McClatchy DC is out with a very timely – and surprising – piece on sexual assault and politics. The title asks the question on everybody’s mind: “Why do women’s groups treat Bill Clinton and Donald Trump differently?”
It’s actually quite surprising that a media outlet would dare to go there in light of all the damning revelations of how the Clintons have the media in their pockets.
Groups that advocate for women’s rights are lashing out at Donald Trump for allegations of groping women and bragging about sexual assaults.
But some of those same groups did not think former President Bill Clinton’s allegations of sexual misconduct nearly two decades ago were disqualifying in the same way.
This is the ultimate in feminist hypocrisy. They tell us sexual assault is never ok and that every sexual assault victim must be believed, but in practice what they really mean is sexual assault is ok if you’re a liberal Democrat and any sexual assault victim of a liberal Democrat must be disparaged.
At least three women – Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey – accused Clinton of unwanted sexual advances. Another five, including White House intern Monica Lewinsky, said they had had consensual affairs with him. Clinton was impeached on charges of lying about the Lewinsky affair before a grand jury and of obstruction of justice, but was acquitted and served his full presidential term.
Women’s groups largely stayed supportive.
“Feminists have, all along, muffled, disguised, excused and denied the worst aspects of the president’s behavior with women,” said a lengthy Vanity Fair article from 1998.
“Feminism sort of died in that period,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd told Yahoo recently. “Because the feminists had to come along with Bill Clinton’s retrogressive behavior with women in order to protect the progressive policies for women that Bill Clinton had as president.”
When even Maureen Dowd can recognize and admit the hypocrisy, you know it’s bad. “Journalist” Nina Burleigh infamously said of Bill in 1998, “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”
This is what it really all comes down to. You can kill a girl in Chappaquiddick or rape a woman in Little Rock as long as you support abortion. It makes sense, really, if you support violence against unborn babies in the womb, violence against women to achieve those ends doesn’t seem so bad.
Clinton’s female supporters stood by him, especially as he denied allegations of misconduct, as has Trump. Later, after Clinton admitted to some of the allegations of consensual sex, they did criticize him but still supported him.
They were called hypocrites at the time, particularly when they were among the first to blast conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., for allegations of sexual misconduct.
Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, said Clinton’s situation was entirely different because it came as Republicans were attacking him and his pro-women agenda, including fighting against the Equal Rights Amendment and a law banning discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs.
“For people like me, it was a totally different story and origin,” Smeal told McClatchy this week. “It was a right-wing attack. We saw it as a right-wing effort to draw out of office a president for ideological reasons.”
Oh, of course, it’s “entirely different” because Clinton’s a Democrat. Although, props to her for admitting her bias. Democrats can get away with any kind of abuse towards women, as long as they vote the right way. What’s a little abuse between friends?
Most comments from influential women and women’s groups in 1998 focused on the Lewinsky scandal, which received the most attention because of independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s lengthy investigation and the president’s subsequent impeachment.
Many women declined to even comment about the trio of women who alleged groping, assault or rape – Broaddrick, Jones and Willey.
Shocking feminists only wanted to focus on the consensual relationship between Lewinsky and Bill. However, there is still plenty of hypocrisy to go around with the Lewinsky affair, from them going along with Hillary’s initial blame-the-victim, body-shaming attacks on Monica’s credibility, to the fact that they would be screaming sexual harassment at any other workplace – the most powerful man in the world seduced a young naïve co-ed who couldn’t say no if she wanted to.
“There’s no question that it’s disturbing. . . . But to come to any judgment now is definitely not something that I think is timely,” National Women’s Political Caucus then-President Anita Perez Ferguson said about Willey at the time.
Donna Lent, the current president of the group, said this week that women’s groups were critical of Clinton, angry that he was jeopardizing equality moves such as boosting the number of women in government.
“It was shameful. It was absolutely shameful: the embarrassment, the pain to his wife, his daughter, the public,” Lent said.
The revisionist history is hilarious. Look at the juxtaposition of the National Women’s Political Caucus presidents then and now. From don’t rush to judgment to it’s absolutely shameful. Today’s caucus president is hoping we don’t remember her group’s shameful position 20 years ago, but we cannot let her get away with it.
Betty Friedan, the late activist and leading figure in the women’s movement, had described the attacks on Clinton as sexual McCarthyism. “It does not serve women to try to hound this president out of office. . . . It does not serve women to focus so much attention even on sexual content while the real obscenities are poverty and violence,” she said at the time.
Hmmm, wonder if Friedan would say that same thing today about Trump if she were alive. Just kidding, I know she wouldn’t. Even though you could say the “real obscenities” of poverty and violence have become a problem again today with record numbers of people out of the workforce and on food stamps and the violence increasing across many major American cities. It’s a total double standard based on party politics.
Feminist hypocrisy rears its ugly head once again.
What do you think – are feminist groups being hypocritical in their reaction to Trump after they defended Bill Clinton? Sound off in the comments below!
