Yeah, agree that Sullivan's feminist trope is moronic and even offensive. I am not a big fan of the HRC candidacy, but I finally understand the instinct to vote for HRC out of spite for someone else.

You make a good case, Dana, but I'll just counter with the obvious. Sully is good friends with Camille Paglia. The one and only Camille Paglia.

So there.

Its a monty python kind of day, I suppose, but the idea of Sullivan being a legitimate defender of Feminism or feminist interests reminds me of the marvellous scene from the Life Of Brian when the gay people's front character insists that they write in to their manifesto that he is a woman. Its symbolic, he insists, but very important. And they end up giving in to him because they can't think what else to do. Who gave in to Sullivan when he demanded to be made queen of the may? that's what I want to know.

aimai

"As Kerry Howley wrote in the New York Times, dynasties often advance the key feminist goal of bringing women to political power -- women who through a family assist, are able to break the glass ceiling and benefit the less well-connected women who will follow."

I think this is a dubious claim in this case. It's a fair enough claim when you don't *know* that some woman walked into Daddy's shoes, let's say, because surface appearances do count for something.

But, when you know how it happens, it tends to help undermine the credibility of women who did make it more on their own. People (men, anti-feminists, anti-elitists) like to go ahead and promote those ideas and other people are ready to go along with it (they're men, anti-feminists, anti-elists).

That's basically the problem that people face with regard to the very existence of affirmative action. I wouldn't necessarily abolish it for that reason, but if you think it doesn't engender other problems you're just lying to yourself.

So, no. I don't think there is any clear benefit to women to having HRC garner the Oval Office. I don't see how it's supposed to help women who have to make it on their own and who *need* credibility in order to do so.

Anyway, I think you can find plenty of "dynasties" throughout European history where women held power. It did less than dick for women, as such. I suppose it promoted licentious court politics. Sleep your way to the top, if you can.

Hell, was Cleopatra not Queen of Egypt? Did her slaves not roll her up in a rug and ship her to Julius Caesar?

Not that I'd put Sullivan in charge of "feminism."

Quite the sand in your bathing suit, isn't he?

I pretty much agree with Anonymous at 1:55-- kids going into the family business has its own set of problems, but spousal gamesmanship really isn't 'dynastic' either-- it's usually just a power-transfer ploy.

Having said that, I have zero use Sullivan, who obviously neither likes nor trusts women in general... he should stick to his own gender/sexuality issues & leave feminism alone, TYVM.

Ok, I'll start off by saying something nice about Sullivan: He and his team blog above and beyond the call of duty on a daily basis. It's an outstanding site, whether you agree with him or not.

But he will never get over his severe case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome and, despite endorsing Obama, he can't quite let go of the whole "black people aren't as smart as white people" thing because he devoted an issue of The New Republic to The Bell Curve to it back in the day.

Yes, Sullivan also introduced us to Paglia, but I don't know what her bizarre, idiosyncratic ravings have to do with feminism. Wasn't she the one who said that a woman who ends up drunk in a man's apartment is basically asking to be raped?

I'd hardly praise Sullivan as a deep and true adherent to feminism. At the same time, I have real trouble imagining what Hillary's campaign would look like without Bill. He's been such a prominent presence that on some level he's outstripped her news coverage. So much of the SC campaign seems to be about what Hillary is offering as defined by Bill.

That, to me, is hardly a ringing endorsement of Hillary's feminist bona fides.

Clark, have you read any of Camille Paglia's major works or do you just go by the crap she puts on Salon?

Go and buy her most recent work, and you will change your tune of her.

Yes, I've read them (not her most recent book, I confess), and she's terrible.

I don't have time to find the link, but back in the early nineties Molly Ivins smacked Paglia down so thoroughly that I can't believe she's still around. The column was called "I Am the Cosmos," IIRC, and I think it was in Mother Jones.

That's my standard contribution to any Paglia-related discussions, anyway.

I pretty much agree with Anonymous at 1:55-- kids going into the family business has its own set of problems, but spousal gamesmanship really isn't 'dynastic' either-- it's usually just a power-transfer ploy.

Having said that, I have zero use Sullivan, who obviously neither likes nor trusts women in general... he should stick to his own gender/sexuality issues & leave feminism alone, TYVM.

I'd wager that whatever Sully said about feminism had little to do with feminism and everything to do with his loathing for the Clintons. He simply isn't objective about them and will seize upon any trope to bludgeon them with.

Perhaps Hillary's supporters can remind us of the dynastic connections that installed Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir?

Or must those supporters insist that, because Hillary is on it, the only path to power for women is that blazed by Eva Peron, Benazir Bhutto, and Indira Gandhi?

What Fredo said. Sullivan needs to explain why Hillary is a worse person than aWol.

Refresh my memory, what exactly did the Lewinsky scandal do for feminism?

To me it look a whole lot more like the old "boss diddling the secretary" than some great triumph of Woman, but mayabe that's just me.

Everyone's basically got it. If this post is just an ad hominem attack on Sullivan because he hasn't always been supportive of feminism, fine. But on the substance, I think it is actually pretty much unarguable that the Hillary Clinton campaign doesn't advance feminism one bit. Wives, daughters, widows, and sisters have succeeded their husbands in politics for centuries. It doesn't indicate a level playing field for women.

Further, Hillary is precisely the analogue of those old, anti-feminist archetypes. She is clearly under-experienced. There is no way she would be taken as a serious candidate for President but for her marriage to Bill.

What will be a triumph for feminism is when some woman who has achieved her political success on her own (and I don't just mean 8 years in a Senate seat in a state that she never lived in before and leapfrogging over more qualified women like Nita Lowey to win the seat) is able to run for and win the Presidency.

There's nothing feminist about the ascendance of Hillary Clinton.

Ten year old girls forcibly married to middle-aged men, women who are rape victims being whipped and jailed, women who are not wearing required clothing being forced back into burning buildings by "fire departments", women being killed by their own families for not respecting the arbitrary "honor" of the family patriarch...

This is what "Feminism" is completely silent about. And why its turned into the cynical, political tool that it is.

Ten year old girls forcibly married to middle-aged men, women who are rape victims being whipped and jailed, women who are not wearing required clothing being forced back into burning buildings by "fire departments", women being killed by their own families for not respecting the arbitrary "honor" of the family patriarch...

This is what "Feminism" is completely silent about. And why its turned into the cynical, political tool that it is.

Ten year old girls forcibly married to middle-aged men, women who are rape victims being whipped and jailed, women who are not wearing required clothing being forced back into burning buildings by "fire departments", women being killed by their own families for not respecting the arbitrary "honor" of the family patriarch...

This is what "Feminism" is completely silent about. And why its turned into the cynical, political tool that it is.

What on Earth is 'xMan' going on about?

I did happen to see the vote for Sullivan as a feminist on CSPAN. It took him twelve rounds of balloting to edge out Wayland Flowers and Madame, though.

"But whatever one thinks about Hillary Clinton, her husband, and their record, her current campaign's relationship to feminism is a complex topic that isn't easy for anyone -- even those of us who spend most of our days thinking about such things -- to wrap our minds around."

Actually, Dana, it's incredibly easy for me to wrap my mind around it.

Q: Did you vote in favor of a war that has destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people -- including women and children -- in Iraq, and did so after only reading a five-page summary of the National Intelligence Estimate?

If A) is "Yes" (as we know it is in the case of Mrs. President Clinton), then I know that candidate has forever reliquished any claims on the title of "feminist." But then, I'm weird. I don't apply a 3/5ths rule to women who live outside the United States when it comes to empowering women.

What on Earth is 'xMan' going on about?

He's never heard of RAWA, or read any western feminist blogs or magazines, or looked at the websites of feminist organizations. Only someone who gets their information about feminism solely from right wing sources would think both Western and Middle Eastern feminists haven't been advocating exactly those positions for decades.