Indeed, men’s contempt for women, their refusal to take their female comrades-in-arms seriously, was legendary. Stokely Carmichael, a leader in the civil rights struggle replied to a question about the position of women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with the single word “prone.” A joke, he explained later. Yeah, right.
White men were no better. In one of the most shameful incidents of the time, men at the national convention of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) jeered women who sought a voice in organizational policy off the stage with catcalls, suggesting that their place was either on their backs or at the coffee machines. It was an event that gave impetus to what was then the infant Women’s Liberation Movement, tagged derisively and dismissively by male commentators as “Women’s Lib.”
Forty years later the parallels between then and now in sexual relations among the young are striking. By 1968, the sexual revolution was in full flower, and sex was everywhere, especially on college campuses. Sexual freedom for women, however, was defined by the male model, and young women were caught between participating in men’s vision of female sexual liberation or risk being seen as retrograde prudes. True, there was the exhilaration of rebellion, of breaking the sexual rules that had bound earlier generations so tightly. But there were also enormous social pressures to “go along to get along,” to comply or be left out. As one woman who lived through those years said to me recently, “The whole ethos was ‘If you’re sexually free, you’ll sleep with me,’ and women bought it.”
Yes, but this is 2008. Surely women now make more autonomous decisions about when, whether, and with whom to have sex. Perhaps older women do. But when I hear the tales about hooking up, the dominant form of socializing in the culture of so many young people now, it seems to me that the pressure to sexual conformity is no less today than it was yesterday. And as in the past, it’s unlikely that there’s much sexual pleasure for girls in the hasty couplings or the blow jobs the boys so eagerly seek. It does get the girls invited to the next party, though, where they get to do more of the same.
Think there’s more to it than that? Maybe. But Michael Kimmel’s forthcoming Guyland, a groundbreaking account of the culture of young men in America today tells a different story. His description of their predatory sexual behavior, their sense of sexual entitlement, the rapes, the contempt for women is chilling. “On your knees or on your back!” That’s the slogan these “guys” live by, while even those who aren’t active participants stand by and watch without a murmur.
STILL, WHATEVER issues remain in private and domestic life—and there are many—feminism’s successes are visible in every corner of public life, from bus drivers to CEOs to television anchors to doctors, lawyers, and college professors. True, women haven’t reached parity, but young girls today take for granted what earlier generations only dared dream about. True, also, there’s still often a glass ceiling, but now, not only is a woman one of two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, I, along with other women, was asked to join with the men in this symposium about politics.
Has sexism in the public arena gone to its final resting place then? Or is it just stuffed in a closet where all the other politically correct mandates live? Like so many questions about modern social life, there is no easy yes or no answer.
Is it sexism when we watch Senator Hillary Clinton held to a different standard at the same time that she’s scrutinized far more relentlessly than her male rival? Or is it just the novelty of her candidacy? Certainly, it’s novel. But then so is the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, the first African American ever to be seen as a serious contender for the presidency. Yet he hasn’t come under the same unremitting gaze—at least not for his personal characteristics or his dress.
Why does the New York Times feature a half-page, over-the-fold article by Patrick Healy devoted entirely to a derisive accounting of what he calls Hillary Clinton’s various personas, without once mentioning her intelligence, her position on the issues, or her qualifications for the presidency. Why does Carl Bernstein think it’s relevant to remark on her “thick ankles?” Why is the silence deafening when, as Robin Morgan wrote in a recent post, the Clinton-hating Citizens United Not Timid (note the acronym) asked John McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” and he answered, “Excellent question!” “Would he have dared,” Morgan asks, “reply similarly to ‘How do we beat the black bastard?’ ” Now that is an excellent question.
Why is Clinton’s “likability” factor so important? No one thinks Rudy Giuliani is a particularly likable or nice guy, yet no moderator of a nationally televised debate ever asked him to comment on why people don’t find him likable. Nor, when he was still in the race, did he feel impelled to defend himself on that score. Instead, he staked his candidacy on playing the hardball street fighter, the guy who’s tough enough to protect us from any threat, while Clinton was applauded for getting “misty” and showing her softer side. That is, until the same commentators turned to wondering whether the mist was just another manipulation by a calculatingly cold candidate.
I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton, not because of her dress or demeanor but because I prefer a more progressive politics. Still, I suspect it’s impossible for many women, as it is for me, to watch the campaign coverage without some empathy for the classic double bind she faces. When former Republican candidate Fred Thompson seemed too laid back, the pundits explained that he didn’t have the fire in the belly to go the distance. When Hillary Clinton displays that fire, they complain that she’s too fueled by raw ambition. If she looks cool and tough, she’s not “womanly” enough; if she presents a softer side, she’s not ready to be commander in chief. If she doesn’t smile, she’s too serious, has no sense of humor; if she lightens up and laughs a bit, the airwaves are inundated with analysis of what it means and how she “cackles.” Cackles: the sound a hen makes after laying an egg.
Whether in the private arena or the public one, then, sexism lives, although it shows itself differently today than it did yesterday. The blatant expression of the kind of sexism we knew in 1968 is now frowned upon in many, if not most, quarters of the land. But when push comes to shove, the inner voice too often rules the public silence. Witness the fifteen million Americans who listen to Rush Limbaugh every day and chortle happily at every sexist thrust, as he dares to say what they can only think.
IT'S NOT only in passive listening that we see the tension between stated belief and public behavior. It’s evident in the electoral process as well, where we have seen what we’ve come to label “The Bradley Effect,” named for the first black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who later ran unsuccessfully for governor of California. Every poll reported that people said they had no problem in voting for an African American; every poll showed him winning by substantial margins. But when the votes were counted, Bradley went down to defeat because many white voters couldn’t make themselves pull the lever for a black man when they were safely behind the curtain. The 2008 primaries have already brought tantalizing suggestions of what could be a “Hillary effect,” where many men who say, and undoubtedly believe, they have no sexist prejudice, have similar qualms when asked to vote for a woman for the highest office in the land.
But unlike forty years ago, that’s only one part of the story. Like all revolutionary political movements, feminism had its successes and failures, its excesses and mistakes. We were blind to class-cultural differences at the outset and were quickly labeled as irrelevant to working-class women and women of color. True, they became the beneficiary of our struggle, but to this day they still abjure the feminist label, even while living its gains. In our anger at the hierarchical nature of the family, we failed to grasp sufficiently the hunger for family and connection that animates most people, and in doing so, gave over the “family values” issues to the radical right. We were so concerned with our own cause that we didn’t fully grasp the pitfalls of the movement toward cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and the identity politics that flowed from that. And we enforced a kind of political correctness on ourselves that blinded us to ways of building a broader, more universal coalition.
Nevertheless, the legacy we have left to our children and grandchildren has been visible in our newspapers and television screens every day for the past year: A woman is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to be president of the United States. And if nominated, she could win.
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