There's been a rash of young women in the news over the past ten years who feel it's necessary to preface feminist thoughts with "I'm not a feminist, but--" That's another failure of the feminist movement and another victory for the patriarchy: young women growing up with no damn clue what being a feminist means, except that it has a negative tinge to it.
I am, by God, a feminist. And I am utterly furious that Geraldine Ferarro continues to go on the news and boil the feminist cause down to this: Elect a woman. Any woman. Doesn't matter what she thinks. Because saying that goes against the very heart of feminism: the revolutionary idea that it does matter what a woman thinks.
This is feminism to me: that a woman running for president got millions and millions of votes on her own merits, as her own person, instead of as an add-on selected by a successful male candidate.
This is feminism to me: that this woman held her own in what was possibly the longest, most heated primary battle in the past forty years, and in doing so forced her opponent to truly earn his victory, and to forge a candidacy that can take down the Republican candidate in November.
This is feminism to me: that this woman proudly and without fail held up issues that were important to her and brought them to national attention, issues that otherwise might have been ignored or forgotten by the otherwise entirely-male slate of candidates.
This is feminism to me: that I had the chance to vote for a female candidate for president whose campaign was not a joke, and that I could choose whether to vote for or against her based on her merits and her position on the issues.
In the end, I didn't vote for Senator Clinton, because I disagreed with her on many issues, and because the way she ran her campaign made me question the way she'd run the executive branch of government. I was proud as fire that she ran and that she did so well, and I long for the day that I will get to hear people say-- not in fiction, but on the news-- Madam President. I am a feminist, and this is feminism to me: that a woman's thoughts, and abilities, and actions matter more than her gender.
It matters what a woman thinks.
This is something that appears to have escaped John McCain, who learned nothing from Hillary Clinton's campaign except that women got excited about the chance to vote for another woman. He seems completely ignorant of what Clinton's positions on the issues are, or, if he knows them, he thinks them unimportant. He is ignoring all of the things that Hillary Clinton finds important, from universal health care to ending the Iraq War to the gender inequity of paychecks and the problem of affordable childcare.
John McCain does not care about what a woman thinks. John McCain is not a feminist.
John McCain has selected a vice presidential candidate of middling ability and education, with a very small amount of experience outside a small town and with intensely questionable judgment about how she uses executive power. He has selected her in order to appeal to female Clinton voters, under the assumption that Clinton had no other appeal to her voters than the fact that she could pass the vaginal litmus test. He assumes that women would blindly vote for any ticket with a woman on it, regardless of what that would mean for the country and for their own lives. John McCain expects every female Clinton voter's gender to be more important than her thoughts.
John McCain does not care about what a woman thinks. John McCain is not a feminist.
John McCain has selected Sarah Palin, who is against all forms of reproductive choice from sex education to birth control to abortion. She expects that privacy will be granted and respect given to her own choices where reproduction is concerned, particularly the highly questionable choices she made when she went into labor with her son Trig, but she is against similar privacy and respect for every other woman's choices about reproduction.
Sarah Palin does not care about what other women think. Sarah Palin is not a feminist.
John McCain selected Sarah Palin on the basis of her gender more than her thoughts. There were other, more able, experienced, more well-known options for a running mate who would have similarly appealed to the fundamentalist branch of the Republican party, but they were all male. Sarah Palin is female. And because of her gender, John McCain was willing to overlook her inexperience, to overlook her abuse of power, to overlook her corruption, to overlook her incompetence, to overlook her highly questionable judgment, to overlook her history with lobbyists and the for-it-before-she-was-against-it pork barrel extravaganza of the Bridge to Nowhere.
John McCain thinks that Sarah Palin is the equal of Hillary Clinton.
John McCain thinks that female Clinton voters can't tell the difference.
John McCain is not a feminist.