Gender
and Jealousy.
Written
by Zillah Eisenstein
to The New York Times Magazine,
August 8, 2007
Who
knows if Mary Gordon meant to say what Deborah Solomon has chosen
to print in her interview. I usually respect and value Gordon’s
words. But Gordon’s depiction of women’s attitudes toward
Hillary is unfounded and even stupid. I thought the old com-petitive
way of viewing women as always jealous of each other had been put
to rest. But Gordon authorizes this supposed jealousy and even assumes
that this leads to the impossibility of electing a woman president
in the U.S. Forget that Chile, Liberia, Germany, etc. have already
done so. I cannot help wondering which women Mary Gordon is thinking
of. The black women who have chosen Hillary over Obama? The white
pro-gressive women who think Obama or Edwards will be better at
ending the war and in-stituting universal health care? There are
real political issues at hand here, not just libido. If Hillary
does not win, it isn’t because she is a woman, or that women
are jealous of her marriage to Bill and won’t vote for her.
(How could anyone in their right mind want her marriage?) Instead,
if she loses, the nomination or the presidency, it is because it
does not matter enough that she is female, that she has no women’s
agenda on day care, health care, equal pay, etc…an agenda
needed by men almost as much as women. If Hillary is not triumphant,
it may simply be because the voters, especially women, see a sexual
decoy—a female presenting a militarist, manly agenda, despite
her newly changing positions on Bush’s failed policies in
Iraq.
— Zillah Eisenstein
— Ithaca, New York
EDITOR’S NOTE:
A response to the following portion of an interview (Deborah
Solomon, “Questions for Mary Gordon: Her Mother, Her Self”)
which appeared in the August 5 issue of the magazine...
Deborah Solomon:
Are you a Hillary Clinton supporter?
Mary Gordon:
I think no woman is electable in America, and particularly not Hillary,
because she is married to this guy whom everyone is libidinally
attached to. I think there is unconscious sexual jealousy of her
among women.
Zillah Eisenstein is the author of ten books, the most recent published
this past spring, 2007, Sexual Decoys, Race, Gender and War.
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