Feminist icons have condemned young women for backing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and unleashed a wave of backlash from the very demographic Hillary Clinton needs to engage most.

A recent series of comments made by prominent feminists Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem have suggested that millennial women are betraying their gender by not supporting Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first woman to be elected president.

At a Clinton campaign event last week, Albright, the first woman to be secretary of state, voiced her generational frustrations with young women as Bernie Sanders supporters. She suggested that this voter demographic didn’t understand older women’s “climbing of the ladder”  toward gender equality, flippantly stating, “It’s not done. There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

Taking the sentiment a step further in a subsequent interview on Real Time with Bill Maher, Steinem explained how women tend to get more radical with age and that young women are backing Sanders with the intent of attracting men.

“When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’” Steinem said.

With the ironic use of sexist rhetoric, these feminist icons implied millennial women, who overwhelmingly support Sanders, either do not recognize the fight of older generations of women in overcoming systemic oppression or that we are blindly driven by libido in our political decisions. The implication that young women vote with frivolous concern or don’t exercise independent political autonomy is incredibly derisive. We vote for various and profound reasons, shame not being one of them.

Albright’s and Steinem’s backing, should have boosted Clinton’s appeal to young women, but instead have only severed her further from a demographic she desperately needed to reach. In an ironic twist of fate, their comments have done a great disservice to Clinton’s feminist identity. After all, it is absurdly anti-feminist to not consider both candidates with equal weight.

In response to the backlash, some have defended Albright and Steinem claiming that their remarks were intended to be “tongue-in-cheek,” but the underlying connotations, especially having come from powerful feminists, were undeniably shocking and insulting regardless.

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press earlier this month, Clinton defended Albright’s comment, calling it a “light-hearted, but very pointed remark.”

She also raised the valid point that statements can often be taken out of context and sensationalized, particularly due to modern Americans’ culture of political correctness.

However, without attacking semantics, their statements both point to the flawed logic that women should vote for Clinton simply based on her gender. With that same rationale, black Americans are obliged vote for Ben Carson and Latinos for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), but clearly voters don’t — and shouldn’t — vote on the sole basis of shared identities.

With the implication that Sanders’ supporters are somehow anti-feminist by inadvertently hindering Clinton’s progress as a woman, it seems to be long-forgotten that many of Sanders supporters were initially pleading for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run before he entered the race. Millennial women are paying attention to issues and they have expressed from the very beginning that they want a more progressive candidate than Clinton.

Sanders and Clinton stand nearly identical on women’s issues including pay equity, reproductive rights and paid family leave. But Sanders appeals to millennials in particular on a range of issues, the main of which being his challenge to corporate interests that have greatly compromised our democracy.

“We have to think about what might be alienating young people from Hillary Clinton in broader terms,” said Cecilia Green, an associate professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

“Young women may feel that Clinton represents a disembodied feminism that is simply not enough,” said Green. “They may see in Sanders’ campaign a social movement that can advance ideas of intersectionality, encompassing feminism in a wider context along with issues of economic and social justice.”

Millennials are increasingly concerned with social justice causes and recognize that they are rarely, if ever, mutually exclusive. Sanders has been consistently more progressive on a range of issues, including income wealth inequality, LGBTQ rights and college affordability, all of which having contributed to a network of oppression. Those that believe that feminism is a multifaceted movement affected by various institutions of inequality, have hope in the “revolution” that Sanders proposes.

The insinuation that a male candidate can’t advance feminist policy is passé. A vote for Sanders is not a vote against feminism. It is simply just delaying the milestone achievement of a president who is a woman on the timeline of the feminist movement.

The concept of a woman as president is revolutionary given the progress women have made and have yet to make, and I want to support women, but my vote is not unconditional.

On Election Day, I’ll be voting for the candidate whose policies I deem best for the future of our country — and certainly not who I think will impress men.

Mia Tomasello is a junior environmental communications major at SUNY ESF. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at atomasel@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @MiaTomasello1.

Published on February 17, 2016 at 1:56 am