A Memo to Hillary Clinton Re: Second and Third Wave Feminists
Feb. 12, 2016
By Shulamit Reinharz
To: Hillary Clinton
Cc: Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright and Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Date: Right after your defeat in New Hampshire
From: Shulamit Reinharz
I am writing to give you an idea, Hillary, for salvaging your connection with young women so you can win the primaries in the many states ahead of you.
But first, an anecdote that foreshadowed this controversy between the feminist generations. In September 2015, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute invited Letty Cottin Pogrebin to have a public conversation with Anita Hill, who, as you know, is a distinguished university professor at Brandeis. The audience included fabulous women in their 60s and up, and terrific women of college age. By the time the conversation was over, the older women of the second feminist wave were astonished and the younger women of the third wave were insulted. Little did I realize that this event would portend the future and the primary elections.
The problem was that Pogrebin actually berated the young women, telling them they are "navel-gazers" who think about their "piercings," and don’t know how to protest to create change about anything important. Pogrebin disparaged the Occupy Wall Street movement as little more than drum circles with no strategy.
After the event, my colleagues, friends and I tried to sort it out. Then, it happened again on the campaign trail. Why are some second-wave icons like Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright and Letty Cottin Pogrebin being so rude to third-wavers? Why would Steinem accuse them of flocking to Bernie Sanders to find men? Why would Albright threaten them with hell if they didn't support Hillary Clinton? Who uses words like that any more? I hope second-wavers are not embittered that they did all the work and are not being appreciated by the third wavers. What a petty perspective that would be.
Instead of just stating my horror at all of this, however, I would like to suggest something for Hillary Clinton, who unfortunately has become entangled in this second wave-third wave mess. How about taking this tactic?
Tell them: "I'm so glad to see that many of you have come to this rally to support me. I would like to explain something important. I am a woman! A proud woman who has faced some tough challenges in my life, like when my husband's sexual relations with a young female intern was front-page news all over the world, for weeks, if not months. I faced a really tough challenge in 2008 when I lost the presidential primaries and did not become the Democratic Party's nominee. These two are just the tip of the iceberg. But they didn’t break me. The reason — in part — is that I was inspired by history.
I knew about first-wave feminists of the 19th-century who fought for 75 years to get the vote. I became part of the second wave with an agenda that went way beyond suffrage, but faced seemingly insurmountable challenges. We wanted the Equal Rights Amendment, but we failed. We wanted equal pay, but we failed. We wanted universal access to free and safe abortion and first we won and then still failed. We wanted equal rights for people regardless of sexual orientation and, and finally, we won.
We tried very hard. We had many victories, but many failures, too. Now, I want to work with you, with women and men of the third wave. I know you will continue to work on the issues we took up and I hope you will succeed. But you will also work on new issues. It's your turn. You have a strong and complex agenda. You have embraced environmental feminism, you have told us that Black Lives Matter, you are teaching everyone about transgender issues. You are teaching us about Islamophobia and finding ways for Jews, Christians and Muslims to help each other. We need to work with you. We need to support you. Please support us as well.
We, your mothers of the second wave, want to hear much more from you, anytime, anywhere, so that the women's movement will not have a generational gap, but rather will share the momentum for change. Work with me; I want to work with you."
Shulamit Reinharz, founder and director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, is the Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology and director of the Women’s Studies Research Center.