According to Heather Wilhelm, feminists are teetering on the brink of a "nervous breakdown":
Why, the chorus goes, is Bernie cast as the future, while Hillary gets painted as “the establishment”? Hillary Clinton is a woman, didn’t you notice? She is by her very nature oppressed; by definition, she cannot be the establishment. Never mind her questionable treatment of the many women who accused her husband of sexual assault; never mind her current classified e-mail quagmire, in which she may have put national security at risk. She is a woman, America. Everything else is chump change.
This lefty-feminist thinking is that women can no more belong to the establishment than blacks can be racists. Why? Because this is true by definition.
At this point I must plug my posts on the illicit use of 'by definition.' Here and here. ("Why must you?" Because it is my self-imposed task people to enlighten people.)
The problem here is that too many women, like too many blacks, are tribal, though not as tribal as blacks. Of course, women are not literally a tribe. Nor is it the case that all women are 'tribal' any more than all blacks are tribal. What do I mean when I say that women, many women, too many women, are 'tribal'? I mean that they place their self-identification as women at the top or near the top of more reasonable and less divisive self-identifications. Any woman who would vote for Hillary just because she is a woman or would place Hillary's being a woman near the top of her reasons for voting for the former Secretary of State is tribal in my sense.
You should vote for the candidate that you think best serves the common good. So if you support Hillary because you think she will best forward the 'progressive' agenda, and you believe in that agenda, then I won't call you 'tribal.' But I will question your judgment. If you really believe in the 'progressive' agenda, shouldn't you be supporting Sanders?
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