Rant about on the Future of Feminism

This entry was originally a comment in another entry on Obama appointing Larry Summers to his National Economic Council and making a joke about Summers being on his Council on Women an Girls.
I am struggling on whether to post this, because honestly I have no idea how it will be received.
However, I truly believe that Obama’s attempt to “compromise” on social issues will fail just as the Democratic party’s misguided attempts to “compromise” on economic issues through the DLC failed in the 1990s.
I’m not going to hold it against him if he succeeds, I did support him, as the lesser of two evils across many issues and not just womens’ issues. I don’t think the Green Party is a real alternative, I’m sorry.
However, even though I supported Obama, I do loathe some of the things he has done. I loathe that he had Bernie Mac speak at a fundraising event and made light of Mac’s misogynistic jokes. I loathe that he did not speak out about the media’s sexism during the primary campaign against Clinton. I loathe that he even though making a joke about “lipstick on a pig” would be acceptable at the time that he did. I loathe that he is even considering keeping a “conscience rule” in place. I loathe that his Council on Women and Girls is made up mainly of male cabinet heads and he has not responded to the call for a Presidential Commission on Women.

Most of all I loathe how, he clearly thinks women’s rights are “divisive” and therefore should be run away from, because they “divide us”. Nay, he has made it a defining hallmark of his philosophy. First of all that is not his decision to make, since he is not a woman. He has no right to say that womens’ rights issues should be kicked into the background in the Democratic party. Basically it is a fancy way of saying he doesn’t give a shit.
And this is just a personal aside, but I don’t like that his attitude is taken to represent liberal men, and the Democratic party as a whole, because he is now leader and spokesperson for the party. Those of us (including progressive men) to the left of him are practically invisible.
I think discussion is good. We need to be constantly pushing our boundaries, groping in the dark. Asking uncomfortable questions like, would it be feminist to support Sarah Palin if she were nominated in 2012? My answer right now would be no, because the elevation of one woman is less important than moving forward for all women, but it’s a question that must, and will be asked again and again. Because the answers aren’t all there right now. And right now, I think that’s a good thing. This can be a tremendously exciting and fun time for feminism. There is an excitement there that I haven’t seen for years, only it’s divided up into so many different separate threads, that sometimes do not talk to one another.
I have a Y chromosome, so I am necessarily blind to many aspects of this. But here is my two cents: feminists need to come together. It’s not just about throwing off this yoke or that yoke but just realizing that even though women have all different kinds of political stripes, ages, life circumstances, at the end of the day women are all still affected by sexism and that alone is worth fighting for.
We need to stop fighting stupid intercine battles like the ones Linda Hirshman and Naomi Wolf are imagining in their academic navel gazing. I realize they are trying to make a similar point as I am making, but they are going about it all the wrong way: by attacking other feminists. The point is, if you want to put gender first, only litmus test should be a genuine, comprehensive commitment to gender equality.
Feminists are a minority in the Democratic party and the Democratic party is a minority in the country overall (if you combine independents and Republicans). Even if you combined all feminists across all parties, we are still a small minority, because sadly there are many women that aren’t committed to feminism at all. And I do mean real feminism which means none of that conservative anti-feminist masquerade bullshit. But a small minority that is united and organized can make THE difference!
Therefore, we have a lot more in common than we are at odds. We’ll be strong when the NOW crowd, the third wavers, the womanists, the mommy bloggers, the old battle axes, and all feminists and allies of all ages, colors and partisan stripes stop attacking each other and come together under one banner of one cause: to banish sexism from politics, policy, and culture. That is my dream.