I didn’t look up to Wonder Woman or Lara Croft as a child: I had women like Gloria Steinem. I was the type of girl who cut my dolls’ hair short, insisted girls could do anything boys could, and invented stories where brave female protagonists always outsmarted the bad guys.
So I was absolutely floored to hear Steinem tell Bill Maher that the only reason young women might support Bernie Sanders is that they want to chase the boys who back him. “When you’re young, you’re thinking, where are the boys?” Steinem said. “The boys are with Bernie.”
Steinem later walked back her comments. Still, some people – like Rachel Krantz and Jill Filipovic – leapt to her defense, suggesting that many young women feel pressure to act a certain way to attract men, or to remain part of the “in” crowd.
Steinem’s bizarre comments didn’t just set us back decades – they also reinforced ignorant notions regarding women’s decision making. It’s one thing to hear nonsense like that from a clueless male politician. It’s another matter entirely to hear it from a leading feminist.
Steinem wasn’t the only feminist elder to talk down to millennial women who are feeling the Bern.
Madeleine Albright said there’s a “special place in hell” for young women who don’t vote for Hillary Clinton. When a moderator asked Clinton herself to address that offensive comment at a debate, Clinton didn’t bother to condemn it. She demurred that Albright had been making remarks like that for “the past 25 years.”
Steinem and Albright claim that opposing Clinton makes women anti-feminist. But isn’t voting for Clinton solely because she’s a woman as sexist as voting for Sanders because he’s a man?
Young women are in a better position than our forebears, because we have resources that older generations had to create for themselves. They fought for our right to vote, our right to control our own bodies, our right to work for pay, and our right to own our own property and assets.
Thanks to those pioneers, women now have so many more potential career paths to choose from. The feminists who came before us made it not only conceivable but totally natural that a woman could be the next US president.
Sexist statements are a throwback to an era when women were told that our place was in the kitchen, when we needed to find and obey a husband at all costs, and when unwed mothers were sent to sanatoriums and their babies were taken from them by social workers.
Gloria Steinem and her peers helped lead us out of that era, but my generation is still fighting for equal pay and reproductive rights. We’re still fighting against domestic violence and for paid parental leave. We have too many issues to fight for – and no time to waste on sexism within our own ranks.
Income inequality, racial discrimination, and labor rights are women’s issues. A successful candidate will take all these things and much more into account.
Young progressive women like me will cast our ballots after considering where the candidates stand on all the issues we care about. We can keep fighting for the right to choose without undermining other women’s choices.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 201 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
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