Motherloving Republicans? In a word: no. In more words: no, not even the Republican candidate who is a mother. To complicate matters further, I want to suggest that a Democrat cannot support mothers, either. Getting any kind of feminist agenda on the presidential platform will require a new, revolutionary mass movement of women (and men) to disrupt these tumultuous, misogynistic political fever swamps.
My first campaigns were for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. (Minnesotans don’t have the plain-old Democratic Party, just the DFL.) I was 14 or so. I tucked my Christmas cards from Paul Wellstone into the paneling in my bedroom. My great-grandfather sold a little peat to Roosevelt, thanks to the Dust Bowl and the New Deal, which put him in the relatively elevated position of being able to house other poor people in his barn and feed them three squares. My household was centered around union organizing. I swooned not at pop concerts but Bill Clinton rallies. Apparently, Clinton put a lot of effort into having that effect on women.
Despite the fact that I was infected at childhood with FDR-Democratitis, even I couldn’t stomach Bill Clinton after my adolescence, when I witnessed the federal government and media’s failure to address Anita Hill’s testimony with the integrity required by the situation. There was a revolution in sexual harassment law. Where’d it go?
It is obvious to us now that Clinton, like Clarence Thomas, is a perpetrator. Is this a political position? Misogyny is a cesspool ideology. Lacking as it does human creative intelligence it is available to all men, and the women who support it, liberal and conservative, Republicrat or Demublican.
The fact that Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are humiliated as competitors within a male-supremacist political arena does not justify the presence of all that blood dripping off their hands. So-called minority candidates change the face of Imperial Amerikkka, just its face.
Have you thought about what these people do with lives? Neither of these candidates is pro-woman. True mother lovers organize to protect the substance of motherhood itself. The Welfare Warriors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is an example of a group like this. They declare often in lobbying initiatives that their work as mothers is work that deserves compensation, and also that children deserve decent lives. These women publish a periodical, Mother Warrior’s Voice, consistently aligning their struggles as poor American black, brown and white mothers with the military strategy and political analyses of organized women around the world. You should subscribe to this publication; do so at welfarewarriors.org.
On campus, in the meantime, mothers and other women (and men) ought to organize scholarly and other activities to put a better feminism on the national agenda. Take a quick look through the campus directory and find all of the Centers dedicated to activities compatible with feminism. This is especially important for women who, overly burdened by the defenses they construct to handle the elitist, racist presumptions of some of their professors, sometimes close the door on professional mentorship and, sadly, a meaningful profession. Students who are fed up with white supremacy and faux feminism and want to align their classroom work with meaningful political and professional goals, but don’t know where to look, should contact me for more information. Let me know. I can be reached at [email protected].