Since Bernie Sanders was first announced as an opening-night speaker at the upcoming Women’s Convention in Detroit, a small but vocal group of people started expressing their outrage. Fueled by misleading headlines like “Bernie Sanders Headlining An Event Called The Women’s Convention Is Peak 2017”, citizens and professional pundits maintained it was bad to let Sanders, a man, speak at a convention devoted to the political advancement of women’s rights.
There was even a Change.org petition, which was successful at getting Sanders moved to a panel. It may or may not shock you to learn that despite my intense commitment to feminism, I do not share their anger. In fact, I’m a little annoyed the organizers caved. (After all this, Sanders announced on Thursday that he would be skipping the event altogether in order to visit Puerto Rico.)
Sanders was meant to be one of 60+ speakers, all of whom but two are women. (As far as I know, there are zero transgender or gender non-binary speakers booked, but no one seems to care about that.) Sanders was never the “headliner;” Congresswoman Maxine Waters, whose phrase “reclaiming my time” was adopted as the convention’s tagline, was and remains so.
I agree that women’s movements must be spearheaded by women and gender non-conforming folk, but men have a role to play, too, and two out of 60 seems like a safe ratio.
While not everyone criticizing the organizers’ decision is motivated by 2016 resentment, the Change.org petition contains a good amount of it. Among other things, it accuses Sanders of “contribut[ing] to a decades-long campaign of deception about the record of Hillary Clinton,” hardly an objective or verifiable claim, and “attack[ing] the Democratic party,” as if that’s synonymous with being anti-woman.
Sanders’ efforts to help elect Democrats (including Clinton) aside, pretending the Democratic party is inherently aligned with women’s interests and thus above critique is a dangerous false equivalency that’s been used to silence left-critics for decades.
The petition also accuses Sanders and the convention’s organizers of “stoking factional divisions among natural allies … especially women and minorities,” which seems to refer to disagreements between self-described feminists on the question of Clinton v Sanders, which is often a proxy for the more relevant battle of neoliberalism versus social democracy.
But while there’s less disagreement among progressives than some people want you to think — a 2017 Economist/YouGov poll found 80% of people who voted for Clinton for president favor expanding Medicare to cover all Americans — these are important debates to be having.
To suggest that they’re in any way Sanders’ doing, and that women and minorities cannot handle having them, is fairly infantilizing. They still don’t understand that for Sanders’ feminist supporters, it’s never been about him specifically, but the ideas for which he advocates.
Perhaps the most valid argument against Sanders’ inclusion in the event is his handling of the Heath Mello debacle, for which I myself have criticized him. While the Omaha mayoral candidate promised he posed no present or future danger to reproductive rights, Sanders muddied the waters with a statement that could fairly be interpreted as saying Democrats should compromise on choice if it helps them win elections.
But prominent Democrats – including Nancy Pelosi, Tim Kaine, and Hillary Clinton – have made innumerable unambiguous statements of this nature. That doesn’t make it OK, but it does call critics’ sincerity into question.
If we are to judge people on policy, not gaffes, Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan would do more for reproductive rights in America than anything since Roe v Wade with comprehensive coverage of abortion care.
And true reproductive freedom includes the freedom to have and adequately care for children, a choice that would be empowered by the kind of broad, redistributive programs for which Sanders is an effective messenger.
Beyond abortion rights, he’s shown a lifelong dedication to many issues that affect women and gender non-binary people disproportionately to men, including healthcare, education, housing, and workers’ rights.
By inviting the most famous face of class politics to be one of many speakers at their conference, the Women’s Convention was strengthening its project by looking at all of the ways women are oppressed – including economically.
If you really care about women, it might be smart to stop bickering over who gets the best slot and get to work on some of these crucial issues.
