hillary clinton and the women abandoning women syndrome

LOOK at this picture. Scary, isn’t she. Good thing there’s a better man afoot.

I’ve been thinking about the “abandon the fallen woman” motif.

You know, the one that allows us to ralley behind a strong intelligent woman and then throw her off of a bridge when we become holier than she is? So we can be prettier, sexier, and less dogmatic than the raving madwoman she has become?

I happen to know a lot about the abandon the woman syndrome.

The thing is, we like to put a spotlight on strong intelligent creative women. We like them to shine. We like them to stand up for us–look what we can do.

Then we like to crucify them, because in the end, when they begin to draw the hatred and disdain of a culture who still can’t handle a woman in power, we don’t want to be associated with them. And when they make choices we don’t like, we turn on them like spoiled sisters.

Why those she-bitches from hell.

By the way. The “we” I’m talking about? I mean women.

When I was 15 I made my big “break” from my abusive father in a showdown argument in the garage. There was nothing else he could do to me after that day. I simply became a son and fought the paradigmatic fight and got myself out.

Of course my father’s abuse left major scars on my mind and body, so even though I was “free” and strong and smart and brave, I was also fucked up, and I made some self destructive choices coming out of the tornado. When I turned to heroin to dull the pain of my oedipal childhood, my friends abandoned me. Because I made a giant mistake. A not pretty mistake. A not smart mistake. An embarrassing to be around mistake.

Yep, they dumped me like a leper.

When I was 20 I had a beautiful baby girl who died.  All the women friends I had who were mothers or about to be mothers stopped being able to talk to me or look at me.  You wouldn’t believe the sentences that came out of their mouths as they tried not to have to be around me.  To this day the only women capable of really talking to me about having a dead daughter are women who have disabled, or troubled, children, or other women whose children have died.

My motherhood failure became their monsterhood fears.

When I divorced my second husband, who was a BIG TIME charismatic, chaotic, womanizing, alcoholic man-boy, I fled. I left the state. And none of my friends supported me. They stopped calling, they didn’t want to know how I was, my failure at my marriage became their failures and it was no fun to be around me. Me the symbol of the failed marriage. Me the thing they feared would happen to them.

Yep, they dumped me like a sad housewife.

When I had an affair with a grad student at my spanky Visiting Writer job in San Diego, I was fired. Quite dramatically. It didn’t matter that three of my older, tenured, male colleagues had been sleeping with their students for, oh, about 40 years (they still are, by the way, ancient as they are becoming). None of my male colleagues supported me (though they were pretty excited to hire me and put their hands near my body when I arrived). My female colleagues abandoned me like rats leaving a sinking ship. They actually spoke out against me and my sexual excess. And the chair of the department, who was female, actually told me I should be ashamed of myself (for dating a 30 year old man who was my student).

And to make matters worse, because I knew this man was it for me, and we decided to go for it, we got pregnant, on purpose, in love, to make a family. So the last few months of my job there I was big with belly, and I came very close to painting a giant red “A” on my belly as fuck you to anyone who looked at me. Because in the end all the hatred and shame being projected at me couldn’t hold a candle to the risk we took to make a life together as artists, lovers, and parents.

Yep, they dumped me like a whore.

By the way. I’ve been married to that man for 8 years now. We have a brilliant, beautiful, 6 year old son. My male colleagues are still sleeping with students whenever they want, carrying the mystique of the great male artist in their pants.

Lots of people have told me that I have helped them, or that I have given them inspiration in their lives for various reasons. As a teacher. A writer. A mother or friend. But I know what it’s like to be shunned, to be demonized, to be abandoned by women when I make choices they don’t like, or choices that make them have to face themselves.

I think maybe Hillary Clinton is on her way to losing the primary election. But I have no intention of abandoning her until she is literally out of the race. I’m quite able to stand up for women who have the courage to live human lives–with all of their mistakes and victories out front where people can see them.

So I don’t care who she married or what happened to her marriage. And I don’t believe in this idiotic “fall of the house of clinton” saga that William Kristol has cooked up. And I refuse to join the posse of banshee women who hate her guts, because you know what? It’s probably your own guts you are hating, and I’m not in the self loathing body anymore, so I don’t have to hate women who are human, just like me.

So all you Hillary Haters? Fuck all y’all.

And in your dazzlement of Obama…try to keep in mind why, how, and when we tend to fall for the equally fictional character and theme of the charismatic male. If he is indeed going to be the nominee, can we please keep our intelligence about us as we support him, and stop sucking his dick?