Brendan O’Neill (who will receive flack for his opinion because he has a penis) nails it (as I will receive flack for this innuendo-laden metaphor) over at Reason when it comes to women declaring unwavering support for Hillary simply because she, too has a vagina:
The bigger problem with such unabashed declarations of “vagina voting” is that they confirm the descent of feminism into the cesspool of identity politics, even biologism, and its abandonment of the idea that women should be valued more for their minds than their anatomy.
How can contemporary feminists get away with applying the same reasoning that has kept women out of the Oval Office for over 200 years? 2008, of course.
The current president’s victory was celebrated as the watershed moment for black men in America. Thanks to him, Loretta Lynch is the “first black woman” to hold her post as attorney general. The majority of Americans who don’t follow the news beyond the nightly national broadcast don’t know a thing about Lynch beyond the fact that she is black and a woman. Qualifications? Experience? Who cares. Black. Woman. That’s all we need to know. Instagram it and move on.
In an increasingly visual culture, what candidates will the Republicans proffer to fit the demographic bill? Even Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are too white and too male for this tough crowd. If they took a few lessons from Sofia Vergara they might stand half a chance. You know, jazz up that accent, tease the hair, get loud with the wardrobe, be ethnic. Sure, it was a strategy that kept your demographic out of office for the past 200 years, but times have changed. Race is in. Desi Arnaz would stand a better chance than these family values-laden dudes.
O’Neill rightly observes that “…modern feminism is pooping all over the suffragettes, who fought tooth-and-nail against the valuation of their viscera over their brains.” Perhaps that is the new campaign strategy. After all, if Obama and Lynch can screw with MLK’s “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” clause, why can’t Rubio, Cruz and the rest of the Republicans put race back into the race?
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