“Vagina voter”: Witnessing the sexism hurled at Hillary in ’08 and the assumptions made about her.
illary’s presence and words were a powerful message to girls and women, and that is why she didn’t quit. And as a mother of a daughter, that is one of the reasons I didn’t quit her. To be sure, Hillary was fighting to win, but she also knew that we needed the memory and the images to move forward for those who came after her. Like her Beijing speech, she was ahead of the curve, but this was a rougher road. The accusations that were hurled at Hillary were hurled at all of us. We were all called “bitter clingers,” “vagina voters,” “working class,” “old,” and “bitches” right along with her and suffered the same dismissal as she did. And some of the people who threw out those slurs were feminists.
Hillary’s 2008 campaign is now a snapshot that is a part of our collective cultural memory from past events that we all share. These memories help us form our identities as individuals and as citizens. Boys and men have the totality of presidential cultural memory reflected to them in the United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt holding up his hat, Dwight Eisenhower with arms held aloft, and John F. Kennedy with Marilyn Monroe. The history of male presidents is the gendered bedrock of power upon which we form our national identity, and women, without similar memories, sense their lack of power.
I grieved when Hillary lost the nomination. The night after she won in South Dakota, one of the last primary states in a campaign already lost, I dreamt about her.
In the dream, Hillary was in the White House. I was with many women in a room waiting to meet with her. When it was my turn, Hillary stood in front of me. I held out my arms as if to receive something. She placed several Middle Eastern shawls and fabrics into my empty arms. I knew women had made them. I took them.
Several years later after the election, I finished my film about the women’s liberation movement and started to speak about how important it is to remember that movement and include it in our cultural memory. If we had had a cultural memory about female leaders in 2008, Hillary may not have been seen as an interloper in the male Oval Office.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/14/vagina_voter_witnessing_the_sexism_hurled_at_hillary_in_08_and_the_assumptions_made_about_her_supporters_changed_my_life/
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