We sat around the din­ner table, a group of 50-some­thing pro­gres­sive fem­i­nists, talk­ing to a friend from Eng­land about pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics. We were all for Hillary, weren’t we, he asked. Hillary? We hat­ed Hillary. He was tak­en aback. Weren’t we her base? Wasn’t she one of us? Why did we hate Hillary?

Hillary wants to be more like a man in her demeanor and politics, leaving some basic tenets of feminism in the dust. She is like patriarchy in sheep's clothing.

Of course, a lot of peo­ple seem to hate Hillary. Accord­ing to some polls, any­where from 39 to 50 per­cent of respon­dents claim they’d vote against her no mat­ter what; her ​“neg­a­tives” con­tin­ue to be high. Many of these are Repub­li­cans and men. But many are not. Accord­ing to a Har­ris poll in March, 52 per­cent of mar­ried women said they would not vote for her. Near­ly half of adults say they dis­like her per­son­al­i­ty and her pol­i­tics. Unlike her hus­band, peo­ple seem to find her cold and don’t see her con­nect­ing with every­day peo­ple, and this is espe­cial­ly true for mar­ried women. Iron­i­cal­ly, it is Gen Xers, those between 31 and 42, who give her the most support.

So what gives? For peo­ple like my friends and me, her hawk­ish posi­tion on Iraq and her insis­tence that the U.S. main­tain a mil­i­tary pres­ence there even after the troops are with­drawn have been very dis­ap­point­ing. But it’s more than any spe­cif­ic posi­tion. Women don’t trust Hillary. They see her as an oppor­tunist; many feel betrayed by her. Why?

Baby boomer women grew up with the Fem­i­nine Mys­tique and then came of age with the Women’s Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment. As a result, mil­lions of us have spent our lives craft­ing a com­pro­mise – or a fusion – between fem­i­nin­i­ty on the one hand and fem­i­nism on the oth­er. And for many of us fem­i­nism did not mean try­ing to be more like men. It meant chal­leng­ing patri­archy: try­ing to bring equi­ty to fam­i­ly life, human­iz­ing the work­place, pri­or­i­tiz­ing women’s issues in pol­i­tics, and con­fronting the dan­gers of mil­i­tarism and impe­ri­al­ism. And mil­lions of us fought (and con­tin­ue to fight) these bat­tles wear­ing lip­stick, skirts and a smile: the mas­quer­ade of fem­i­nin­i­ty we are com­pelled to don.

Hillary, by con­trast, seems to want to be more like a man in her demeanor and pol­i­tics, makes few con­ces­sions to the social demands of fem­i­nin­i­ty, and yet seems to be only a par­tial fem­i­nist. She seems above us, exempt­ing her­self from com­pro­mis­es women have to make every day, while, at the same time, leav­ing some of the basic tenets of fem­i­nism in the dust. We are sold out on both counts. In oth­er words, she seems like patri­archy in sheep’s clothing.

One of pro­gres­sive feminism’s biggest (and so far, failed) bat­tles has been against the Genghis Khan prin­ci­ple of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics: that our lead­ers must be ruth­less, macho empire builders ful­ly pre­pared to drop the big one if they have to and invade any­time, any­where. When Geral­dine Fer­raro ran for vice pres­i­dent in 1984, the recur­ring ques­tion was whether she had the cojones to push the red but­ton, as if that is the ulti­mate cri­te­ri­on for lead­ing the coun­try. And while Amer­i­can pol­i­tics has, for years, been all about the neces­si­ty of dis­play­ing mas­culin­i­ty, Bush, Cheney and Rove suc­ceed­ed in upping the ante after 9⁄ 11 so that the sight of John Ker­ry wind­surf­ing meant he wasn’t man enough to run the coun­try. But now, with the mas­sive fail­ures of this cal­lous macho pos­ture every­where – a dis­as­trous war, a deeply endan­gered envi­ron­ment and more peo­ple than ever with­out health insur­ance – mil­lions are des­per­ate for a new vision and a new mod­el of leadership.

All of this frames many women’s reac­tions to Hillary. If she’s a fem­i­nist, how could she con­tin­ue to sup­port this war for so long? If she’s such a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for chil­dren, women and fam­i­lies, how could she coun­te­nance the ongo­ing killing of inno­cent Iraqi fam­i­lies, and of Amer­i­can sol­diers who are also someone’s chil­dren? If it would be so rev­o­lu­tion­ary to have a female as pres­i­dent, why does she feel like the same old poll-dri­ven oppor­tunis­tic politi­cian who seems to craft her posi­tions accordingly?

Maybe women like me are being extra hard on Hillary because she’s a woman. After all, baby boomer women couldn’t be ​“as good” as men in school or the work­place; we had to be bet­ter, to prove that women deserved equal oppor­tu­ni­ties. And this is part of the prob­lem too. We don’t want the first female pres­i­dent to be Joe Lieber­man in drag, push­ing Bush-lite pol­i­tics. We expect some­thing better.

Clear­ly, Hillary and her advi­sors have cal­cu­lat­ed that for a woman to be elect­ed in this coun­try, she’s got to come across as just as tough as the guys. And maybe they’re right. But so far, Hillary is not get­ting men with this strat­e­gy, and women feel writ­ten off. After the dark ages of this pugna­cious admin­is­tra­tion, many of us want to let the light in. We want a break with the past, opti­mism, and a recom­mit­ment to the gov­ern­ment car­ing about and serv­ing the needs of every­day peo­ple. We want what fem­i­nism began to fight for 40 years ago – human­iz­ing deeply patri­ar­chal insti­tu­tions. And, iron­i­cal­ly, we see can­di­dates like John Edwards or Barack Oba­ma – men – offer­ing just that. If Hillary Clin­ton wants to be the first female pres­i­dent, then maybe, just maybe, she should actu­al­ly run as a woman.