More thoughts on Clinton and feminism.

Of course, I won't have completely unpacked my feelings toward Hillary Clinton's candidacy until years after this whole mess is over.

So I just keep blogging things as they occur to me, and hope they illuminate to you and to me why I feel the way I do at any given time.

In making herself masculine, in using words like "obliterate" and "destroy," in vowing revenge and declaring herself ready for that 3:00 AM phone call, in talking about her time shooting things with her father, Hillary Clinton has not only reclaimed the phallus and painted her (male) opponent as more feminine and thus less qualified (except when she wants to claim she's more qualified because she's a woman).

She has proved herself willing to kill.

Because the unnamed part of political power in America is that you have to be willing to kill.

Bill Clinton proved it in Arkansas when he executed a brain-damaged man while pursuing the presidency. John Kerry tried to prove it by continually invoking his military service and going hunting. Michael Dukakis looked like an idiot when he tried to prove it by riding around on a tank. And Dubya, of course, executed his own mentally retarded convict.

And every feminist who recognizes the masculine/feminine, destroy/create binary, the difference between power-to and power-over, and thinks even in passing about state violence, should be disappointed and disgusted with this. Because as many people have said, the point of feminism should not be simply to put women in those positions where men have always been. It should be a starting point for a radical critique of power structures in general. At least, that's my feminism.

(Cross-posted to Season of the Bitch)