Sister Toldjah says in a post from yesterday: [1]
The discussions over Hillary Clinton’s use of the victim card [2] after her poor performance at last week’s Democratic presidential candidate debate haven’t died down. In fact, they seem to be intensifying.
There’s been some diversity amongst the reactions amongst liberal feminists as to whether they consider her a victim of a “boys-club” attack or if they view her playing of the victim card as a setback of sorts for the feminist movement. Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn at The Politico reported yesterday [3] on the mixed reaction from feminists to Hillary’s victim card defense:
After jeers from her Democratic rivals and many commentators, Hillary Rodham Clinton has backed off her suggestion last week that her opponents were ganging up on her because she is a woman.
But the debate is still churning in feminist circles, where some women’s activists said she had every right to invoke sexism and gender stereotypes as a defense on the campaign trail — and predicted that this tactic will prove effective against fellow Democrats and against a Republican, if she is the general election nominee.
One prominent feminist and Hillary endorser made excuses for Clinton’s hiding behind her gender, calling it a “visceral gut reaction” to being around all those men:
“It goes beyond logic — it’s a gut response,” Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said of the spectacle of Clinton onstage confronting seven male rivals and two male moderators at a debate in Philadelphia on Wednesday night.
Smeal, who has endorsed Clinton, compared the debate scene to the congressional grilling of Anita Hill when she challenged Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination in 1991.
“Every woman — it was just so visceral — that panel was all male,” Smeal recalled. “It didn’t matter almost what was being said. It [was] a visceral gut reaction, and I think that’s what you’re seeing here again.”
Sure – it’s a “gut reaction” to instinctively think the worst of a group of people simply due to their sex. Women just can’t help but think the worst! Now, imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, and a prominent male public figure described his “visceral reaction” to having to stand on stage with several female contenders for political office, and then imagine the howls of outrage that would be sure to follow for weeks, the calls for apologies, healing, etc. Double standards, anyone?
Radical feminista Naomi Wolf was decidedly tame in her criticism of Clinton:
“They are being very, very strategic” by playing to sympathies that virtually every woman in a male-dominated professional world can relate to, feminist writer Naomi Wolf said of the Clinton campaign. At the same time, she said, “They are yielding to gender stereotypes.”
But she, too, eventually called Clinton’s tactic fair:
Wolf, a Democrat who advised Al Gore in the 2000 race on how to present a more “alpha male” image, said if this comes to pass, she has little sympathy for the GOP dilemma.
Men traditionally speak in more combative tones and language, in ways that women tend to find off-putting, Wolf said. Her complaints this week were a way of pushing back against that brand of public discourse, Wolf argued. “I have to say they are doing it legitimately,” she added.
Look; None of this should be a shock to anyone; As I’ve told you previously, what we have here is a seriously conflicted Democrat party. It’s to the point now, where this conflict we see is NOT going to end when the primaries do. In this case, we’re talking about the split between anti-war leftists, and gender feminists…
What I found both disappointing and disgusting were the reactions of liberal women who believed that it was ok for Clinton to use the victim card even if she wasn’t really a “victim” of the alleged misogyny of the her fellow male candidates on the stage — because to those women, turnabout is fair play:
But even as Clinton abandoned the stance — arguably after it had run its public course and she had reaped the benefits — some women who have spent their lives fighting the politics of gender stereotyping said Clinton had a right to turn the latest events to her advantage.
They note that she has spent a career enduring public attacks, often accompanied by gender-based slurs about her persona.
“Turnabout is fair play,” said Marie Wilson, a Clinton supporter and president of the White House Project, which trains women to enter politics. “When you’re the one and only, those stereotypes are coming at you all the time. If she has one time when she can make them work for her, why not?”
[…]
Smeal said that she and other women deeply involved in politics didn’t immediately see the debate in terms of gender, but rather in the political terms of rivals engaging a front-runner.
Then, she said, her group started getting e-mails from women complaining that Clinton was being attacked. “Our rank and file … saw it the other way,” she said.
She and some other women’s activists were unapologetic about Clinton’s willingness to use stereotypes to her advantage.
“You reap what you sow,” she said. “There’s been discrimination against women for so long, and for once this is benefiting a woman.”
I can’t even describe in words fit for a lady to say how this attitude offends me as a woman. I can only imagine how it irks men who’ve had to put up with radical feminist double-speak for decades.
Yeah, well, welcome to the world through our eyes, here, Sister. But perhaps more to the point; How is Hillary Clinton winning, benefiting women of ANY stripe? An administration under that individual would be an unmitigated disaster… a fact which even many Democrats are now starting to see. The country falling apart doesn’t seem to me an environment in which women of ANY political stripe will fare well.