I understand the fact that Hillary being elected president would represent an enormous achievement in the eyes of women and those who subscribe to feminist thought.
The problem is that Hillary isn't that woman for me and I'm guessing many of my fellow feminists agree.
Could it be that I'm a 3rd waver?
From Wiki:
Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized experiences of upper middle class white women.
Third-wave feminists often focus on "micro-politics" and challenge the second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for females.]
But how does that contrast second wave feminism?
From Wiki:
Second-wave feminism is generally identified with a period beginning in the early 1960s.
The movement encouraged women to understand the psychological implications of sexist stereotypes, and to make them realize that they could achieve more in life than being a housewife. It is credited by some as having opened up the eyes of American women to a world of careers and achievement. During the Second World War, many women experienced working life for the very first time. Women and men were working side by side, and achievements were being recognized. In the wake of the war, it is often argued that the short-lived affirmation of women's independence gave way to a pervasive endorsement of female subordination and domesticity, and it was not until the 1960s that the women's movement became successful.
However, the second wave focused mainly on middle to upper class woman who wanted to work, but not on working class women who were facing poor conditions in their factory jobs
This is likely part of the issue. I do not and will not blindly follow a canonical feminist ideal. I will not vote for Hillary simply because a woman should one day be President or because she embodies some ideal of the success of second wave feminism. A woman WILL one day be President. Just not this woman.
There are things about Hillary Clinton that are admirable. However, I think there are many more things about Clinton's behavior over the last twenty years and recently that are not and make me say "Not this Woman".
Women do want a female president. The right one.
Kathleen Parker's article in USA today sums it up nicely:
The answer to the question of what women want might no longer be a mystery. They want lots of different things — not just "women things." They aren't monolithic, nor are they necessarily more fickle than men. They are diverse, smart, successful, strong, savvy ... and sometimes, like men, they're not.
Further:
What they clearly don't want is a woman president just because she's a woman. If Clinton loses, it won't be because women betrayed her. It will be because Obama offered something that women — and men — want more. A fresh start free of tired tropes and battered baggage.
Despite her negligible win in West Virginia, a state where she so clearly played to the limitations of a largely uninformed voter base with her gas tax pandering and "hardworking, white" comment, she is still on course to lose this nomination and rightfully so.
...her losses are her own. It was Hillary Clinton — that particular woman, not A Woman — who failed to cinch the destiny she presumed to be hers. In trying to be all things to all people — an amorphous, tough-talking, beer-swilling, truck-stumping Mighty Hermaphrodite — rather than the whoever she really is, Clinton lost voters' confidence.
Women, it turns out, are like men. They want a president they can trust.
And as a woman, I want the first female President to stand on her own two feet and not rely on the name of her philandering husband. Nor do I want a female President who besmirches her dignity to chug back some beers and shots while surrounded by a group of cheering men like a college co-ed. I want a woman who has the skill and savvy to not have to ask me to vote with my vagina but to vote with my brain and one that respects me enough, as a voter, to not feel the need to lie and pander with the promises of pebbles when the real solution requires boulders.
I don't want a female president who cannot accept defeat or one who, instead of bowing out of a situation when it becomes inevitable, continues to prey upon racism and gender for her own personal benefit. As an American and feminist this does not help any of us in the least. We are more than our race and for sure more than our gender.
Unfortunately, this is what Hillary's campaign has come to represent. I am saying once again: A woman will be president. Probably in our lifetime. The right woman but not this woman.
Update: Huffington Post has an interesting bit about Hillary and accepting defeat. It is sad that on some level Clinton appears fatalistic regarding this race for Democrats, selfishly holding on for an "I told you so".