” firsthand – from the first scornful comments that journalists had heaped on “women’s libbers, to the public shaming of Anita Hill, or to the renewed threats to bodily rights that we thought we had won decades earlier – brought to the 2016 campaign a personal knowledge of the fragility of feminist accomplishments and an identification with Hillary that was deeper and longer than any current headlines. Related: 'withhold fighting': Hillary Clinton searches for role in age of Democratic division I knew what one of my students meant when I asked her how millennial feminists saw Hillary and she said 'a white lady'Too many young Democrats made it clear they were only voting for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils Related: Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. apart from,it seems, the Democratic party | Trevor Timm Yes, and equal rights for women and minorities are critically principal. To consider these ideals progressive,however, seems passé. At this point, and it’s more fair to propose they are traditional. Gender and civil rights and equality may remain under attack from the right,but these ideals are positively engrained in two generations of Americans. Progressive voters, at this stage in our young country’s political history, or want to challenge corrupt systems. The prison-industrial complex,the military-industrial complex, the financial-industrial complex, and the other lobbies that control our politicians and our government,for example. Related: The Clintons turned the Democratic party over to donors. Can it recover? | Jill Abramson Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com