Robin Morgan wrote the 1970 essay breaking free from the politics of accommodation as it affected women. She says she has avoided writing another "Goodbye" essay until now.
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.htmlI am posting a few lines from each part of the Goodbye:
Goodbye to the double standard...
Young political Kennedys -- Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby, Jr. -- all endorse Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort, "See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.
Goodbye to toxic viciousness...
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles." Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group, "Citizens United Not Timid" (check the capital letters). John McCain answering, "How do we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" would he have dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard"
Goodbye to the news-coverage target practice...
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white...
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy, being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah...We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it was never about qualifications after all.
Goodbye, goodbye to...
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power --granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives and widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the first pathway "in" permitted to women Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan ... far to many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide...
And goodbye to the ageism...
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from its torpor it's useful to triage the single largest demographic in the country's history, the boomer generation, the majority of which is female?
Old women are the one group that doesn't grow more conservative with age...
And one last thing:
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There's not a woman alive, who, if she's honest doesn't recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with everything Bill.
So listen to her voice.