By Lauren Cash
After illustrating its flaws and lies while also calling out its false data, I was contemplating letting up on the new American feminist movement. I’ve debunked its main points; my work was largely done. I figured that if all the feminists reading the Binghamton Review still choose to identify as such, no amount of truth could persuade them to come to their senses. There was no need to beat a dead horse. But Madeline Albright just spouted off the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard, so here I am.
“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” Keep reading that. Read it again. You’re all smart people. I know that I probably don’t need to explain why this is wrong, but I’m going to break it down for you anyway.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the aforementioned quote in support of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in order to shame female voters into voting for Clinton. Albright wants Clinton to “climb up the ladder” by holding the position of commander-in-chief because, Albright argues, women aren’t high enough up on the ladder. She says, “the job isn’t done.” In other words, she’s saying that women should feel obligated to vote literally any female candidate into office because it doesn’t matter at all what the candidate’s platform is, as long as she has a vagina she bumps the number of females in power up. On the side of the politician, that’s awfully demeaning. Effectively, it’s pretty much just like getting the job you want because the employer needed to meet a quota. No one cares what you have to say, no one values your capabilities, no one even respects you enough to critique you. You’re just there to help statistics.
I don’t really care about Hillary’s feelings, though. I care about Ms. Albright telling women to go to hell if they don’t support another woman just because she’s a woman. I can’t even preface this by saying, “I’m sure her intentions were good, but…”, because it was such an asinine statement that even Huffington Post realized there was something wrong about it. What Albright told women to do is to set aside our own opinions and thoughts and vote for this female candidate because we also have the same body parts. What the ever-living fuck? Did you just try to make a feminist point by telling women that their views are invalid if they don’t vote for women? She might as well have said “only REAL women vote for Hillary.”
Culturally, shaming has been a new thing. I never want any of you to allow yourselves to be shamed into anything. Women, don’t let other women, like Madeleine, make you think you’re insignificant for not agreeing with what another woman says. You’re a person. You get to have your own opinions and evaluate other people’s arguments using your reasoning and intellect. Let me repeat: you are a person with your own individual opinions.
I think that a lot of the more moderate third wave feminists understand that what Albright said is wrong. My hope, too, is that even those radical feminazis have enough intellect to realize that women should have their own opinions. We as a gender don’t– and never should– exist as a monolith. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen from the movement, the climate is a hostile one that is inherently hypocritical. It is a self-proclaimed supporter of equal treatment of men and women, unless you have a conflicting opinion about something, in which case aspects of your gender or sometimes even your sexuality will be torn down and used against you.
Fuck those people. Imagine looking your sister, mother, best friend, daughter in the eye and telling her that unless she does everything in accordance with what women on the internet and TV say is right, she’s not a real girl and her opinions are invalid. Though, it must be noted that Madeleine Albright was part of the second wave of feminism– the women in the 1960s who fought actual legal gender inequalities and opened up the discussion on women’s reproductive rights– and she was the first female Secretary of State. So maybe she’s not just “some woman.” But, she’s spewing off some shit about voting in accordance to your genitalia, so I really don’t know how else to describe her. Oh, you too, Gloria Steinem: she thinks that girls are only voting for Bernie Sanders to get male attention. That’s something else that made me audibly say “what the fuck” at my computer screen. But I think it was more the fact that she’s kind of implying that Bernie is some sort of a man’s man who has an all-straight, strapping male following who can use the slogan “feel the Bern” without drying every vagina in the room right up. You would think that for such prominent women in the 60s feminist movement, they would recognize that when Hillary loses, it’s because she fucking sucks. Not because she’s a woman.
To conclude, there is no excuse for what these women said, no matter how old they are and no matter how involved they were in the last of the legitimate American feminist movements. Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem are like those smug feminists who scoff at “basic bitches” and think that they’re so progressive for shaming young female adults for our Uggs and Starbucks. I’ve seen way too many of those self-proclaimed “feminists” online (and even in person) who are constantly shaming other girls for what they like… because the idea that another girl can have her own preferences and opinions isn’t contradictory to the feminist movement at-fucking-all, right?