Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright Scold Young Women Backing Bernie Sanders

Gloria Steinem, in a Facebook post on Sunday morning, walked back pro-Hillary Clinton comments critics contend are patronizing toward young women. “When older feminists like Albright and Steinem engage in increasingly baseless and wild explanations about why young women don’t support Hillary, they display the limitations of their brand of feminism, while young women like me realize that one’s gender isn’t what makes them a feminist”. At the time, she said young women were supporting Bernie Sanders to meet “boys”.

“Women are more for [Clinton] than men are…First of all, women get more radical as we get older, because we experience…Not to over-generalize, but…men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, women get more radical because they lose power as they age, ” Steinem said. “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys?”

“Like my fellow young feminist women, I recognize that voting for a woman because she’s a woman is sexist, just like voting for a man because he’s a man is also sexist”, said Javidi.

One group of Sanders supporters even launched a petition against her, petulantly demanding that Steinem issue a mea culpa – “we demand that you admit your mistake and apologize” were the exact words in the petition, a phrasing more appropriately leveled at a naughty student by a disciplinarian headmaster than at an adult woman who is a long-time political activist and surely doesn’t need to be sneeringly admonished. Young women, in particular, have been drawn to the septuagenarian socialist from Vermont, and the dynamic has disappointed feminists who dreamed of Mrs. Clinton’s election as a capstone to the movement.

“If he lost his wallet, how many women would be interested?”

What worries me is that one of our greatest feminist leaders believes that only a vote for a woman can be a vote against patriarchal systems of oppression. “The boys are with Bernie…” She considers it’s too early to say there are “no more gender barriers”, but understands that the fact some people think so reflects the very success of the feminist movement. Setting aside whether and how Sanders could ever achieve the political revolution he promises, his emphasis on alleviating economic inequality and upsetting the current balance of power may speak to women who are paid less, promoted less, and taken less seriously than their male counterparts. “You want somebody that values all of your principles and the morals that you stand for”, said Greaves during an interview with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin. “It’s not that we’re not grateful to all the women leaders ahead of us who have cleared the way and created conditions for us to do the work that is important now”.

Similarly, this isn’t to say that plenty of young women don’t like Bernie Sanders for his policy positions, his revolutionary message, and his far-left politics. The lack of support from younger women is something that’s clearly gotten under the skin of some Clinton supporters, particularly women who are of her age and stage. They do. Young women aren’t dumb, and they aren’t pledging allegiance to Sanders just to get the boys.