Our feminist foremother has misbehaved.
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Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC radio’s The Current, moderated a debate this week between two very different American political volunteers: Karen Murphy a 53-year-old Hillary Clinton supporter and Anoa Changa, a 34-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter. If you have reason to believe that any written material or image has been innocently infringed, please bring it to the immediate attention of CDN via the e-mail address or phone number listed on the Contact page so that it can be resolved expeditiously.
Don’t, because it’s not true.
Janet Davis, a UT professor who specializes in women’s history, said she does not think the criticism holds, but that it does represent a generational divide in the idea of feminism. Presto. A feminist heroine was recast as a woman-bashing villain.
Gloria Steinem said she “misspoke” when she made the comment on Real Time with Bill Maher after being asked why she thought Clinton wasn’t doing better with young women. “In some ways, Hillary is bringing the worst out of the women I admire, and Gloria Steinem is one of them”. We were like 12 insane ladies. I do think that gratitude never radicalized anybody. The boys are with Bernie, ‘ ” she said. It pains me, not only because I hate to see feminism leave certain women out, but also on behalf of my trans friends and my trans fiancee. “So they’re mad as hell because they’re graduating in debt, and they’re gonna earn a million dollars less over their lifetime to pay it back, they’re mad about what’s happening to them”. Not only did Steinem endorse Bernie Sanders over a female candidate, but she hailed his pro-feminist agenda as soon as she stepped up to the microphone.
“Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, and women tend to get more radical because they lose power as they age”, Steinem said.
During her debate with Sanders last week, she pushed back against his suggestion that she was “establishment” by reminding voters that her election would signal the end of a long road for women.
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem is feeling the “Bern” in a way she never intended, after a backlash from women of all ages over her comments that young women support presidential candidate Bernie Sanders simply because “that’s where the boys are”. She has since apologized for this response: “Women get more radical as we get older”.
“We agreed that if we didn’t drive these kinds of issues, who would?” recalls Maine Republican Olympia Snowe in her memoir. One headline rephrased it: “Young Women Support Bernie Sanders Just To Get Laid?” In this primary, Sanders is the guy stuff.
It didn’t help that, in the same weekend, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stood next to Hillary Clinton and warned younger women, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”.
Clinton’s campaign has recruited young female celebrities like Lena Dunham, creator and star of the HBO show “Girls”, and singer Demi Lovato to build a following among millennial women. What do you make of all this? “I want my first female president to be more than a symbol, I want her to have politics that can revolutionize”.
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“Women are always liked if we sacrifice ourselves for something bigger - and something bigger always means including men, even though something bigger for men doesn’t usually including women”. It isn’t to say that the women who say they like those things are faking it to impress boys. Sanders – or Bernie as he is now known, having achieved “Cher” status – is a staunch advocate for the poor and middle class, a position that resonates with a modern feminist movement fixated on “intersectionality” (the intersection of class and race in politics).
