One of the real weak spots within the resurgent progressive movement is the thinking of some of its eager young proponents on gender issues. In the course of kindly talking up my latest column for the magazine, which describes a trip to Eastern Iowa with John Edwards, MyDD’s resident pro-Edwards blogger David Mizner (MyDD has resolved the conflicting primary passions issue by adding a rotating cast of bloggers who argue on behalf of different candidates) calls me a “blogger who claims without evidence that the hositlity to Hillary among male bloggers derives from sexism.”
In fact, I never claimed any such thing. Nor did I use such words. What I wrote in the March post Mizner cites as evidence for his contention:
As I argued in my piece, “The most important division Clinton begets is between men and women,” and I think you can see that political divide emerging even here on this site. Unfortunately for Clinton, most opinion media — including the progressive variety — consists of upwards of 75 percent (and somtimes even upwards of 90 percent) male voices. That means that the demographic bias of men against Hillary is offered a far greater public airing than the demographic bias of women for her, and that the few women who are around will be more likely to be like the young woman at happy hour, and prefer to sit in silent disagreement rather than feel themselves pounced upon by all the loudest voices at the table, or in the midst of an eight on one intra-office fight.
It also means that progressive media are going to be unusually out of sync with the progressive base this cycle.
I see no accusation of sexism there. I see a description of a real social phenomenon, one which is even more pronounced now than when I wrote those words in March. As The Washington Post reported in June, “The consistent lead that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has maintained over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and others in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination is due largely to one factor: her support from women.”
A more recent poll had Clinton with a 42 percent lead among likely female Democratic voters nationwide, as compared to a 22-percentage point lead with men. Something has to explain that, and the most obvious explanation is that men and women are evaluating Clinton differently. There is no reason to suppose that the male position on Clinton is the fair and balanced one, while the female one is biased by gender. In fact, the studies I have seen show quite clearly that men evaluate Clinton more negatively than do women (demographic bias against her) while women are unusually drawn to her (demographic bias for her).
To reiterate: A blogosphere made mainly of men would not fairly represent public opinion on Clinton NOT because its male members are sexist (think women are inferior) or chauvinist (think only men should rule), but, rather, because they are men, period, and therefore have a different set of evalutive criteria they apply to public figures than do women, and also a different position with regard to the political establishment, the economy, and the facts of war. Further, most men are not privy to the “just among us girls” conversations women have about their lives and politics, and most women do their best not to speak frankly about their feelings about their social position in mixed company, because it is considered gauche and also dangerously confrontational to do so. This sets up a situation where women know much more clearly how men think about politics than men known what women think, and in which, if women are not expressing themselves in print directly, the differences in their views tend to be subsumed.
If men don’t get Clinton, it doesn’t mean they are sexist. But it shouldn’t be verbotten to point out that they are not seeing something in her that women do see — for reasons that, taken as a whole, very likely do have something to do with demographics — any more than it should be verbotten to point out that a lot of working class people apparently don’t get Barack Obama, or that only a tiny fraction of African-Americans back John Edwards. Some candidates just appeal more to different constituencies for reasons of self-presentation and history as well as policy, and when writing about women in politics, our society does yet not have an uncontested “universal” position. Noting the absence of a universal perspective is not the same as making an accusation of sexism, however.
For example, it is not an accusation against David Paul Kuhn to point out that Dana Goldstein‘s different political perspective probably has something to do with her gender, just as his willingness to write an entire book in 2007 arguing that white men are “neglected” probably was increased by the fact the he is both male and spent the last few years in New York, where white men, I find, frequently feel plagued by the city’s unusually intense identity politics. People come to the political arena from different perspectives, and if contest 2008 is going to teach us anything, I hope it will teach us to recognize that.
–Garance Franke-Ruta