Clinton Feminists Are Not Feminists

Senator Bernie Sanders is under fire from the Clinton wing of the Democratic party, because of fucking course he is. Sanders has been under fire from the Clinton wing of the Democratic party (which functionally includes the corporate media) ever since he had the gall to run against the Anointed Queen. This time around the excuse that the McResistance is giving for their attack is that Sanders endorsed a candidate for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska who is personally pro-life.

Never mind the fact that this candidate, Heath Mello, has specifically said that “While my faith guides my personal views, as mayor I would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care." Never mind the fact that as mayor he’d have no control over reproductive rights legislation anyway. Never mind the fact that these pussyhat-wearing dimwits are promulgating a bald-faced lie peddled by establishment outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the CIA-funded Washington Post asserting that Mello sponsored a bill that would require women to have a transvaginal ultrasound and look at the picture of the fetus before they could obtain an abortion. Never mind that it’s in deep-red fucking Nebraska. Never mind the hypocrisy of bitching about “purity tests” from progressives and then saying that a slight impurity in one mayoral candidate he endorsed means that Sanders hates women and needs to go. Never mind Sanders’ 100% perfect rating on reproductive rights from Planned Parenthood. This is where these brave McResistors have chosen to take their stand against the big, scary boogeyman from Vermont.

And of course it’s not just women joining in the fray, because we can’t be trusted to subvert the progressive agenda on our own now, can we?

I thought about writing yet another article defending yet another progressive public figure from yet another corporatist establishment smear campaign, but then I thought to myself — wait a second. Defend? Why am I defending against these disgusting assholes? They hate women. They hate feminism. They’ve espoused a ferociously anti-woman ideology. Fuck defending — I’m going on the attack.

Allow me to femsplain. The people coming after Sanders in this way are all Clinton loyalists — seriously, check them out, I guarantee you’ll find Hillary stuff on the social media page of anyone who’s going on about this Mello thing. These are human beings who truly believe that Hillary Clinton would have made a terrific president. They’re people who think a former Walmart director who attacked Sanders for pushing for universal healthcare over the corporatist clusterfuck known as Obamacare would steer America in a positive direction. They’re people who think that the woman who told a group of Goldman Sachs executives that she’d lie to the American people for their benefit, and who painted Sanders’ vision of bringing the United States up to speed with the rest of the developed world on economic justice as “pie in the sky” naivety, was what the nation really needs. They’re people like former Clinton strategist Sally Albright, who in January said in a (since-deleted but archived) tweet that income inequality is “only a priority for white cis men” in her relentless establishment push to get Democrats to abandon the fight for economic justice. They support thinking like that and oppose thinking like Bernie’s.

In short, these are people who oppose a push toward policies that would uplift disadvantaged groups and level the playing field. This can only mean one of two things:
1) These people who claim to be feminists do not see women as a disadvantaged group, or
2) these people who claim to be feminists do see women as a disadvantaged group, but don’t want to help elevate them to a more even playing field.

One of those two is necessarily true of these people, and either way it means they aren’t feminists. Either they have been red pilled (side note: I’m co-opting the term “red pilled”; it now means becoming aware of the disproportionate hardships of being a woman in a society that was forged in the fires of misogyny) but have willfully decided to keep women down anyway, or they actually believe that everything is pretty much even and the only challenge American women face as a group is the possibility of losing their reproductive rights. Either way, they are opposed to true gender equality, they are opposed to uplifting women in America, and they are therefore unable to legitimately call themselves feminists.

I know you’re not supposed to say that. I’m saying it.

These people oppose the fight against income and wealth inequality in a society wherein 83 percent of all single parents are women, only half of whom are able to work full time year-round and who make a third of the median income of married-couple families. They oppose the fight against income and wealth inequality in a society where women are forced to stay in or return to abusive relationships to avoid unsustainable financial hardship. They oppose the fight against income and wealth inequality in a society wherein income and wealth inequality hurts women of color by vast disproportions, wherein Latinas earn half as much as white men. The fact that perpetuating the Walmart economy as Clinton wanted to do would hurt women and democratic socialism would help them is clear and undeniable, but these woman haters have the gall to attack Sanders as a sexist.

Neoliberalism disproportionately hurts women. Corporatism disproportionately hurts women. Clinton’s beloved trade agreements disproportionately hurt women. Economic justice would relieve women of so very many of the problems we face as a gender, and fighting for it is the best thing that we can possibly do for ourselves. Obviously reproductive sovereignty is an indispensable component of gender equality as well, but instead of embracing a politician who is both uncompromisingly pro-choice and a trailblazing proponent of economic justice, they’re embracing a faction of the Democratic party that wants them to shut the fuck up about the income and wealth inequality that its plutocratic sponsors have created and focus on our ability to decide what happens to our bodies like that’s some sort of reward instead of a basic human right.

Wake up, my lovely ladies of the Resistance™. These corporatist vampires are bleeding you dry.

That’s all I’ve got to say about that for now. If you enjoyed my little rant here, you’ll probably enjoy my conversation with the brilliant Katie Halper, who sees clearly that progressivism and economic justice are absolutely inseparable from feminism.

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