Barack Obama and Feminism

While Geraldine Ferraro is claiming that Barack Obama is "sexist," and many female voters who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary are threatening to vote for McCain, it becomes valuable to look at what Barack Obama's influences are, what his experiences have been, and what these as well as his actions stand to say about his character.

Barack Obama was raised by a woman who would be seen as fulfillment of liberal womanhood. Not only was she a major motive force behind the highly successful international microloan program, but she was a white woman who married a black man; who supported her son by herself when her husband decided to go to Harvard; who got a PhD in anthropology while living in Indonesia; and whose work and activism made it possible for millions of people around the world to rise out of poverty using their own actions. This woman has been the main formative female influence on Barack Obama, and to claim that he is somehow backward in his attitudes toward women is ridiculous. This is not someone raised by a backward woman, but somebody raised by a woman who was significantly more intelligent, more free-thinking, more accomplished, and more dedicated to improving people's condition around the world, than many who call themselves feminists. Barack Obama has not only gained from her real strength and vision, but also more enlightened attitudes toward women than are practiced by the same.

There have throughout history been many forms of feminism, and some have been better than others. I speak of a form that has been most loud and most destructive, having faith that people can recognize that there are better directions that women's rights can and should take. Gender feminism - the ideology that claims that all differences between men and women are culturally determined, and that there is nothing inherently different between women and men - is fundamentally misogynistic and totalitarian at the same time. First it attacks the woman's right to all the qualities that are natural to women more than they are to men - to female physicality and all that comes with it, which gender feminists claim to be a cultural construct but which biology, anatomy, anthropology, social history and experience of anyone who's been a parent knows to have a natural component, and which natural component has expressed in it many beautiful, positive, profound and life-nurturing qualities that are not found - or not as easily found - in males. Then, having taken away from the woman the right to her physical nature, it goes straight for her individuality, using its claim of having liberated women from patriarchy to dictate what women can feel, what they can think, how they can behave, how they can look, and what kind of lives and relationships they are allowed to have. 

In the first step, such feminism eviscerates women by denying them the right to their physical nature as women and to all the valuable, strengthening and positive qualities that come with this nature. In the second step, it disempowers them still further by denying them the right to their human nature - the nature as beings of volitional consciousness, capable of meaningful individuality, meaningful selfhood and meaningful choice over their lives. To such feminists, not only is expressed femininity loathsome but so is expressed individuality, both of which pose a threat - the first by threatening their central ideological claim; the second by threatening their claim that they represent the best interests of all women. And it is women at the receiving end of such ideologies who have been most injured by their self-proclaimed leaders - the self-proclaimed leaders who aim to take away from those they claim to be serving, but in fact are more interested in controlling, both the right to their physical nature as women and the right to their general human nature as beings of choice. 

That many aspects of "traditional" women's roles are wrongful, oppressive, insulting and inapplicable for many women, is undeniable. But to claim that there is nothing inherently different between women and men, is absurd. And while there are naturally tomboyish females and naturally effeminate males, the ideal of unisex is one that makes people into robots rather than into free women or free men. To abuse in the name of women's empowerment both the women who seek to express the feminine nature and the women who seek to practice meaningful individuality - in the process destroying beauty, culture, romance, passion, and freedom, without creating anything better - is something that would be expected from Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. And while this type of feminism has been branded by those on the Right as "feminazism," a more truthful name would be femi-Maoism; which, like Maoism, is misconceived and results according to its own nature in great wrongs. Not only do women deserve better representation, but so does America; and that means moving American feminism away from this direction and toward directions that are more democratic, more life-affirming, more based in human reality, and thus more capable of affectuating real improvement in women's lives.

Feminism would do a far better service to women by working with instead of against the letter and spirit of American constitution and acknowledging, supporting and protecting, at every meaningful level and to the same extent as for men, the women's constitutional rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The first clause (life) means being able to be themselves - both in their physical nature as women and in their human nature as beings of volitional consciousness with ability to choose who to be and how to live. The second of this (liberty) means freedom to express both natures without violence or discrimination, and with meaningful protection against the same. And the third (pursuit of happiness) means being able to strive for happiness and fulfilment - as a woman, as a person, as her individual self - likewise without violence or discrimination, either from men or from other women. This should fulfil all the rightful demands of feminism - the right for women to have equal rights and freedoms with men; the right for women to be in control of their minds, their lives and their bodies; the right for women to shape their own destiny; the right for women to have protection against all who would mistreat them - while doing away with the wrongs that have come with feminism as it has been practiced in recent years. At which point feminism will move away from a negative misdirection and become again a movement consistent in every way with America's founding principles. And then it could rightfully claim a place that it has had in the past - the place as part of the true progressive agenda of constitutional democracy and human rights.

In Obama, we are seeing superior influences, superior experience, as well as superior choices as to what to do with the preceding. He has been raised by a woman who very much thought for herself, acted with courage and initiative, and affectuated a great and profound improvement in lives of many; he has also himself seen many ways of life and many aspects of human experience and has made the choice to understand and make most of them all. He has lived in different settings and knows first-hand the experience of different places and different cultures; he has knowledge and experiential understanding possessed by different cultures and distinct individuals; he cares about people in all these positions, and he has an amazing ability as a unifier as well as a drive to improve matters for America and the rest of the world. He is someone rich both in intellect and compassion, who not only can understand people in far more positions than most politicians have ever made a serious attempt to understand, but also know what they need to do to improve their condition and not be shy to say so outright. 

As someone who's written extensively on social issues in public forums, I know what is faced by those who speak honestly about matters of society and culture. From the Southern-style see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-or-you-are-evil, to politically correct-style you-cannot-say-anything-bad-about-any-cultural-group, to pseudoacademic-style do-not-ever-make-generalizations-even-when-they-are-reflected-in-statistics-and-explained-by-root-causes, to Midwestern-style there-is-no-such-thing-as-society-so-we-will-create-an-extremely-controlling-society-and-hope-you-don't-notice, to spiritualist-style whatever-you-say-about-another-person-is-a-reflection-of-you, the public discourse is full of distortions designed to keep things from being clearly stated or clearly addressed. And here is Obama coming forth and straight to tell black fathers to take care of their children, to tell lower-class white people to kick their scapegoating habit, to tell American elites to pay attention to their constituents, and to tell the schoolchildren to do their lessons instead of beating up on the classmates who do theirs. Breaking through doubletalk and into actual understanding, Obama has been able both to clearly see the issues and masterfully communicate them while skillfully avoiding the traps. With brilliance, compassion, broad-based experience, curiousity, courage, piercing honesty, and drive to improve matters for people, this man speaks truthfully and knowledgeably about what many would want unacknowledged and silenced and hidden beyond the veil. It is this attitude that makes possible not only to actually understand situations, but likewise to propose effective solutions that resolve matters to the core and completely - instead of partially and with tons of negative side effects, as have such solutions as patriarchy and political correctness.

Being who he is, and having been raised by whom he has been raised, Barack Obama knows first-hand, and at a very profound level, that women, like men, do not have a single "place" or come in a single typology. Which puts him in better category than either traditional patriarchal men or the women who claim most loudly to be feminists, both of whom create totalitarian coercion to either one or the other concept of the preceding, Instead his own life, as well as the life of his first female influence, show a much superior path to that preached by both parties: The path of thinking for oneself and creating not only situations that are beneficial for oneself and one's immediates, but also of going far beyond the call of self-interest to understand others - many of them people from whom one has nothing to gain, or who are not part of one's social group or ethnicity - well enough to develop and implement informed, insightful and highly successful solutions for them.

Barack Obama's mother is in many ways a more interesting, more individualized and more impressive woman than Hillary Clinton. As for Obama himself, he is a man who can bring into the White House the kind of brilliance and visionary courage that has been missing from it since the days of Theodore Roosevelt or at least FDR. And while Hillary Clinton is an extraordinary person in her own right, coming this close to being nominated is hardly a humiliation. Hillary Clinton still has a chance to become the first female President. She is neither old nor sick, and she has enough brains and political capital to become President anytime in the next two decades. 

As for Barack Obama, his having run a genuine and respectful primary campaign with a woman opponent, and being able to work with her afterwards, should convince any person of any kind of sense that he has respect for women as much as that he is a gentleman. Which would also show that there are viable alternatives besides patriarchal traditionalism and political correctness, and that some highly effective people practice such alternatives with great success.