Of Bernie Bros and Famous Blue Dresses: Notes from a Female Sanders Supporter
There have been many sexist moments in the 2016 presidential race so far. Whether you’re talking about Trump assailing Carly Fiorina on the basis of her appearance, or yet another male news commentator calling Hillary Clinton shrill, there are plenty of examples with which one could fill this page and more. But at the moment, I want to address something that I don’t hear enough people talking about, something I see as profoundly sexist. I want to address the constant attempts by the media and the Clinton campaign to erase and discredit Bernie Sanders’ female supporters, of which I am one.
Bernie’s supporters have been ubiquitously discounted as “Bernie Bros:” sexist anti-Hillary bots who harass Hillary’s female supporters online. No doubt, there are trolls: it’s the internet, and the internet largely exists in 2016 as a forum for men to harass women. Find any group that includes men who use the internet, and you will find men who are behaving horridly. The idea that this would be something unique to men drawn to support Bernie Sanders, a candidate with an impeccable record on women’s issues, is of course absurd, but the media and Hillary supporters have latched onto this convenient, if unsupported, narrative and treated it as gospel. But what this generalization of Bernie Sanders supporters does do especially well is this: it erases his millions of female supporters from the narrative. This is sexism at its most devious.
When Bernie’s large number of female supporters — especially among young women — are acknowledged at all, they are invariably condescended to. Most recently, none other than Gloria Steinem herself said one of the most profoundly sexist things I have heard in recent memory: “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.” And thus died Second-Wave Feminism.
Madeleine Albright just a day later said that there’s “a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” No mention, oddly enough, of the special place in hell for women who shame each other for voting their conscience.
Another such moment of condescension I have come across recently is an article titled, “History Lesson for a Young Sanders Supporter.” The article is, essentially, a chastening on why all good little feminists should fall in line and vote for Clinton.
I’m much older than the intended audience for this article (the author, Susan Bordo, mentions 19-year-olds more than once as if that’s somehow the magic Sanders-supporting age). I myself am a grown-assed 40 year old woman who unequivocally supports Bernie Sanders. But as a woman of my generation, that means I actually lived through, even came of age during the history of which this article speaks. This history includes a famous blue dress, a vast right-wing conspiracy, the world’s uncanny obsession with Hillary’s fashion sense (or lack thereof), a lot of sexist name-calling, and on and on. I am not, and would never, belittle these things. They happened; I remember. The vast right-wing conspiracy is (still) real, and I spent plenty of time in my 20s defending the First Lady from sexist nonsense. But I spent even more of that time feeling betrayed by her: again, and again, and again.
You see, Bill Clinton was the first president I was old enough to vote for. And what did that presidency get me? It got me a disavowal of my sexuality with DOMA and DADT. It got my mentally ill mother kicked off of welfare thanks to regressive welfare reform. It got hundreds of thousands of people (overwhelmingly black) imprisoned with draconian drug enforcement laws like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. And Hillary Clinton campaigned in force for every single one of these measures.
Hillary Clinton frequently touts her advocacy for children (as does Ms. Bordo’s aforementioned article) as a touchstone of her progressive politics. True, her first job out of grad school was with the Children’s Defense Fund. But her campaigning for her husband’s welfare reform legislation undid all of the goodwill she had earned on this issue. Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and president of CDF and long-time friend of the Clintons was outspoken against the welfare reform bill. She said that President Clinton’s “signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.” Likewise for Hillary Clinton for campaigning for it on his behalf.
In 2013 Hillary Clinton finally — finally! — came out in support of gay marriage once the vast majority of her party already had. Any dregs of redemption points she gets from that too-little-too-late moment, however, are undone by the convenient lies she came up with for why DOMA was a necessary defense of gay rights at the time. (She earned 4 Pinocchios — the highest score — for this one from the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column.)
Another entry in the category of last-ditch efforts to appear more progressive: Clinton just last October promised to ban private prisons and to stop accepting money from this despicable industry. That’s right: stop taking their money. Up to that point, she had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from that industry for her 2016 campaign alone. But the damage was already done in 1994 with the passage of Bill Clinton’s prison-filling crime bill. When campaigning for it, Hillary Clinton said, “We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The ‘three strikes and you’re out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.” The U.S. prison population rose by more than 60% by the end of the Clinton administration according to the Brennan Center for Justice. And Hillary Clinton has profited mightily as a result. Until a few months ago, that is. Speaking of history lessons, by the way, the reason for that little policy reversal back in October was because Bernie Sanders pressed her on the issue again and again in his campaign, once again leaving little doubt in my mind on where my vote should go.
These are just a few reasons why, as a progressive, as a feminist, and as a woman, I will not vote for Hillary Clinton for as long as there is a better alternative. I haven’t even touched upon the fact that she is, as Jeffrey Sachs has called her, “the candidate of the war machine;” that she sold out the First Amendment by voting for the Patriot Act; that she is in favor of the death penalty; or that she is far too cozy with Wall Street to properly regulate it. The differences between Sanders and Clinton are numerous, and they are crucial. Telling me that the fact of her gender should be enough to tip the scale is like telling me the Keystone XL Pipeline is just a bit of plumbing.
All of this being said, however, there are, in fact, issues on which Clinton is a true progressive; I will admit to that. She has a 100% rating from NARAL, for instance. But so does Bernie Sanders. Clinton is great on women’s issues, if you’re not too worried about intersectionality, that is. But my belief is that class and race is far too often left out of the discussion of women’s issues, and to that end, I believe Bernie Sanders is better.
No doubt Hillary has dealt with rampant and vicious sexism: I saw it. I see it. I know my history. But the prize for surviving sexism doesn’t get to be my vote. After all, I do know my history, and women died for my right to cast that vote. And the vote I cast for Bernie Sanders will be the proudest vote I may ever cast.
