Hillary’s political fortunes are driven by out of control cocks.  – Bill Maher

Can we talk about the elephant…or the jackass, in the room?

Yeah.  Bill.

It was really hard for me, and I mean Feminist Me, the chick who refuses to wear high heels because I think they’re a sign of male dominance, to watch Hillary Clinton, her supporters, and prominent feminists feigning outrage over Gropergate, knowing the whole time about Bill.  Young women, you may not remember Bill.  You may not remember the things he did.  But some of us do.  And some of us remember the way that Hillary and many other Clinton supporters defended his bad behavior.

I’m not gonna talk about the allegations.  They are in tons of places online and I don’t think going over it all again, is helpful to the overall debate.   I will simply mention that the late author Christopher Hitchens, a committed leftist and general anti-religion guy, not a right-wing partisan, not a prude, found the allegations plausible enough to write a book where Bill’s troubling sexual hijinks were discussed at great length.  And he believed Hillary Clinton to be very complicit in covering up her husband’s bad behavior.  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2008/01/the_case_against_hillary_clinton.html

The facts are what concern me; two sets of facts in particular.

1)Hillary’s, and Hillary’s supporters’ inconsistency on the issue of sexual assault, at least where Bill is concerned, while simultaneously and hypocritically lambasting their political opponents for the same things.

Firstly – shifting support for rape victims depending on which way the wind is blowing.  Hillary in her own words: “To every survivor of sexual assault…you have the right to be heard.   You have the right to be believed.  We’re with you.”  When she was questioned about this statement during the Democratic primaries in light of the accusations made against her husband, she backpedaled on this and said “well, I would say everyone should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence” (a statement which I completely agree with BTW – but an idea which has been criticized by many far-left feminist activists even despite some prominent cases where there were false allegations made).  Then, she or someone working for her deleted a previous statement for unquestioned solidarity for rape victims from her own website.  Snopes has this down as true, folks, it happened.   http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-right-to-be-believed/

Yuck.

Secondly, Gloria Steinem herself, in a New York Times editorial written in 1998, defended Bill Clinton against groping allegations made against him by a desperate woman in need of money who came to him to beg for a job (very similar to what Donald Trump has been accused of and admitted to on tape) as being “just a clumsy pass.”  This was a widely utilized defense of Bill Clinton at the time and Hillary certainly did not speak out against this interpretation.  They didn’t admit he did it, they just said even if he DID do it, it would have been ok because it was just a clumsy pass.  A grope is ok, according to Steinem, if the woman says no, and then you stop.  Using this logic, apparently it’s ok for Bill to grab a job-seeking woman’s hand and shove it into his crotch – that’s just a horny guy making a pass.  It’s ok for Bill to expose himself to a total stranger and demand that she kiss him (and not on the cheek) because she said no and he stopped.  It’s ok for Bill to grab a woman’s breasts and then tell his girlfriend “I didn’t do that because her tits were too small.”  (Didn’t Donald say that too, supposedly??  I’m starting to see a trend here.)  He could have been more suave, maybe.  Bought her a drink first, or something.

Double yuck.

If anyone can come up with some difference between what Donald did and what Bill did in the groping department, I’m all ears.  Other than that what Bill did is a lot better proven.

2) The victimization of Monica Lewinsky.

Bill Clinton was 49 years old, and the President of the United States when he met and pursued an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky.  She was 22 years old and an INTERN – not an employee, not hired on her merits and education and at least somewhat on an equal footing as her boss, but an intern.   I am of the opinion that it’s almost always wrong for any older man to mack on a much younger woman till she’s at least 25 and 30 is better.   And it’s even worse when it’s a boss-employee kind of situation – it’s the imbalance of power, the idea that you can’t really say no, because if you do, it may cost you your job.   Even if it’s consensual, that imbalance of power may force a woman into a position where she feels she can’t break it off, or she can’t say no to things she is uncomfortable with.  This is especially true for younger, less experienced women.

Additionally, I think it’s gross and wrong when men use and discard women.  Bill had no intention of pursuing a relationship with Monica.  He was using her for sex.  Yet she saved all those sad little mementos of their relationship.  He was using her and I believe she naively hoped for more (that’s where being 22 years old comes into play).  It’s a moral judgement to be sure, but it’s a moral judgement that I feel is a legitimate feminist issue.  The terrible case of Bill and Monica involves an epic misuse of power and male privilege and speaks to the status of women in the workplace, the status of women in society, the role of older women as protectors to younger women, and is at least worthy of serious consideration by anyone who calls themselves a friend to women.

If this had been my husband and I found out he was messing with an innocent young woman, I would kick his ass both publicly and privately.  But Hillary Clinton did not do that.  She was certainly no friend to Monica.  She called her a narcissistic looney toon, employed the “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” tactic to smear Monica’s name and reputation.  Clinton staffers have stated that it was Hillary herself who came up with the “Monica is a stalker” defense to undermine her credibility.  Again, Gloria Steinem betrayed her feminist principles to defend Bill Clinton (because it was consensual, that makes it ok) and again, Hillary didn’t disagree.  Hillary cannot truly call herself a feminist, she just can’t, she doesn’t have the ground to stand on.  A feminist defends another woman when she’s been victimized, she doesn’t slut shame and play the “mentally ill” card when the guy who did the victimizing just so happens to be somebody she likes.

Clinton supporters at the time and still to this day, mock Monica Lewinsky’s weight.  I have never heard Hillary say one word against them.  Miss Piggy, she was allll over that, but Monica Lewinsky being excoriated for the last 2 decades over her weight??  Apparently that’s a-ok.  Slut shaming, body shaming, taking advantage of one’s female employees for sexual gratification – these things are evidently ok with Hillary.  If they weren’t, she’d speak out against it unilaterally and not only when it involved her political opponents.

Hillary Clinton is no feminist.  She never was.  She’s a person who lusts after political power and is willing to exploit and betray feminist solidarity and sacrifice individual women in order to achieve that.  She proved this yet again during the recent election cycle when her minions accused young female Bernie Sanders supporters of being sexists for not voting her way.  In yet another shocking move by Steinem (I think Gloria may need to have her head examined), she came right out and said younger women only voted for Bernie because “that’s where the boys are”.  (!!!)  Maureen Dowd, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Lewinsky case,  has an excellent analysis of the situation and its implications for feminism as a movement.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/when-hillary-clinton-killed-feminism.html

All this stuff, it just makes it really hard to take anyone’s outrage over “Gropergate” seriously.  Bill is no different than Donald.  Both men behaving badly.  But Hillary defended Bill.  She attacked his accusers.  But Donald was to be endlessly taken to task for similar escapades, without even the faintest whiff of irony.  Hillary is not a friend to women, she’s not a defender of women, she is clearly a person for whom political expediency reigns supreme.