Views » September 7, 2008 » Web Only

McCain’s Feminist Mistake

By Susan Levine

With the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice-presidential pick, the Republicans are banking on the hope that the historic splits within the women’s movement are alive and well. Those splits, most notably over the urgency of racial and social reforms versus suffrage and women’s rights per se, have limited the scope of the feminist movement and divided women as a political constituency for over a century.

Pat Buchanan happily labels the anti-choice, deeply conservative Palin, a feminist. That kind of feminism brings to mind the tensions that have marked the women’s movement since its inception.

The media – and the McCain campaign – seem convinced that a large bloc of women voters will throw aside consideration of the issues to vote for another woman. This remains to be seen. Some women, however, have always put gender before anything else. While this group has usually been small and relatively isolated, it has consistently captured public attention – and fascination.

After the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton left their abolitionist comrades and allied with the blatantly racist Democratic Party. They did so because the Republican Party, in crafting the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution balked at including women’s right to vote. Other veteran abolitionists, notably Lucy Stone, supported the amendments, agreeing with Frederick Douglass that this was “the Negro’s hour.” A bitter split ensued among women, one that has lasted until the present day.

Over the course of the next half-century, Stanton and Anthony succeeded in defining woman’s equality in terms of the right to vote. At the same time, however, thousands of women became active in political organizations ranging from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union to settlement houses, women’s clubs and the YWCA. These organizations pressed for a broad range of issues including property rights, educational opportunities, labor reform, prison reform and citizenship rights for women who married foreign nationals. All of these women supported suffrage but few of them believed that the vote alone would bring equality.

In the early twentieth century, a small cadre of women adopted the label “feminist” and continued to press solely for the vote. Once again, they were willing to compromise the definition of equality – in this case, using both racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric to argue that white women needed the vote in order to protect “American traditions.” After the nineteenth amendment was ratified, Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party, claiming the mantle of feminism, allied themselves with conservative interests (including the American Medical Association) against the efforts of other women’s groups to establish a modern health care system, outlaw child labor, protect free speech and pass anti-lynching legislation. Paul went so far as to ally herself with the National Manufacturer’s Association and other groups who accused women’s reform organizations of being un-American and un-patriotic.

The key issue that divided women from 1920s until the 1970s was the Equal Rights Amendment. Social reformers who believed deeply in equal rights feared that this amendment would annul their hard-fought for gains in labor protections. By the ’70s, however, the old fights among feminists seemed to disappear as younger activists took up the call for the ERA and reproductive rights along with demands for political representation, economic opportunities, and racial equality. Even though the media characterized feminists as extremists, more women than ever before happily adopted the label.

But this current election has revealed that the old rifts still exist. Women, it turns out, have never agreed on political priorities any more than men have. The so called “Hillary dead-enders,” like Stanton, Anthony, and Alice Paul before them, seem ready to sacrifice every other issue for the sake of a female candidate. These women (and their male allies) are ready to play on the most racist and conservative elements of feminism.

If women supported Hillary Clinton simply because she is a woman, they will have little trouble shifting their allegiance to the Republican Party because it is running a woman for vice president. But if women supported Clinton, as she herself claimed, because they care about health care, reproductive rights and reducing poverty, both at home and abroad, then the Republicans have made a bad gamble.

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• Reader Comments

  good god don’t you get it yet. this choice was about the base period. if mccain has any chance to win he has to energize his base which at best has given him lukewarm support. if he picks up disaffected women voters in the process it’s a bonus. I’m a conservative, anyone with half a brain realizes that Palin is not going to appeal to 90% of the women on the left. The pick has done precisely what it was intended to do. that Palin has now become a national star (for how long who knows) is a huge rather unexpected bonus.

  Posted by shiftright on Sep 7, 2008 at 7:53 PM

  I think you are missing the point with some Hillary Clinton supporters.
  We supported Hillary because she was the most qualified and had the best plans and solutions to accomplish her plans for America.

  I will not support Obama because I don’t think he is qualified to be President and his plans and positions change from day to day.  I think McCain is very qualified to lead this nation and despite what Obama and company say, McCain will not be another Bush.  McCain has been a thorn in the Republicans’ side for years and he put them on notice on Sep. 4, 2008, it will not be business as usual in Washington.

  I happen to be an Independent.

  Posted by JayD on Sep 7, 2008 at 8:05 PM

  The point of this column is that McCain will not get support from feminists by nominating Gov. Palin.  Depending upon how you define “feminist”, this point is either asinine or whistling in the dark.

  If by “feminist” you mean members of NOW and other hard-core self-identified feminists, then, no, of course, there is no one McCain could have nominated that would have changed their vote.  “Feminists” by this definition are left of liberal.  They are not voting Republican, under any circumstances.  And they are, at most, 5% of the vote.  So, no, McCain was not making a play for the sort of person who agonizes over whether to “vote her conscience” by voting for Nader or “sell out” by voting for Obama.  It is silly to even discuss this kind of question.

  But if by “feminist” you mean the sort of voter—male or female—who would like to see women advance further in American society, then, yes, you can place a large bet on Gov. Palin’s vote influencing them.  Why shouldn’t it?  She is a bright, touch, articulate, attractive woman.  She is the second women on a major party ticket, nominated right after the other party showed great disrespect toward its first woman to come within a cat whisker of winning the nomination.

  Bottom line, you are correct that the sort of “feminist” who puts being Left ahead of supporting women, will not be tempted by Palin.  But how many such “feminists” do you think are out there?  And how many voters are there, who actually would like to see a woman in high office, particularly one who is this attractive, from so many angles?

  What you should have written is that your guy Obama dropped the ball big time by not nominating Hillary as his VP, and this is the price that the Left pays for disrespecting women.  Instead, you write this drivel about how being a woman makes no difference to anyone; the only thing that matters is being Left.  You wish.

  Posted by Rick Gibson on Sep 7, 2008 at 8:07 PM

  “Vitriol” is the metaphor perpetually used to define the gaunt life-negating feminism of the ERA past, as in “You, professor, are here knee-deep in corrosive vitriol.”  So now let me mention some other reasons why women will vote for Sarah Palin:  She is a real leader—smart, powerful, attractive, tough optimistic, proven.  And above all she is not simply a “trophy Vice President” as she has been called of late, but she is a trophy woman for every family in the United States that struggles to raise their children in the shadow of the diminished so-called feminists who care more about child care than actual children, more about abortion choice than school choice and more about defining marriage than succeeding at marriage.  And in 4 or 8 years when Sarah Palin runs for president she will still be a trophy.  She will be a trophy president and her husband will be a trophy husband and her family will be a trophy family, and there is no shame in embracing the ability of an autonomous trophy family, with five children and a husband, to stand up against the cold burning green vitriol of the Prozac addled, scarfed, graying, life-negating Steinemites that still haunt our universities, preaching misery to thousands if not millions of young women and men who would love to have families like Sarah Palin’s.

  Posted by jdcarmine on Sep 7, 2008 at 8:27 PM

  So called feminists out there are really showing who they are. They don’t support women, only LIBERAL ones. NOW has really angered me with their spokesman saying, “She might as well be a conservative man”. Gloria Steinem’s article that she is the wrong women angered me as well. Sarah Palin represents the modern feminist. That women who can believe whatever they want to believe without fear of what anyone thinks. I believe NOW and Gloria should be commended for what they did for women, but it is outdated. The fact is they never gave her a chance and it is sad. It is also disgusting how the media has attacked her w/out giving her a chance. I am an independent that leans conservative. I never agreed with Hillary Clinton’s politics, but I was dismayed b/c I felt she was being railroaded, just as Sarah is now. She gave a great 1st and 2nd impression. She now has to prove herself in the debate, on talk shows, and on the campaign trail. To minimize her candidacy is close-minded and a mistake.

  Posted by cuppa jo on Sep 7, 2008 at 8:37 PM

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