As a lifelong feminist, I find this statement extremely offensive. Not only because, while it is supposed to represent the thinking of feminists in one of the largest states in the nation, it sounds like it was written by an 8th grader, but because it presumes that feminists and pro-feminist men MUST support Hillary Clinton for president or they have committed the “ultimate betrayal.”
Crap!
I have a long history as an activist for equal rights and justice for women, people of color and other groups. I have longed for the time when this country would elect someone other than a white (usually Protestant) male as President.
I supported the presidential aspirations (either in primaries or in the general election) of Shirley Chisolm, Sonia Johnson, Patricia Shroeder, Jesse Jackson (twice) and even Al Sharpton. So I'm ready for both a woman and a person of color to hold our highest office. I was ready a long damn time ago.
But I am not ready to support a corporatist sell-out just because she's female. And I'm not ready to install another member of some American political dynasty, just because the Heathers club that is NY-NOW says I should. That's not any kind of feminism I'd have anything to do with, or that any self-respecting progressive should promote.
Would I love it if my candidate of choice for 2008, John Edwards, was not a white man, but rather a black woman with the same ideas, determination and courage? You bet. That would be a perfect combination all things political as far as I'm concerned. But he's not. And I don't hold it against him. John Edwards' positions are so much more progressive, and dare I say “feminist,” than Hillary Clinton's, it's not even funny.
Hell, I have a hard time even thinking of Hillary Clinton as even a liberal or a leftist, despite what the “VRWC” thinks of her. Those morons don't have a frickin' clue about the reality of the political spectrum in this country (much less the rest of the world). Much like NY-NOW, apparently.
I'm enraged that this bunch has embarrassed real feminists with their sophmoric bile. Women have enough to complain about politically and culturally without having to explain this kind of nonsense.
I passed through NOW very early in my political activism, but I still felt like it was a decent, if hopelessly DC-centric and mainstream (in the negative sense) organization. But if national NOW doesn't put out some kind of disclaimer on this, they will have completely destroyed any hope at being a voice for working class American women, and certainly ever representing women of color (which they never were anyway).