Hillary Clinton takes feminism seriously place in American politics. Schyman will be inspired by Martin Gelin book about Clinton.
I can not help but be optimistic when I read Martin Gelin’s book “the longest fight – Hillary Clinton’s rise to power.” It seems to simmer of feminist rhetoric and practice in the United States and the impression I get is that as long detested the F-word, feminism has a new and broader meaning, also in the United States. I say “also” because it happened here, in Sweden and in several other countries in Europe. While there has been a polarization of public debate, hatred and threats against feminists hails, both on the street and online, so has the understanding both deepened and broadened. The inclusive feminism where more power structures are made visible and interact, where the movements for women’s rights interacts with rights movement based on class, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or functionality, and no longer stand against each other but mutually reinforcing; there is a political dimension that is now growing. It became clear in the last election campaign in Sweden and it is a fundamental dimension of the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton runs.
In addition to a at least to me much needed updating of the knowledge of the political melting pot that is the United States so the book gives a clear message: Changes take time! To follow Hillary Clinton’s path from the first feminist speech at Wellesley University, where she criticized that society made women invisible and all leaders appeared to be men, to today’s feminist spoken in the presidential campaign provides just that message. There are no easy victories won. There are no shortcuts. There is only a committed, persistent, long-term, organized political work to do. Paired with the certainty that no one else will do it for us.
It is sometimes easy to forget the subtle expressions of the patriarchal world we live in takes. The book reminds us. Politics is no exception. The parties are no exception. Media is no exception. And the United States is very clear. In the 2008 presidential election was the criticism of Hillary Clinton often about more than politics. Conservative television host Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck expressed a concern that Hillary Clinton carried a secret dream to castrate men. “Every time I see her on TV, I involuntarily cross your legs,” said Carlson. Columnist Mike Barnicle said that Clinton’s main problem was that she “looks like the first wife you divorced yourself from and who now are waiting for you outside the courtroom.” The conservative commentator Marc Rudov said that “when Hillary talks among all men a wife who nags about taking out the garbage.” A conservative news released regularly publishes photos, where Hillary Clinton looked tired or newly awake out of conservative radio show became an involved debate about her health, with the question: “Do we want our appearance fixated culture really stare at this aging woman?”
policy provided with a man’s eyes results in a sexism that in the United States reach heights that would be unthinkable here. But sexism available. Gender contract laws that men listen to men and women listen to men still thrives. I tend to my own meetings, ask the audience if they remember that we had an agency called Jämo and that a man in a period was director there. Many remember Claes Borgström. Then I ask them if they remember who was there and who came after. The questions was not new and the problems had not been resolved when Borgström ended. But no one remembers. When men speak, we listen obediently.
The book also shows how the smear campaigns take hold, even though the facts investigative news website PolitiFact an examination of the campaigns in 2016 showed that Clinton was by far the most sincere candidate. 95 percent of her statements were true, while the same figure for Sanders was 46 percent, Ted Cruz 23 procentoch Donald Trump 12 percent.
Martin Gelin citing the political columnist Damon Linker facing election campaign wrote that Clinton’s biggest problem is “her total inability to let sincere”, and Gelin believes that there is a discrepancy between what Clinton is doing and what many feel that she does. A measurable backlash that it is difficult to find any other explanation than that Hillary Clinton treated differently because she is a woman.
And so it is understood. Still. There, as here. But issues – abortion, parental leave, nursery, women’s poverty wages and increasingly precarious employment, the growing class inequality, the inadequate security systems, discrimination against ethnic minorities, the hetero norm exclusion of LGBT people, all this has been Hillary Clinton’s affairs for decades. She got her first international breakthrough on Women in Beijing in 1995, with the simple observation that women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.
But all this has been the patriarchal colored policy treated as side issues and special interests. Long. To long. Now comes the reactions. The anti-racist and inclusive feminism grows locally, regionally and globally. The emphasis on individual freedom coupled with a systematic and structural critique of power has found independent ideological basis of feminism.
The time is ripe for political feminism and Hillary Clinton is an impressive carrier of it.
At the same time brave and hypocritical. The biggest question is left. The on violence. From the intimate to the international. Violence purpose is power and control. Over the body of a woman, a young person’s sexuality, a territory in a big city or territories in the world. Feminism and militarism do not go together. Military intervention against regimes that violate women’s rights do not improve the situation of women, says Valerie Hudson and Patricia Leidl in “The Hillary Doctrine”. Rather, it leads to even more violent situations for women. When societies collapse takes new groups of men over at the local level, without respect for human rights. When we see the outcry the obvious requirement to restrict private gun ownership raises in the United States, we understand that it is a long way to go before the destructive link between masculinity and militarism can free mankind from the scourge of war. There, as here.
Martin Gelin book is solid. Valuable facts about how it actually looks, both in terms of sexism, racism and class divisions served in a way that clarifies the relationships. In addition, the book’s great merit that it gives us inspiration to continue the necessary political work to strengthen human rights. So read!
Schyman
because Martin Gelin involved in the cultural pages of the book are reviewed Schyman, feminist debater and leader of the Feminist Initiative.
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