American social critic Camille Paglia has accused Hillary Clinton of conforming to a “blame-men-first” brand of feminism. This kind of feminism “defines women as perpetual victims requiring government protections,” according to Paglia.
Paglia also suggested that this, coupled with her “sometimes impatient or patronizing tone about men,” could end up hurting her campaign.
It’s not hard to see where Paglia is coming from on this. Clinton endlessly reminds voters that she is a woman and running to be the first woman president, as if we forget or can’t tell. Yet despite this constant discussion of women and “women’s issues,” Clinton is beginning to lose support among women. Young women especially don’t care for Clinton, which at least seems odd considering how many college-aged social justice warriors there are claiming women in America are horribly oppressed.
Paglia also brings up how Clinton detoured from the “women don’t need men” mantra of second-wave feminism and began relying on Bill Clinton for her career advancements.
“As his most trusted counselor and strategist, she helped guide her husband’s rise to attorney general and governor of Arkansas, but at every point, her professional life, culminating in a partnership at the Rose Law Firm, was at least partly derived from her association with him — not an ideal feminist paradigm,” Paglia wrote.
The social critic took special note of how Clinton deviated from the “women as victims” narrative when it suited her — when her future was at risk due to husband Bill’s infidelities. At that time, Clinton began berating women who accused her husband of rape and women who remained in abusive relationships.
“When rumors about [Gennifer] Flowers surfaced during the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary defended her husband by vehemently asserting on CBS’s ’60 Minutes,’ ‘I’m not sitting here — some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,'” Paglia wrote. “Hillary later apologized to Wynette, but her caustic remark seemed to betray Hillary’s Seven Sisters class bias against a spectrum of Southern women admirable for their own strength, tenacity and grit.”
For Clinton, her campaign suffers “when she privileges elite professional women at men’s expense,” Paglia concluded.
This is a broader commentary on the state of some modern feminists, who seek to tear men down rather than build up women. We’ll have to wait and see if Clinton’s brand of feminism turns enough women and men off to cost her the presidential nomination.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
