Why Some Feminists Aren’t Supporting Hillary Clinton

Quite a few feminist activists are not supporting Hillary Clinton in her bid for the presidency. And that may seem odd, given that she's the first viable woman candidate to run for the White House. She remains highly suspect to her cohort: middle- and upper-middle-class educated and professional white women over 40 years old.

Rebecca Traister gives her own reason why she's not supporting her:

Unlike its sister gem, "I'm not a feminist, but ..." (an utterance that nearly always gives away the fact that its speaker is in fact a feminist), the Hillary disavowal, in my case, has been true: I really am not a Hillary Clinton supporter. A feminist by trade, I have wished that I could get behind Clinton, a woman I admired when she first arrived in the White House 15 years ago. But there has been nothing in her steady, ineluctable move to the center that I could embrace; I understood why she did it, but it cost her my support.

The sad fact is that Clinton has felt compelled to run as a stereotypical male. In her own mind it is only a certain kind of man who is qualified to be president and she will be that man: tough on everything from war, flag burning, kids' access to video games, illegal immigrants and Palestinians. She has missed the opportunity to talk about what it really means for women to be equal in this country. She has shown no interest in using her extensive international experience to push for more women in party leadership, state legislatures and even the Senate. A woman candidate who considered her gender a strength (as opposed to something she needed to overcome) would announce a series of measures specifically designed to ensure that women's needs and rights were at the forefront of her agenda.