Responses
Barkan, Joanne
At first glance, Zelda Bronstein seems to make a half-dozen plausible arguments in "Feminist Pundits on Hillary Clinton": to start, feminist pundits didn't pay enough attention to the Clinton...
...then she uses SUMMER • 1997...
...I agree with a generalized—and obvious— version of Bronstein's point about muted criticism: if feminists, leftists, environmentalists, human rights activists, and others want credibility and support, they must speak out when they see violated principles and policy mistakes...
...Too little, too late...
...We used to make helpful distinctions between different kinds of feminists—liberal feminists, radical feminists, socialist feminists, bourgeois feminists, and so on...
...second, feminist pundits didn't pressure Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) hard enough for the single-payer model...
...The single-payer health care model comes from the socialist tradition, from the left...
...and sixth, by muting their criticism of HRC and other women with political clout, feminist pundits have squelched dialogue and further enfeebled an already debilitated women's movement...
...how long...
...Her scattered examples from the work of almost twenty writers don't add up to a compelling case...
...She criticizes HRC's appointment to head the health care task force primarily because of the potential abuse of power...
...On the contrary, one can imagine a feminist giving highest priority to increasing women's power in Washington and to creating a visible model for new marriage roles and therefore supporting HRC's appointment...
...fifth, they didn't debate "public partnership marriage" sufficiently with respect to its effect on women or the issue of power without accountability...
...Yet one can imagine a non feminist liberal or a principled conservative (admittedly a rare breed) condemning HRC's appointment on exactly the same grounds—as a violation of democratic principles...
...In the end, the pundits let the rest of the feminist world down by never adequately defending what Bronstein assumes to be feminist positions on health care and political partnership marriages...
...She assumes that feminism is so monolithic that all people calling themselves feminists should hold the same positions on health care and political partnership marriages...
...Of course, unlike Rodham Clinton, many of the feminist pundits whom Bronstein criticizes consider themselves leftists and supporters of single payer...
...I call Bronstein's arguments plausible, but I don't find them convincing...
...they might want less government in health care, they might not favor the redistribution of resources, they might not be leftists...
...98 • DISSENT...
...As a functioning system in the real world, it belongs to the "classic" social democratic program that many European nations implemented after the Second World War...
...I'm a feminist who happens to agree with these positions, but I don't understand why the positions are inherently feminist...
...The overall picture of feminist pundits on Rodham Clinton gets more muddled when Bronstein describes (as she should) how several pundits changed their positions over time and criticized HRC more vigorously...
...At first glance, Zelda Bronstein seems to make a half-dozen plausible arguments in "Feminist Pundits on Hillary Clinton": to start, feminist pundits didn't pay enough attention to the Clinton administration's health care reform effort...
...but these criteria remain vague and subjective...
...97 Arguments this particular world of feminism as the setting for her entire discussion of health care reform and as the standard for evaluating a slew of writers and Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...third, they didn't criticize HRC long enough or hard enough for proposing a different model...
...But why does Bronstein expect left feminist writers as politically diverse as Erica Jong, Ruth Rosen, and Katha Pollitt to prioritize issues the same way or to argue them with the same intensity...
...the pundits can counter that they did plenty...
...Feminists—by definition, it seems— have single-payer health care as a top priority...
...Bronstein, however, seems to assume that feminists are leftists by definition...
...She evaluates criticism of Rodham Clinton in quantitative terms (how hard...
...and there we are—at an unenlightening impasse...
...It was easy to imagine an upper-middle-class woman who fervently supported the right to abortion and wanted to smash the glass ceiling in employment but didn't care about public funding for abortions for poor women...
...Yes, they did say the correct thing here and there, but even the improved positions didn't satisfy Bronstein...
...She expects feminist pundits to do the same...
...It doesn't make sense to analyze this violation in terms of feminism...
...What troubles me most are Bronstein's implicit presuppositions...
...But they'll speak more forcefully when their underlying assumptions are sorted out...
...fourth, they didn't criticize HRC long enough or hard enough for bungling the entire reform effort...
...She insists the feminist pundits did too little...
...She could legitimately call herself a (liberal) feminist and not support single-payer health care...
...In the case of HRC, rejecting the single-payer model probably had more to do with her not being a leftist than with her inadequate feminism...
...Quantitative standards obviously work well in some evaluations, but they don't in Bronstein's article...
...how much...
...feminists don't approve of politicians appointing their unelected spouses to important policymaking positions because spouses have too much access to power...
...I think similarly flawed assumptions muddy the way Bronstein analyzes the political partnership marriage...
...Many feminists might support single payer because it looks like the most just and humane model, but other feminists might not support it...
Vol. 44 • July 1997 • No. 3
